“I have to be careful what I use in class,” she added, of the real-life situations she sometimes converts into teaching tools. “I have to ask permission if they mind if I swear.”

Dorothy began teaching First Aid through St. John Ambulance in the early 1960s while still in her native homeland, England.
“I really don’t know (why),” she says. “It was one of those things that I was really interested in. “It has been a major part of my life and I still thoroughly enjoy it.”

Shortly after moving to the Truro area around 1968, she signed on with the local program and began taking First Aid courses. Over the next year and a half she kept secret the fact she was actually a qualified instructor, learning all she could about the “methods that are accepted in this country” and then waiting until she was invited to become an instructor.

After their first couple of years in Canada, Dorothy and her husband William ended up purchasing a dairy farm in Debert, where she still lives.
But with 32 cattle to look after and young children to raise, her First-Aid activities took a back seat to family priorities for nearly the next decade.
“When you work from five in the morning until you finish at night, you really don’t have much time,” she says.

After nine years of milking more than 30 head of cattle, they sold the herd and Dorothy began delivering First Aid instruction on a full-time basis, sometimes working six and seven days a week.

“Then I could devote a lot more time to doing what I liked to do, not what I had to do,” she says.

And, she’s still doing it, though on a greatly reduced scale.

As for how many people she has instructed or the number of lives indirectly impacted through her work with First Aid, Dorothy has no idea.

“I would think from the people I meet in Truro who said ‘oh, I remember you, you taught me First Aid,’ ... many, many, many people,” she says.

Dorothy has never actually had to put her expertise to work in a life-saving situation but her efforts have garnered numerous awards and commendations over the years, including the prestigious Dame of Grace Award. And while she does appreciate receiving recognition for a job well done, her real rewards come through word-of-mouth feedback.

“People who have come back to me and said how they have been successful. So, that’s all I need in the way of thanks,” she says.“Those are the things that mean a lot to me. Medals and things like that mean nothing. The recognition of service, I think, means the most to me because I put as much as I could (into it) and it was appreciated and that’s all that I need. Because I loved doing what I was doing.”