They are a mother and daughter who between them have more than 75 years of nursing experience.

Julie Harrington has been a nurse for 26 years and her mother Elaine administered 52 years worth of tender loving care to the sick.

Together the pair embody this year's Nurses Week theme -- Celebrating Nursing's Past: Claiming the future.

The elder Harrington began her nursing career in 1944 after completing her training at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal.

Her nursing career eventually led her to Bermuda where she ran a ward at the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital.

Elaine, who retired three years ago, said the nursing profession had changed quite a bit during her 52-year career.

"If the maid didn't come down and wash the dishes, you had to do them,'' she recalled.

"The hospital was segregated when I first started,'' she said. "At that time the men were on one side of the hall, the women on the other side. It was also segregated in colour.

"And there wasn't a public ward for ladies. Women had to find enough money to pay for a semi private room if they were going to go into the hospital.'' But Elaine said that it was not all doom and gloom at the hospital. In fact she said that patients were treated with plenty of TLC.

"The patients on the public wards were really special, we took really good care of them,'' she recalled. "I'd go back tomorrow to take care of the patients.

"In my day that's why you went into nursing for was to care for people.'' She added: "Anyone thinking of entering into nursing have to be dedicated. It has to be something you really have to do. You have to do it from your heart.

"In my time it was a vocation, you didn't go into it for the money -- we were only paid 20 pounds a month which is about $80.'' Daughter Julie quickly chimed in: "It's still that way today Mom!'' Julie, who is a diagnostic imaging nurse at KEMH, estimated that the starting pay for a nurse today was $31,000.

In addition to following in her mother's footsteps in her choice of careers, Julie said that she even had the pleasure of working in the same hospital where her mother trained.

"I ended up working where my Mom trained in Montreal,'' said Julie. "We would compare some notes.

"When I first went into nursing she would ask me what I was up to,'' Julie recalled. "But as time went along she backed off.''