Vaughn (Vonnie) Rundle (nee Aubin) came, with her best friend, to St. Paul’s School of Nursing from the French-Canadian town of Lafleche, Saskatchewan shortly after high school graduation. For the remainder of her life, one of Vonnie’s proudest accomplishments was her graduation from St. Paul’s in 1954: not bad for a small-town girl from Saskatchewan!
While still in Nursing School, Vonnie met and later married Howard Rundle, an astrophysics student at UBC. The couple married at Guardian Angels Church in Vancouver’s West End and went on to live in England, France, and the United States while Howard completed his PhD in Astrophysics.
Howard and Vonnie settled in Saskatoon and raised two daughters and a son while Howard taught at the University of Saskatchewan. Once her children were grown, Vonnie returned to her nursing career and spent 14 years working at a nursing home in Saskatoon. Her children remember their mother talking fondly about her years at St. Paul’s School of Nursing and the friends she made there. (One of Vonnie’s daughters went on to become a nurse!)
Two of Vonnie’s prized possessions were her nursing graduation pin (pictured above) and a hand-made pillow embroidered with “St. Paul’s School of Nursing” given to her by a friend from the School. Towards the end of her life, her daughter Carole remembers that her mother sometimes slept with that pillow!
Vonnie was a wife, mother, friend, amateur painter, cabin-builder, outdoor enthusiast, and, always, a nurse and a proud graduate of St. Paul’s School of Nursing! We are grateful to Vaughn Rundle for the gift left to us in her will and we celebrate her legacy as one of St. Paul’s amazing nurses.