Stella Ajuzieogu
Stella Ajuzieogu, a Nigerian-trained registered nurse/midwife, earned her Nursing degree in Australia, and has served as an RN at the University of Alberta Hospital, and an AHS Community Care Case Manager.
Ruth Alexander
Ruth Alexander was a long-time ICU and community nurse in Edmonton and UNA activist who faced workplace discrimination as a Black nurse.
Donna Antsey
Donna Antsey had a long career at the University of Alberta in cardiovascular surgery before becoming a Patient Care Coordinator.
Jane Bennett
Jane Bennett is a long-time nurse who worked in coronary care, hematology, and eventually postpartum community services.
Sheila Berrisford
Sheila Berrisford is a senior nurse in Edmonton who began work in Health Link after a patient assault reduced her ability to do bedside work.
Alan Besecker
Alan Besecker, RN, participated in the merger of the Staff Nurses’ Association of Alberta with the United Nurses of Alberta, and became a member of the UNA negotiating team that was involved in intense bargaining with Ralph Klein’s government in 2001. He is a strong advocate for public healthcare.
Murray Billett
Murray Billett, human rights and trade union activist, educator, and advocate for 2SLGBTQ+ communities, describes his role in the Delwin Vriend case which resulted in legal recognition in Alberta of equality rights based on sexual orientation.
Judith Blakely
Judy Blakely has been a long-time nurse in British Columbia and Alberta as well as a municipal politician in Hinton.
Tim Bouwsema
Tim Bouwsema is a member of the Emergency Mental Health Team in the Emergency Department of the University of Alberta Hospital.
Maureen Brass
Maureen Brass was part of the first Public Health unit team in Canmore in 1974 where she initiated home care service in the town.
Linda Bridge
Linda Bridge and Barb Charles both had long nursing careers in the Chinook Health Region where both were long-time officers of the UNA local.
Wendy Brigham
Wendy Brigham had a long nursing career at Rocky View General Hospital beginning in 1980, and of union activism including both local mentoring and solidarity actions with nurses at other facilities.
Christine Burdett
Christine Burdett chaired Friends of Medicare from 1999 to 2004, and led organization of a militant campaign against Ralph Klein’s Bill 11 in 2000 which proposed an expanded role for private surgical clinics.
Canmore Nurses Group Interview
Includes interviews with Pam Little, Jean Shafto, Maureen Brass, and Helen Krizan.
Barbara Campbell
Barbara Campbell is a veteran oncology nurse and union activist in two provinces who has experienced the reduction in patient services that hospital cutbacks involve as well as the resentments that bumping resulting from cutbacks produce.
Marie Campbell
Marie Campbell had a long career in nursing in Saskatchewan and Edmonton , during which she participated in 5 strikes and became a Ward Rep who mentored new nurses coming into her workplace.
Barb Charles
Linda Bridge and Barb Charles both had long nursing careers in the Chinook Health Region where both were long-time officers of the UNA local.
Laurie Coates
As a new Labour Relations Officer with UNA in 1988, Laurie Coates filed the complaint for Susan Parcels that led to the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench removing the discrimination between the benefits women can claim during maternity leave and those claimed by employees on sick leave.
Larry Connell
Larry Connell’s long nursing career has included stints in industrial nursing, corrections, and orthopaedic nursing.
Jennifer Cory
Jennifer Cory, an RN and new graduate, exemplified leadership early in her career, recognizing that all nurses have the responsibility to advocate for patient safety, regardless of their years of work experience.
Karen Craik
Karen Craik is the Secretary-Treasurer of the United Nurses of Alberta, a position held since 1996. She has a long history with UNA, from their founding in 1977 to the present day, protecting nurses’ rights and our healthcare system.
Bev Dick
Bev Dick, before her retirement in 2013, had been a UNA activist since its founding and served as first vice-president from 1995 to 2013.
Lisa Dubbeldam
Lisa Dubbeldam’s work in community nursing caused her to become an advocate for full assessments and adequate staffing to support the needs of her patients.
Margaret Ethier
Margaret Ethier was president of the United Nurses of Alberta from 1980 to 1988 and led the Alberta nursing strikes of 1982 and 1988.
Dewey Funk
Dewey Funk describes nurses’ struggles against management in their efforts to secure safe working conditions in Alberta hospitals and the Edmonton Remand Centre.
Tanya George
Tanya George has made community health nursing, with emphasis on the relationship between family health and the health of entire communities, the focus of her nursing career.
David Harrigan
David Harrigan, a registered psychiatric nurse, has served as Director of Labour Relations for the United Nurses of Alberta since 1990.
Holly Heffernan
Holly Heffernan is a long-time UNA activist who was in practice throughout all of the nursing strikes in Alberta.
Kristen Hennes
Kristin Hennes, a first-year acute care RN, discusses her perception of inadequate staffing as a major challenge for the profession, and its ripple effects on expectations of nurses and care delivery, as well as working conditions for which she has come to see the importance of the union.
Sister Theresa Horvath
Sister Theresa Horvath took the lead in organizing a UNA local at Extended Care Holyrood in Edmonton and then Extended Care Leduc as well as playing a role in organizing Extended Care Mayerthorpe. Horvath battled management for proper security for her patients, and worked with the union to deal with physical safety for the staff in extended care facilities and to have injuries that they received in the course of fulfilling their duties recognized as work injuries.
Jenna Knight
Jenna Knight, RN, is a nurse at the University of Alberta Hospital who has served on the UNA executive since 2011.
Helen Krizan
Helen Krizan, who was a nurse at Canmore Hospital from 1968 to 1993, supported Canmore nurses’efforts to join the United Nurses of Alberta in 1979 because the nurses were dealing with poor wages, threats to their pensions, and arbitrary management.
Karen Kuprys
Karen Kuprys is a gerontology nurse who was a leading United Nurses of Alberta activist from 1993 to 2021 when she became secretary-treasurer of the Alberta Federation of Labour.
Laurie Lang
Laurie Lang, RN, RPN, served as president of the Alberta Hospital Edmonton local where he was particularly active on Occupational Health and Safety issues.
Barb LeBlanc
Barb LeBlanc, a Registered ICU Nurse and former Staff Nurses Association of Alberta (SNAA) president, used the Professional Responsibility process to challenge changes affecting the effectiveness of nurses in fulfilling their roles, and helped bring SNAA into UNA in 1997 to better fight for nurses and patients.
Pam Little
Pam Little focused on developing best practices for rural nursing during 20 years of nursing in Banff.
Linda Long
Dr. Linda Rose Long was a nurse and nurse educator who worked in hospitals in four provinces and taught in a university nursing program in a fifth province.
Jerry Macdonald
Jerry Macdonald, a former president of CARNA, transferred out of hospital nursing to community nursing because understaffing at a time of increased patient acuity and demands on hospital nurses made his ICU work unbearable.
Marion McKenzie
Marion McKenzie is an active UNA Ward Rep and RN in nephrology at the University of Alberta who describes both her activism and racial discrimination on the job.
Lee McNiven
Lee McNiven is a long-time union activist who was UNA vice-president of Local 121, Colonel Belcher Hospital, in Calgary, at the time of her interview.
Mike Mearns
Mike Mearns, RN, played a key role in the creation of UNA and served as one of its initial labour relations officers.
Arlene Moreside
Arlene Moreside explains why the provincial UNA strike in 1988 proved a pivotal event in achieving gains in the area of occupational health and safety.
Noreen Olmstead
Noreen Olmstead practiced nursing from 1955 to 1962 in Saskatchewan and describes what nursing was like in the pre-medicare, pre-union period.
Cynthia Perkins
Cynthia Perkins, a nursing veteran of over 45 years, describes the many health and safety issues for nurses at Rocky View General Hospital in 2007.
Daisy Plenderleith
Daisy Plenderleith, a nurse of Dominican origin, experienced racism both at Bonnyville Hospital and in several units of the Royal Alexandra through a long nursing career in Alberta.
Diane Poynter
Diane Poynter lived the downgrading of Lethbridge and area hospital facilities and staffing during her 25-year nursing career, and had to transfer hospitals when one of the two hospitals in Lethbridge was closed.
Doris Proulx
Doris Proulx is an Indigenous nurse with experience across emergency and ICU/CCU who mentors new Indigenous nurses and challenges culturally inappropriate and outright racist treatment of Indigenous patients.
Joyce Pui-Porretta
Joyce Pui-Porretta is a Southeast Asian-origin psychiatric nurse with over three decades of experience who has served as an advocate for nurses of colour within UNA and the AFL.
Helen Pulido
Helen Pulido’s nursing career has included work in a dialysis unit, in ICU, in long-term care, and in an acute geriatric facility where she became a unit manager.
Alexis Ranger
Alexis Ranger was a UNA activist, including during the period during 2009 and 2010 when Dr. Stephen Duckett, the first president of Alberta Health Services, was making huge cuts to healthcare staffing on behalf of the Progressive Conservative government of Ed Stelmach.
Sandie Rentz
Sandie Rentz had a 35-year nursing career, mostly in Red Deer at the David Thompson Regional Hospital, and describes the ways in which nurses were made to feel under-appreciated in the years before the 1988 nurses’ strike.
Pat Richardson
Pat Richardson is a long-time UNA activist who, at the time of her interview, was working at Calgary Health Link doing telephone triage.
Trudy Richardson
Trudy Richardson was a feminist and global social justice activist who became a UNA labour relations officer in 1984 and then education director in 1990, while playing important roles in Friends of Medicare.
Linda Roberts
Linda Roberts was president of the Red Deer Regional Hospital Staff Nurses’ Association when she became a founding member of UNA in 1977.
Louise Rogers
Louise Rogers, RN, played a leading role in the merger of the Staff Nurses’ Association and UNA that made UNA the representative of all nurses in Alberta.
Cecile Sangster-Locker
Cecile Sangster-Locker is an RN and midwife who played important roles in all the nursing strikes in Alberta to date.
Beryl L. Scott
Beryl Scott, RN, has been a lifelong advocate for equal treatment for marginalized groups within the healthcare system and society in general.
Michelle Senkow
Michelle Senkow is a long-time Maternal Child Care nurse throughout Alberta who became active in UNA and serves as a mentor to other nurses.
Jean Shafto
Jean Shafto nursed at Banff Mineral Springs Hospital off and on from 1945 to 1965, later training and serving as a psychiatric nurse.
Risi Shokoya
At the time of this interview, Risi Shokoya was a recent graduate from Athabasca University’s Bachelor of Nursing program at Mount Royal College who was working in general medicine and palliative care nominally part-time but almost full-time hours at Rocky View General Hospital in Calgary.
Linda Sloan
Linda Sloan served as president of the Staff Nurses Association of Alberta (SNAA) from 1992 to 1997 before becoming a Liberal MLA and later an Edmonton city councillor.
Heather Smith
Heather Smith, RN, who took part in all 4 province-wide United Nurses of Alberta strikes between 1977 and 1998, has served as president of UNA since 1988.
Anna Sokolawski
Anna Sokolawski was, at the time of her interview, a new graduate nurse, who was discovering the impact of nursing shortages on both her own, and patient, safety.
Beryl Stelmach
Jamaican-born English trained nurse who specialized in different areas of her field. In Canada, employment was mainly federal – in hospitals and penitentiaries.
Jane Sustrik
Jane Sustrik was local president of the Staff Nurses Association of Alberta at the University of Alberta Hospital when the SNAA and UNA negotiated their merger.
Aman Takhar
Aman Takhar, RN, credits the United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) union leadership and solidarity for ensuring that nurses’ voices are heard at level where policy change can be made.
Constance Thomas
Constance Thomas is a veteran nurse, midwife, and UNA activist who has experienced many instances of racism in both her work and community lives, including denials of promotions at work.
Karen Three Persons
Karen Three Persons is a veteran Indigenous nurse and UNA local president, who has managed training programmes for Elders’ care and home care.
Jennifer Ward
Jennifer Ward is a long-time registered nurse on the psychiatric unit of the Grande Prairie Hospital where she, as a local UNA executive member, has fought for nurses’ rights to refuse unsafe work.
Kevin Wilibnisky
Kevin Wilibnisky is a psychiatric nurse at Red Deer General Hospital and an activist in Local 2 of UNA.
Pauline Worsfold
Pauline Worsfold was president of the Staff Nurses Association of Alberta when that union and the United Nurses of Alberta merged, and later became the national secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions and chair of the Canadian Health Coalition.