Canadian Nurse Saved Thousands During 1920s Genocide

When Turkish forces set Smyrna ablaze in September 1922, a 50-year-old Canadian nurse walked straight into the inferno to save hundreds of children trapped inside burning schools.

Sara Corning had already spent three years rescuing orphans across Turkey and Armenia. Born in Nova Scotia in 1872, she didn't become a nurse until age 24, spending nearly two decades in New England before finding her calling in disaster relief.

In 1919, Corning joined Near East Relief and arrived in Constantinople with 250 other aid workers. Her mission was simple but dangerous: save as many children as she could from the genocide unfolding around her.

Her first assignment took her to Yerevan, where hundreds of thousands of starving refugees battled typhoid and cholera. At her second post in Anatolia, she and her colleagues collected babies each morning that desperate parents had left at the college entrance, hoping someone would give their children a chance at life.

The Greco-Turkish War brought Corning to Smyrna in 1922, where Allied warships had been ordered not to evacuate locals. As flames consumed entire neighborhoods and Turkish forces advanced, Corning defied the restrictions and led hundreds of trapped schoolchildren through smoke and bloodshed to American ships bound for Greece.

Why This Inspires

Corning didn't stop when the children reached safety. She helped establish orphanages across Greece and ran one herself, eventually adopting five girls and paying for their education out of her own pocket.

King George II of Greece awarded her the Knight's Silver Cross of the Order of the Redeemer, one of the country's highest honors. She continued working in Turkey until Anatolia College closed in 1930, then returned home to Nova Scotia.

Corning lived quietly in her childhood home until her death in 1969 at age 97. Her headstone reads simply: "She Lived to Serve Others."

In 2016, Nova Scotia established the Sara Corning Society to honor her legacy. A statue now stands at the Yarmouth County Museum, sculpted by an artist of Armenian descent whose own ancestors might have been among the thousands Corning saved.

The families she rescued still remember her name a century later, passing down stories of the brave nurse who ran toward danger when others looked away.