Dr. Angela Cooper Brathwaite gets national and provincial recognition
February 3, 2023
Dr. Angela Cooper Brathwaite had no idea where St. Anthony is after responding to an advertisement in the ‘Nursing Times’ journal for Midwives in Newfoundland & Labrador (NL).
Surprised that the application was accepted and she had a short window to travel to the easterly Canadian province, the Registered Nurse & Midwife in Trinidad & Tobago consulted her pastor’s wife to locate where she was assigned.
At the tip of the Great Northern Peninsula, St. Anthony is the main service centre for NL.
“It took us quite a while before we could find it on a map,” Cooper Brathwaite recalled. “Then reality slowly sunk in that I was going to the far reaches of a country where I knew no one.”
Nearing 50 years since landing in Canada and being the only racialized midwife delivering babies in isolated communities across northeast NL between 1979 and 1981, the health care professional is a household name in Canada’s nursing community.
Cooper Brathwaite was appointed to the Order of Canada in December, joining an illustrious list to be honoured with the highest level of distinction in the national honours system.
She dedicated the honour to her nominator, Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario (RNAO) Chief Executive Officer Dr. Doris Grinspun, who created the organization’s Black Nurses’ Task Force (BNTF) that Cooper Brathwaite co-chairs with nurse practitioner Corsita Garraway.
It was set up in June 2020 following George Floyd’s murder to address anti-Black racism in the nursing profession.
“Dr. Grinspun is a friend, mentor and colleague whom I have known and worked with for over 26 years,” noted Cooper Brathwaite. “She has nominated me for the last three awards I received in 2022 and is also a great supporter of Black nurses in Canada.”
The last six months have been quite rewarding for the former RNAO President.
The Order of Canada came just six weeks after she was named to the Order of Ontario.
RNAO Lifetime Achievement and Student Mentorship Leadership Awards were bestowed on Cooper Brathwaite last June.
In October, she was inducted into the American Academy of Nursing comprising over 3,000 fellows who are global nursing leaders in education, management, practice, research and policy and are advancing health policy to serve the public and nursing profession.
Coming to Canada in 1975, Cooper Brathwaite is very appreciative of the honours.
“I had no clue I was nominated for the two Orders, so I am quite surprised,” she said. “I have worked very hard, but I am not going to make noise about that because I don’t do it for recognition. I do a lot of work to help people and that is the reason I got into the nursing profession.”
As a BNTF co-chair, Cooper Brathwaite facilitated 11 monthly anti-Black racism webinars and submitted a resolution advocating for racism to be included in undergraduate and graduate curricula in Ontario’s colleges and universities.
The resolution was passed at the RNAO’s 97th annual general meeting last June.
She has also published peer-reviewed articles on systemic racism and discrimination in nursing in professional journals and presented keynote addresses on racism in nursing at webinars/conferences for national and international nursing students and academics.
Though Cooper Brathwaite’s mother excelled in the nursing profession, she didn’t want her daughter to follow her footsteps.
“My mom wept when I broke the news to her that this was the career I was going to pursue and she didn’t sleep during the first week I was in nursing school,” she pointed out. “My mother said I was too outspoken, too candid, people would not like me and she didn’t want to see me get hurt. I just said I am going and I went. I like helping people.”
Making the move to Canada was not easy for Cooper Brathwaite who helped launched the Healthy Babies Healthy Children program, a collaboration between hospital maternity units and public health to promote nursing education and improve women and children’s health.
After completing midwifery education, she asked to be assigned to a Maternity Unit in T & T.
“Out of a large group of applicants, I was one of three chosen,” said Cooper Brathwaite. “I was very satisfied with where my career was heading and I was going to church and teaching Sunday school. Things were great and I had no reason to move.”
She however enjoys travelling and most of her family members were in the United States.
While in transit in Nova Scotia on the way to NL, Cooper Brathwaite suitcase went missing.
With just a loaned uniform and pair of shoes, she sent a cable to her mom in New York, saying, ‘Lost suitcase, send clothes.”
Four days later, Cooper Brathwaite received a grip full of clothes and a winter coat.
She still has the lost one, received three weeks after she landed in NL, in her home as a memento.
“I have kept that with me as a memorial to the Lord and his faithfulness in me,” said Cooper Brathwaite.
Since the COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020, health care workers have quit the profession in droves.
A Statistics Canada survey released last June revealed that one in four nurses plan to leave their jobs in the next three years and 95 per cent feel the pandemic has impacted their mental health and has added stress to their work-life balance.
Despite the doom and gloom, Cooper Brathwaite encourages individuals interested in pursuing a nursing career to follow their calling.
“To care for sick people is a career that is physically, mentally and emotionally draining,” the Ontario Institute of Technology Health Science department Sessional Professor and Associate Graduate Faculty member said. “Sickness changes people’s behaviour and some are not so pleasant to deal with even when they are not sick. If you are not interested in helping people, this is not the profession for you. On the other hand, if you care for people and love to help them, go for it.”
