Hamilton General nurse Barb Linker is longest-serving HHS employee at 55 years. Not even COVID can stop her
They say the eyes are windows onto the soul, and so glasses must be - what? - the double glazing? The colourful drapes?
Barbara Linkert's expressive, seen-everything eyes quietly show you the soul of a nurse and what that means - the compassion, stamina and focus, the art and science of care deeply understood.
Her glasses? Round-lensed, frame of marigold orange and fuchsia blue, they sing the rest of the story. The joy (with a touch of mischief) and stylish confidence that come out the other side of hard work well done, challenges met and the courage to know who you are ... and wear it.
I was meant to be a nurse," says Barb. I think I knew from the time I volunteered as a candystriper in my teens."
Barb has worked as a nurse, continuously, for 55 years, all of them at the Hamilton General Hospital. Stamina? She's the longest-serving employee, in any capacity, not only at the General but in all of the Hamilton Health Sciences family, 41 years full time and part time since 2007.
Not even COVID-19 could put her off, though she has strong feelings about it. It has been pretty well the worst time she has seen in all her years nursing. It's hard and you really have to try to keep positive." She wishes that nurses were consulted more on decision-making around COVID responses in the hospitals, as they experience it most intimately.
I miss seeing people's faces," she says.
Barb, going into her 56th year, has no plans to pack it in.
It's my home," she says of the General. I have so many friends here. And I still have a lot I want to contribute." She loves her patients and her colleagues.
It's her home - and was, literally.
For three years before she started working at the General, she studied nursing there, Hamilton Civic Hospital's School of Nursing, class of '66. The school was a residence program. She lived at the hospital.
I get a lot of comments on the glasses," says Barb, smiling. Most people know me because of them (especially since COVID, when that's mostly what people see)."
She loves capricious design and bold colour. It's not just glasses. The clothes she wears. Her wonderful dresses with the flouncy hems and pane construction; her standout earrings, her jewelry. She makes everything that she wears, however daring, seem as classy and timeless as her career.
Her father worked in design in Stratford, where Barb grew up, though the family always had a strong link with Hamilton. Her grandfather, A.G. Gall, owned Gall Jewelry and was a harbour commissioner.
My dad wanted me to go into jewelry design," she recalls, but, no, I knew I wanted to be nurse." Her parents were enormous supports throughout.
When she applied, right out of high school, she was accepted both at the General and Toronto Sick Kids.
She excelled - when, that is, she and her classmates in the Hendry residence weren't getting into all kinds of trouble. The hospital-based residential nursing school back then - I've written about them before - represented a uniquely bonding, affirming and fun culture of opportunity for young women at a time when there wasn't much of that.
We were always pulling pranks on each other," Barb recalls fondly. A girl would go home for the weekend and when she got back, all the furniture in her room would be gone." They'd always be helping or jokingly hindering each other elude the house mother, as one or another would try to sneak back into residence up the fire escape, having been out with a boyfriend past curfew. Then there was the episode with the fire extinguisher ...
Barb keeps in touch with that class of '66 - 92 of 106 graduated, and they still get 40 or some of them out at their frequent reunions, which Barb has always helped organize; only Barb is still working as a nurse.
I made some of my closest friends there," she says of nursing school.
Barb works 12-hour shifts several times a month on the 4 West cardiology and vascular surgery ward, where, of course, they adore her.
Most of her career she was at the old HGH building on Ward 36 - a medical floor for chronic patients, gastroenterology and cardiology cases. She worked with the same core group, who became close friends, for more than 30 years.
She has always brought to the job an infectious positivity and continued to pull pranks (there's a story about a colleague, an elevator and pushing every button). Even when dealing with difficult patients, she had a great touch around managing tempers.
She tells of one man who was angrily laying on the language with her. She looked at him calmly and said, I had another patient say something like that to me. Funny, I don't seem him around anymore." That kept him quiet.
Aside from her nursing, Barb is a bead artist and makes wonderful jewelry and other style pieces, so in a way her father did get his original wish for her.
She says she'll retire some day. It'll be hard when I do."
It sure will. For us.
Jeff Mahoney is a Hamilton-based reporter and columnist covering culture and lifestyle stories, commentary and humour for The Spectator. Reach him via email: jmahoney@thespec.com