Mona Gordon Wilson, the third child of Harold and Elizabeth Farquahar Tainsh Wilson was born in 1894 in Toronto, Ontario. Her father owned a popular sporting goods store in Toronto and belonged to several of Toronto's exclusive organizations. Mona attended the Toronto Model School before enrolling at Havergal Ladies College in 1909, followed by four years of nursing instruction at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.

After graduating in 1918, Mona enlisted with the United States Army Nursing Corps, and sailed to France in December of that year. Following her return from France, she joined the American Red Cross Society and departed via San Francisco and Japan for Vladivostok where she spent eight months working in a women’s medical ward and training Russian nurses’ aides in the principles of practical nursing. By the time she left Siberia, she had experienced a failed coup attempt and had watched helplessly as mounted Bolshevik soldiers rode into her hospital looking for deserters. In May 1920 she was posted to Tirana, Albania, where she and other nurses conducted home visitations and helped establish a small school for training local nurses. Mona accompanied mobile clinics into the mountains to preach the benefits of toothbrushes and soap and to conduct baby clinics. At the conclusion of hostilities, the Italian Red Cross decorated her for her efforts.

In August the American Red Cross dispatched Mona to Ragusa (now Dubrovnik) on the Dalmatian coast to care for 30,000 White Russian refugees who had escaped the Bolsheviks in the Crimea. By April she had moved on to Vir Pazar, Montenegro, where, for nine months, she organized mothers’ clubs to teach the benefits of fresh air, infant care, and personal hygiene. She also conducted home visitations, once again accompanied mobile clinics into the mountains, initiated school inspections, trained young women in the principles of public health nursing, and was resident nurse at the Danilovgrad Orphanage.

Mona returned to Toronto in January 1922 and enrolled in the Public Health Nursing Program at the University of Toronto, earning her degree the following year. In 1923 she became Chief Red Cross Public Health Nurse in Prince Edward Island. In the absence of a provincial health department, Mona and her small staff ministered to the Island’s health needs. For the next eight years, working closely with the Women’s Institutes, she initiated medical inspections in schools, established dental clinics, Junior Red Cross clubs, tuberculosis chest clinics, and diphtheria vaccinations. When the provincial government established a Department of Health in 1931, Mona Wilson became the Provincial Director of Public Health Nursing. Except for the period of the Second World War, she held this position until her retirement in 1961.

In October 1940, the Canadian Red Cross seconded her as Red Cross Assistant Commissioner for Newfoundland. Here she took charge of administering to the needs of the shipwrecked soldiers and sailors on the North Atlantic Run, for which she earned the nickname “the Florence Nightingale of St. John’s,” and received the Order of the British Empire. She was also instrumental in the Red Cross effort to bring relief to the residents of Harbour Grace following a fire in that community.

Returning to Prince Edward Island, Mona was instrumental in training dental hygienists to administer educational programs for improved dental health, the first time such personnel had been used in a public health department in Canada. She also played a major role in the establishment of the Division of Nutrition and the introduction of a child and maternal health program.

In addition to these career accomplishments, Mona Wilson helped to establish the Girl Guides, The Zonta Club, the Business and Professional Women’s Club of Charlottetown, as well as several other Island associations which sought to broaden the people’s vision and boost women’s self-confidence. By the time she passed away in 1981, she had been awarded the highest honor in international nursing (she was the ninth Canadian to receive the Florence Nightingale Award in 1963), in Girl Guides (the Beaver Award in 1957), and in Prince Edward Island (Island Woman of the Century in 1967).