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Sub-Lieutenant Agnes Wilkie

Young woman in glasses and naval officer's uniform

Photo:

courtesy of the Misericordia Heritage Collection at Misericordia Health Centre, Winnipeg, MB

Sub-Lieutenant Agnes Wilkie was a Nursing Sister in the Royal Canadian Navy in World War II. She worked as the assistant matron of the Navy Hospital at H.M.C.S. Avalon in St. John’s, Newfoundland in 1942. She was returning from two weeks of leave in Canada when she boarded S.S. Caribou to travel back to Newfoundland on October 13th, 1942. She was traveling with her colleague and friend Nursing Sister Margaret Brooke on the ferry.

Agnes Wilkie survived the initial sinking of S.S. Caribou and was clinging to a capsized lifeboat with Margaret Brooke and others for hours in the frigid North Atlantic. Tragically, Wilkie succumbed to hypothermia before they were rescued by H.M.C.S. Grandmere. Her body was one of the 34 recovered by fishermen.

Sub-Lieutenant Agnes Wilkie was the only woman serving with the Royal Canadian Navy killed by enemy action in World War II. She was buried with full naval honours in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Her name was given to a nurses’ residence in Halifax, Nova Scotia and to Lake Wilkie in Manitoba in honour of her wartime sacrifice.