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Marion and Louise Keshen are best known as the philanthropists who, along with their brother-in-law Sam Goodman, gave Halifax the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium and the Keshen-Goodman Library; however they also served overseas with the Canadian Red Cross Society in the Second World War.
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During WWII, 15,000 women volunteered with the Canadian Red Cross Corps. Marion and Louise were among 641 who served in the Overseas Detachment.
The efforts of the Red Cross volunteers were crucial for the war effort.
This 1945 image shows Louise and Marion, proud of their uniforms, in Halifax, before they go to Europe. |
Louise and Marion in Trafalgar Square, London, UK in 1946.
Other images from their "Red Cross Overseas trip scrapbook" show that they worked in Switzerland and France, as well.
The scrapbook given to HRM Archives gives no clues to what type of work the Keshen sisters did, but Red Cross volunteers worked as ambulance drivers, civil defence workers, welfare officers, nurses, as well as accompanying war brides and their children to their new homes in Canada. |
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Louise and Marion were in their 30s when they served in Europe, and continued to volunteer with the Red Cross when they returned to Halifax.
A 1950 image from their collection shows a Red Cross van providing food at a Musquodoboit forest fire. |
Louise and friends "mid-Atlantic", on the homeward voyage aboard the troop-ship Samaria, December 1946.
Like many Canadians, Marion Keshen was proud of her war service. She kept her Red Cross uniform the rest of her life. A photograph taken of Marion before her death, shows her nurses dressed up in her old Red Cross uniform. Visit the Archives to see more of the Keshen Goodman family photographs.
All images from a scrapbook of the Keshen sisters' WWII Red Cross service, HRM Archives CR 19 Keshen Goodman family photographs. See description of the collection in our database.
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