The Sisters of St. Joseph founded St. Michael's Hospital in 1892. Until 1974, when nursing programs began to be offered at community colleges, students were trained at the hospital's Training School for Nurses. Students attended classes and lectures regularly:

ARCAT is fortunate to have a copy of Macdonald's speech, "Echoes of the Great War," from the luncheon, including hand-written corrections. This is the first page, where she began to describe her experience with nurses during World War I:

"To one whose work had long been almost entirely for and with men, the prospect of going to a war in charge of a party of one hundred odd women promised to be more alarming than novel -- so alarming, in fact, that my first step was one of protest. I declared by incompetency to assume responsibility for, what then seemed, so enormous a number of nurses. Instead of assurance or sympathy I was reminded of a soldier's first duty -- obedience. Denied a crumb of comfort, I took up my new duties with the same degree of liking one has for a cold plunge. However, long before the hundred odd had developed into a Corps of twenty-five hundred odd, confidence had succeeded fear, and novelty was swallowed up by a positive greed.
The more I knew of nurses the more of them I wanted to know. To gather all into the ranks of the elect of war became my hobby. An organization that expands gradually is easy of control. One grows along with it and finds that one thousand are quite as readily administered as on hundred; two thousand as two hundred and so on. In the Army, and for the reason that everything -- almost one's mind -- is governed by rule, difficulties of administration are perhaps not so frequently encountered. Still, with all the regulations in the world, there are bound to arise circumstances to which no rule applies. A law must be created to suit the occasion. Then comes in that indispensable quality possessed by nine-tenths of our Canadian women -- initiative."

The first graduating class, which was in 1894 after two years of study, consisted of seven students. The number of graduates increased yearly. In 1929, 53 students were honoured at the graduation ceremony

Archbishop McGuigan was pleased to help Miss Mitchell and provided her with a directory that included contact information for clergy in all districts. One reason McGuigan may have been so accommodating is due to personal experience. In his introduction of Cardinal McGuigan at the 1946 Congress of the Catholic Canadian Nurses Association, Rev. Louis-Emile Hudon, Moral Director of Nurses at Quebec, mentioned one Alice McGuigan, sister to the Cardinal, who was a lieutenant/nursing sister in the Canadian Army Medical Corps:

"Three months ago, just on March 27th, two women, ... the first one was Reverend Mother St. George, dean of Studies at St. Louis College, Montreal and the other one was Lieutenant Alice McGuigan of the Canadian Army Medical Corps, were at St. Michael's Cathedral in the joy to see, for the first time, their brother so loved, the Cardinal James Charles McGuigan. ... Yes, dear Sisters, dear Nurses, one sister of Our Cardinal in Toronto is a member of the large family of all Catholic Nurses of Canada and we are very glad to receive this evening your Eminence in our Congress, because in your life and in your own family the problems of the Nurses were well known." June 30, 1946