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Henderson Hospital

The public is now becoming aware that back in 2006 the Hamilton Health Sciences Corporation made the decision to dump the name Henderson and rename the hospital on Concession Street the Juravinski Hospital. There has been a lot of confusion about this because people assumed that the occasional reference that they may have heard to the Juravinski name applied to the Juravinski Cancer Clinic.

The Juravinskis deserve to be recognized and honoured for their generosity to public institutions in Hamilton. However, the public will be justified in protesting that honouring them ought not to necessitate withdrawing the honour that was previously accorded to Nora-Frances Henderson. While some may not value preserving the memory of outstanding public service in our past the Hamilton Mountain Heritage Society certainly does and wants it to be known that they oppose this obliteration of our heritage.


"Fiery, Fearless and Feminine"
Nora-Frances Henderson
(1896-1949)

Excerpted from "Hamilton's Famous and Fascinating"
by T. M. Bailey and C.A. Carter (1972)

"I'll run if you won't!" said spunky, diminutive Nora Henderson. Run she did! She became our first woman to win an aldermanic seat; first female controller in Canada; a "City Father," substituting for the mayor.

Sixteen-year-old Nora invented a rotating oven on her father's Winona farm. "It is impractical," a stove manufacturer wrote to her, "But, you write so clearly and logically that you must become a writer." Urged on by her mother she invaded the totally male Hamilton Herald. It was a den of iniquity, she remembered, blue with smoke. Reporters played cards with their feet on the desk. She got the job! By 1932 she rose to Women's Editor. Readers chuckled over the pungent and subtle humour of her column, "Mrs. Pepys' Diary." She later wrote a book, "The Citizens of Tomorrow." Her "Pageant of Motherhood" was performed at the Savoy Theatre.

Nora believed that people appreciated frankness. Sometimes this backfired. At the start of her career it often irritated old ladies, policemen and clergymen. She could outface many a person twice her size, like the crowd that sang, "We'll hang Nora Henderson to a sour apple tree." Then, there was the woman who pulled her hair and the man who kicked her in the seat. During the tense steel strike she defiantly crossed the picket lines.

Generosity was a sister to her braveness. Often she handed out civic relief deficiencies from her own pocket. When she retired from city politics she became director of the Ontario Children's Aid Society. Her work there initiated child protection laws now in force in Canada, England and the United States. A scholarship perpetuates her name. Hamilton's Nora-Frances Henderson Hospital is her finest memorial.

Unfortunately, the memorial referred to in the last line of this bio sketch has now been sold to someone else!