For the Least of My Brethren: A Centenary History of St. Michael's Hospital - Tapa blanda

For the Least of My Brethren is the story of St. Michael's Hospital, founded by the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1892 to meet the needs of Toronto's sick poor. Sustained by the Gospel's assurance "What you have done for the least of My Brethren you have done for Me," a plucky little group of fewer than twenty people – sisters, doctors, and nurses – located in an old Baptist church, laid the foundations for what would grow into a major urban university teaching hospital.

The book traces the development to 1992 of the first hospital in Toronto under Roman Catholic auspices, and the first Catholic school of nursing in Canada. Within the context of a not-always-friendly political, social, economic, and religious culture, the author has identified the forces – the people, events, struggles, triumphs, and failures – that have shaped St. Michael's into what it is today.

Irene McDonald enrolled in St. Michael's School of Nursing in 1947, joined the Sisters of St. Joseph a year later, and thereafter was closely associated with St. Michael's for more than thirty years.

After graduating from St. Michael's School of Nursing, Sister Irene earned a bachelor of science degree in nursing from St. Louis University, St. Louis, Mo., a master's degree in administration in nursing education, and a doctoral degree in psychiatric nursing at the Catholic University of American, Washington, D.C. Along the way she was inducted into Sigma Theta Tau, the honour society for nursing.

Sister Irene worked in several of St. Michael's Hospital's nursing units (work that included the indispensible experience of several terms as night supervisor), taught in the hospital's school of nursing, directed its nursing service department, and, lastly, served a ten-year term as assistant administrator, patient care, whil serving concurrently on the hospital's Board of Directors. In these capacities, Sister Irene was part of the making of much of the history here recorded.