Honourable senators, we recently celebrated Nursing Week.

It gives me great pleasure to introduce you to two exceptional nurses, who are here today as guests.

Diane Dupont was a nurse for 35 years at the Centre hospitalier universitaire mère-enfant Sainte-Justine. She holds a master’s degree in nursing from the Université de Montréal. She served in various roles, including nurse navigator at the Cystic Fibrosis Clinic for 13 years and at the Child Development Centre Clinic for 10 years. This clinic provides care to children with autism, cystic fibrosis and pervasive developmental disorders.

She was a speaker at various conferences, where she presented topics related to her practice. Diane also worked in the field of genetic prenatal diagnosis. This is crucial for people with sickle cell disease, cystic fibrosis and other genetic disorders. Her role as a nurse navigator, as well as the interdisciplinary work she did, made her a pioneer in both fields.

I would now like to highlight Louise Forest-Lalande’s career path. Louise holds a master’s degree in nursing from the Université de Montréal, with a specialization in ostomy therapy, a specialty focusing on ostomy care, incontinence care and wound care. Louise worked at Sainte-Justine Hospital for 26 years. She is the author of several book chapters on this subject.

Our career paths crossed in the field of chronic wound care. We gave talks both in the country and abroad on the importance of the physician-nurse team and a multidisciplinary team working in tandem to treat wounds.

Louise visited Latin America, Asia, and Europe, where she established the specialty of stomal therapy. She also trained of thousands of health care professionals in this field. Together, we served in the Canadian Association of Wound Care, now known as Wounds Canada. We helped ensure that training courses for professionals were available in French.

Along the way, our retirement dream was to buy a motorhome equipped to treat chronic wounds and then travel to remote regions to dispense care and deliver training. Life, however, had a different plan. Louise kept writing books and participating in conferences, while I ended up here, in the Senate, welcoming these two outstanding nurses. Thank you.