Rosalee Longmoore (current SUN president)

Rosalee Longmoore attributes her love for nursing to her father's illness when she was young.

My Father was a chronic nephritic patient. He had chronic nephritis, which is an infection of the kidneys and eventually after several hospitalizations had to be on dialysis. Back in those days there was one dialysis machine in Regina which was for emergency use only. So patients from southern Saskatchewan where I grew up could come, you know, were often brought here in a crisis, stabilized and if they required long-term dialysis, had to move to Saskatoon. So our family relocated to Saskatoon and we lived in an apartment across from St. Paul's Hospital so that my Father could have dialysis three times a week. And you know, I watched him suffer a lot and watched the people that were caring for him and I believe all of that contributed to my decision to enter nursing (Interview: Rosalie Longmoore).

Longmoore graduated from Wascana Institute of Applied Arts and Sciences Technology in Regina, which is now SIAST, in 1976. Prior to and during her schooling she worked as a nurse's aide at a long-term care facility, Extendicare, in Regina. She was fortunate after her graduation to immediately have work in a new Extendicare facility in Regina as the only registered nurse working nights. Longmore loves long-term care nursing because she works with the disabled and the elderly. She also attributes part of her happiness at the time to the working environment.

"The other thing about nursing back then is it was a much more stable environment in healthcare. So whether it was the registered nursing staff or the dietary staff it was a very stable work force and we too became very close like families. We all you know, had babies together, lived through the joys, the happiness, the tears, the sorrows that occur in people's lives and became like an extended family. And I think all of those things contribute to making people very satisfied in their work life".

Longmoore had been involved in the union from the time she began working. After a brief time off to get married, she became a local officer and was on the Extendicare bargaining committee. From these beginnings, she got involved in the larger union and in 1984 was elected to the board. She had various positions on the board, from representing nursing homes (the Region 8 representative) to being the Vice President of the long-term care sector. One success she remembers from her time on the board was that at one time every long-term care facility in the province had their own collective agreements. Longmoore worked to bring all of the facilities under one collective agreement, and then to achieve equity with acute care for nurses who worked in long term care.