Item AAAB2570 - Claire Culhane interview

CALL NUMBER: T2369:0001 RECORDED: [location unknown], 1976 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Birth in Montreal; education at Sir George Williams; nursing training in 1935; discharged in 1937 for disobeying rules that compromised her humanitarianism; on Spanish Civil War Committee in Montreal; Dr. Bethune's Montreal lectures; union organisation in Quebec in the 1930s; War Measures Act in 1940; the Red squad in Quebec; moving to Vancouver; women's movement within unions in the 1940s; 1950s was Ban the Bomb; Rosenberg protests; working at Children's Hospital on East 55th in Vancouver; Montreal Neurological Institute in 1955; Grace Hart Tuberculosis Hospital setting up medical record department; medical librarian training in Canada and the UK; 1957 to 1960, setting up medical records system at Meath Hospital, Dublin, Ireland; 1960 to 1966 medical record work at a Montreal hospital. TRACK 2: Dr. Alte Vennema and Dr. Michael Jutra, January 1967; Canadian hospital supplies on the South Vietnamese black market; 'lost' hospital goods; no vouchers for $429,000 worth of medical supplies; Canadian ambassador in South Vietnam in 1967; hospital routine at Quang Ngai; 200 patients each morning; ambassador's advice to her; the Tet Offensive in 1968; decision to leave needy people there and return to Canada to tell the truth of our role in Vietnam; the hypocrisy of making bombs for the Americans and telling world only of our hospital work in Vietnam, which was in South Vietnam only; denied the right to present a report on the hospital; ten day fast in October of 1968; Ottawa winter campout on Parliament Hill in 1969; chained to public gallery in Ottawa; Parliament May 1971; protests. CALL NUMBER: T2369:0002 RECORDED: [location unknown], 1976 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: $2.5 million in aid to Vietnam; total from BC Government in 1973; only $300,000 actually sent; BC NDP conference in 1974 ignores the Vietnam delegation; values; a call for medicine; scholarly books to help rebuild Vietnam; sent to Clair Culhane for forwarding; campaign to aid political prisoners in South Vietnam in 1973; tiger cage publicity; United Prisoners Rights movement in Canada in 1976; need for freedom on information acts, sponsored by Senator Eugene Forsey and Gerald Baldwin, MP.