Kathleen Gilmour, MBE, GCStJ
Kathleen Gilmour joined St. John Ambulance in 1940. By 1942, she was Lady District Superintendent of the Brigade in Ontario.
In 1942, Gilmour left for Britain as part of a delegation to study the British Civil Defence preparations. After 8 months, she returned to Canada and became Lady Superintendent-in-Chief of the Brigade in Canada, the second person to hold this appointment.1
In 1943, she traveled to every province in support of Volunteer Aid Detachment (VAD) recruitment. At each stop, she spoke to St. John Ambulance members and the public. She would return to England that December to set in place a plan to send members of the Canadian Nursing Divisions overseas.
Gilmour was part of a delegation of 10 senior officers from the Nursing Division to travel to Britain (at their own expense) in February 1944 to meet with the Joint War Organization, a combined organization of the British Red Cross and St. John Ambulance, to determine how Canadian VADs could best support Britain. Queen Elizabeth, the late Queen Mother and consort of King George VI, invited Gilmour and her delegation to Buckingham Palace. From 1944 till the war’s end, Gilmour was the senior Canadian St. John’s Ambulance Nursing Officer in the United Kingdom. Gilmour established a Canadian St. John Ambulance Medical Aid Post on Platform 3 at Leinster Square underground station at the request of the City of Westminster due to bombings by German V1 and V2 rockets.2
She returned to Canada in June 1945 and retired to the officers’ reserve in January 1946. On November 25, 1946 she was awarded the Service Medal of the Order of St. John with palms by the Governor General, Viscount Alexander of Tunis. She was appointed a Dame Grand Cross of the Order in 1976, only the second Canadian to have received the honour.3 In 1975, she co-hosted a VAD reunion in Toronto with Constance Hutcheon, another former VAD.4
Later in life, she suggested that the Priory of Canada fund a Canadian nurse to work at the St. John Ambulance Eye Hospital for a year at a time. This project would not be realized until after her death. Between 1984 and 1993, six nurses were sent by the Ophthalmic Hospital Guild as part of the Kay Gilmour Memorial Project.5
Gilmour passed away in 1980.
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1 Strome Galloway, The White Cross in Canada 1883-1983. (Ottawa: St John Priory of Canada, 1983), p.92.
2 Galloway, 96.
3 Christopher McCreery, The Maple Leaf and the White Cross: A History of St. John Ambulance and the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in Canada (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2008), 146.
4 Harry Hammond, Yesteryears: A History of St. John Ambulance (Toronto: Versatel), 48.
5 McCreery, 159-160.
