In 1978, Humber Polytechnic profiled Wayne Manning, a first-year nursing diploma student whose presence immediately set him apart.  

Manning was the only man in a cohort of 99 women, a distinction that shaped not only how he experienced nursing school, but how others interpreted his decision to pursue a career in care work. 

At the time, nursing in Canada remained firmly framed as a women’s profession. As of 2023, approximately 90 percent of regulated nurses in Canada identified as women, according to the Canadian Nurses Association. Given that the profession’s statistics remain heavily gendered today, Manning’s career becomes even more striking. 

Yet Manning did not describe his choice as radical. In fact, he emphasized its normalcy. His family in Trinidad viewed nursing as a respectable and unremarkable career choice for men. Their support stood in contrast to the skepticism he encountered in Canada, where male nurses were often treated as anomalies. 

Manning’s experience cannot be separated from the broader racial history of nursing education in Canada. Access to formal nursing programs was unevenly structured well into the twentieth century. Nursing education reflected broader systems of racial exclusion that shaped who was seen as credible, professional, and deserving of institutional access. 

It’s within this context that Humber’s nursing program, and Manning’s place within it, becomes particularly significant. Humber’s approach to nursing education was shaped by the influence of the Osler School of Nursing, which operated from 1966 to 1973 as the first and only regional nursing school serving northwest metropolitan Toronto. Osler represented a shift away from hospital-based apprenticeship models toward education situated within broader academic institutions. 

In 1969, Humber became the first Ontario College of Applied Arts and Technology to offer an integrated nursing diploma program. When nursing education formally moved into the college system in 1973, Humber’s early experience positioned it as a model for other colleges across the province.  

By the 1970s, the idea of the “new nurse” was beginning to replace the older image of the nurse as subordinate or auxiliary. Professional autonomy, clinical judgment, and collaboration were increasingly emphasized over obedience. This evolving philosophy created institutional conditions in which students such as Manning could enter a profession still shaped by restrictive assumptions about gender and race. 

Manning’s presence within the program quietly challenged these norms – simply by existing within the program and asserting his place within it, he disrupted expectations about masculinity, caregiving and authority. 

At the same time, Black communities across Canada continued to develop parallel systems of care. Organizations such as the Canadian chapter of the Black Cross Nurses provided midwifery services, wound care, veterans’ assistance and public health education during periods when formal healthcare institutions failed to adequately serve Black populations. 

Situated within this broader history, Manning’s experience reflects both expansion and limitation. Humber’s nursing program created access, but inclusion alone did not dismantle long standing assumptions about gender, race or credibility. Manning’s concerns about patient perception and social judgment suggest that visibility often came with heightened scrutiny. 

Revisiting archival profiles such as Manning’s during Black Heritage Month is about understanding how institutions have defined belonging, whose presence was treated as remarkable and why. These narratives reveal how professional norms were constructed, how they were contested, and how they continue to shape contemporary conversations about equity, representation and institutional responsibility. 

Manning’s story endures not only because of who he was, but because Humber’s nursing program, shaped by the Osler School of Nursing and early commitments to integrated, values-based education, created the conditions for him to pursue care work on his own terms. In doing so, he quietly helped push the profession forward.