The Nurse Who Lost Her Job Because She Said Men Aren’t Women
The Persecution of Amy Hamm
Note: I had this written on the day Amy announced the decision and I submitted this piece to The Hub, hoping they would publish it. I waited the 5 days and they didn’t respond so, I’m publishing my analysis of the BCCNM decision here in my substack. My analysis and weigh-in arrives to you comparatively late because I waited on an editorial decision and that’s the gamble one takes when submitting writing to “news” outlets, which is why I typically don’t. Nonetheless, here’s my analysis of the Amy Hamm case.
“We believe in the Right-Touch approach of using the minimum regulatory force needed to achieve the desired results.” — BCCNM regulatory philosophy
Last Thursday night (August 14th) I tuned into X to discover that the BC College of Nurses and Midwives has ordered
to pay its legal costs of $93,639.80 and will suspend her license for one month. Her employer, Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH), suspended her in May of 2024, and fired her in March, after the BCCNM charged her with unprofessional conduct related to her off-duty statements.A week before its ruling about Amy Hamm’s thought crimes, the BCCNM gave a one week suspension to an unnamed nurse who stole narcotics and worked while under the influence of drugs. The nurse in question will keep her job and will have to submit to strict controls on the job including ongoing monitoring for five years.
The Amy Hamm saga began in September of 2020, when Amy Hamm and Chris Elston paid Pattison Group to put up a billboard that said “I ❤️ JK Rowling.” The harmless sign, located in Vancouver at Hastings and Glen, triggered an explosion of disproportionate fear and outrage in the very progressive city of Vancouver. Somehow a benign message expressing affection for the greatest and bestselling children’s author of all time struck fear into the hearts of progressives in Vancouver and across the country. On September 12, 2020, CityNews Vancouver reported that “Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung asked Pattison Outdoor Advertising to take the billboard down, Saturday morning.” That’s right, reader, a city councillor asked a private advertising company to remove a billboard that didn’t violate any laws or express any hateful sentiments or ideas. A public expression of love for a famous children’s author offended Ms Kirby-Yung so much that she took it upon herself to demand its removal. In full cowardice, the company, Pattinson Outdoor, caved to Kirby-Yung’s unreasonable request.
Amy has fought on the frontlines for women’s rights activism since the federal government’s controversial Bill C-16 passed into law. At the time that the bill, authored by Jody Wilson Raybauld, passed through debate and parliamentary committee hearings onto royal assent, a handful of voices warned this law would lead to a humans rights conflict and jeopardise women’s rights. The media downplayed concerns expressed by Jordan Peterson, Megan Murphy and several others. Reader, I admit initially I couldn’t foresee that all levels of government in Canada would so willingly trounce women’s rights to bend over for this new law which had secretly crept into humans rights codes across the country, province by province, unbeknownst to Canadians. I greeted the concerns of Murphy and Peterson with healthy skepticism. I never imagined we would devolve into denial of biological reality. Not ever did I imagine this dystopian scenario we now live.
Soon after Bill C-16 became federal law, Correctional Service Canada announced it would assign male prisoners to accommodations based on gender identity and not sex. Trudeau made the decision at a town hall meeting in Kingston and the department quickly implemented his decision. Women watched as every major feminist and women’s rights group abandoned them to support “gender equality” and “trans rights”. Carceral women watched as the Elizabeth Fry Society abandoned them, ignoring concerns stemming from having to share carceral space with violent male offenders who readily exploited the legislative loophole to serve their sentences in female prison. Heather Mason, formerly a federal prison, began speaking out against the impact of Bill C-16 and organising protests across Canada outside women’s prisons. Her work went largely unnoticed by the publicly funded mainstream media.
Eventually fears materialised. Rape shelters became the target of zealous trans activists. Vancouver Rape Relief lost its funding from the city of Vancouver for its strict female-only policy. Trans radicals and their allies lobbied hard for this defunding and they cheered their victorious attack on women’s rights. Journalist and lesbian Meghan Murphy faced ongoing threats and harassment because of her work promoting women’s rights, she made frequent reports to police, who seemed unable to protect her from the onslaught of hate. The hate-motivated threats drove Murphy out of the country.
At one point Murphy and Amy Hamm (via GIDYVR) held a discussion event about gender and women’s rights at Vancouver Public Library, which tried to cancel the event and eventually allowed it to take place. A throng of angry and emotionally disturbed masked radical progressives showed up outside VPL, one sporting a placard shaped like a guillotine. At a similar event held at a Toronto Public Library, Murphy received the same unhinged response from gender radicals for her uncontroversial message. The simple notion of the humanity of women seemed to offend progressives. Politicians have consistently caved in to the progressive mob, abandoning women at their darkest hour. Justin Trudeau consistently refused to engage reality, stating smugly “trans women are women” and sounding very Ayatollah in his denouncement of women fighting for sex based rights as transphobic.
Amy Hamm, a practising nurse with a blemish-free record employed with VCH for 13 years, became more vocal in her defense of women’s rights as time passed and the entire country abandoned women. As the radicals viciously and unrelentingly targeted Murphy, so too did they target Hamm. Anonymous complains made to the BCCNM triggered an investigation into Amy Hamm. The process became the punishment, as Hamm faced a Maoist persecution for her social media activism. That’s correct, Hamm faced the slow destruction of her nursing career, not for any patient-care practise offenses, but for legal and reasonable off-duty behaviour. Hamm has had her career destroyed for tweets she made. Hamm has had her career destroyed and her life up-ended because of a vicious campaign of vengeance waged by extreme progressives sporting a zealous hatred for women’s rights.
In Canada only thought crimes matter to the intelligentsia, legislative bodies, and elected representatives. We can easily explain away and excuse unprovoked (ie not in self defense) violence by appealing to “inter generational trauma” or even the hot summer weather. Safetyism means we have no willingness to extend tolerance to wrong-think or wrong-speak, though. It’s as though we have decided that disagreeable thoughts and opinions pose a greater threat and we will sacrifice physical liberty and personal safety and even the integrity of professional regulatory bodies to accommodate the tyranny of progressivism.
Reader, the BCCNM abused its power and position of authority to make an example out of Amy, and strike fear into the hearts and minds of every regulated professional in the country. I probably don’t have to tell you—that violates the mission and purpose of professional regulation. “BCCNM seeks to ensure unshakeable confidence in nursing and midwifery care and protect the public by regulating nurses and midwives to ensure they provide care that is safe, competent, ethical, and meets the standards that the college sets.”
“The Panel is satisfied that a one-month suspension will serve the public interest and the purposes of specific and general deterrence …”
Reader, what kind of community, city, province, country, society, humanity, and world do you wish for yourself and your children and grandchildren and family? What will you do to get the level of moral reasoning and integrity required to have free and open and transparent and fair society? Whom does your silence and fear serve? Those questions only you can answer. Think fast because time ticks away.