Margaret MacDonald (nurse)

Major Margaret Clothilde MacDonald, (26 February 1873 – 7 September 1948) was a Canadian military nurse, serving in the Second Boer War and the First World War. MacDonald held the title of Matron-in-Chief of the Canadian Army Medical Corps Nursing Service, the first woman promoted to the rank of major in the British Empire and was awarded the Royal Red Cross (1916) and the Florence Nightingale Medal (1918).

MacDonald was born into a wealthy, Catholic family in Bailey Brook, Nova Scotia in 1873. Her father was a store owner and provided MacDonald the opportunity to receive an education from an early age, atypical for girls of that time. After graduation, MacDonald went to practice in Panama before beginning her first military nursing work aboard the military ship, USS Relief during the Spanish-American War in 1898.