Jean Ewen

Jean Ewen (1911 to 1987) was a Canadian nurse who worked with Chinese communist forces during the 1930s. Born in Scotland and raised in Saskatchewan, she graduated in nursing in Winnipeg in 1931 and went to China in 1932 as a medical missionary with the Franciscan Fathers, where she learned Mandarin. After a short return to Canada she went back with Doctor Norman Bethune, serving as his interpreter and assistant, and nursed the wounded in front-line surgery during the Second Sino-Japanese War. She also trained nurses and so-called barefoot doctors and taught sanitation, work for which the Chinese government gave her the Silver Shield. Although her family supported the communist cause, she held that politics and medicine should be kept apart. Her memoir China Nurse was published in 1981 and later issued as Canadian Nurse in China; she died in 1987 and her ashes were returned to China the next year.