Nancy Malloy, from nearby Brockville, Ontario, graduated from the Kingston General Hospital School of Nursing in 1968 and earned her Bachelor’s degree in Nursing Science at Queen’s University in 1969. She did not stay in Ontario for long, however, moving east to Montreal to be a teacher and then west to Vancouver where she joined the British Columbia branch of the Red Cross as a nurse and hospital administrator at remote hospitals.
When she completed her MBA, Nancy Malloy continued to work for the Canadian Red Cross for nine years, working in Ethiopia, Kuwait, Belgrade, Zaire, and Chechnya. It was in Chechnya in 1996 that Malloy would lose her life, along with five others, as she slept in the hospital compound at Novye Atagi. A peace treaty had recently been signed between Russia and Chechnya, but tensions were still high after two years of warfare. A group of armed men (later found out to be Russians on a mission gone wrong), entered the hospital and killed Nancy Malloy and her colleagues.
Malloy was posthumously awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal from the International Committee of the Red Cross, as well as the Meritorious Service Medal from Governor General Romeo LeBlanc, in recognition of her service and sacrifice. Her memory lives on in a monument to Canadian Aid Workers in Rideau Falls, Ottawa, and through the Nancy Malloy Memorial Award given by the Queen’s University School of Nursing.
To learn more about Nancy Malloy and her life and work, visit our blog at https://museumofhealthcare.blog/15-years-later-remembering-nancy-malloy.
