The First Shot: Venus Balino Lucero | CPUCN Class 2011

On December 15, 2020, Venus Balino Lucero, CPUCN Class of 2011, walked into work at The Ottawa Hospital and became part of Canadian history. That morning, Venus administered the first Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in Ottawa, Canada’s capital. The recipient was a personal support worker, a fellow frontline healthcare worker who had spent months caring for others during one of the most uncertain periods healthcare workers had ever known.

Venus had been asked if she would be comfortable giving that first injection. She did not hesitate. She said yes, and a Centralian nurse became part of Canadian history.

There has been some confusion about what happened afterward. Some people came to believe that Venus was the nurse who gave then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau his COVID-19 vaccine. She wasn’t. Trudeau later interviewed Venus at The Ottawa Hospital after that historic first vaccination, and somewhere along the way, the two events became tangled in the retelling.

The truth is remarkable enough. A young woman who had once struggled financially to make it through nursing school at Central Philippine University was now the nurse chosen to administer the first COVID-19 vaccine in Canada’s capital.

But when Venus recently shared her story with us, she wanted to make sure we knew about someone else: Perlita Rebanal.

Venus entered the CPU College of Nursing in 2007. Money was tight, and the road through nursing school was not always easy. Among the people who helped her was fellow CPU alumna Perlita Rebanal. Venus was one of the recipients of Perlita’s Grants and Aid scholarship, and Perlita also became her benefactor during her Nursing Review.

Venus graduated with her BSN in 2011, but she never had the opportunity to practice nursing in the Philippines. When she later immigrated to Canada, becoming a nurse there meant proving herself all over again. She underwent assessments and examinations and returned to school, completing the Practical Nursing Diploma for Foreign-Trained Nurses at Algonquin College, where she graduated with Honors.

Eventually, that long road brought her to The Ottawa Hospital and to that December morning when a small vial of vaccine arrived carrying an enormous amount of hope.

There is a photograph from that day of Venus administering Ottawa’s first COVID-19 vaccine. There is another, taken later, of Venus sitting in her red scrubs across a table from Prime Minister Trudeau, talking with him about what had happened. They are remarkable photographs, but neither one shows everything that brought her there.

They do not show the difficult years at CPU, the financial worries, the Nursing Review, immigration, starting over, returning to school in another country, or the examinations she had to pass before she could practice again. And they do not show all the people who helped her along the way.

When Venus was given the chance to tell us about one of the biggest moments of her nursing career, she wanted us to remember the woman who once helped her. In her own words:

“Mam, I also wanted to express gratitude and pay tribute to an alumna, Perlita Rebanal, who became a benefactor during my Nursing Review, especially because I was one of the recipients of her Grants and Aid scholarship. I am just waiting for the perfect timing to personally thank her.”

Amo gid na ang indi mo malipatan.

There is something beautiful about looking again at that photograph of Venus holding the syringe. We see the hand that administered Ottawa’s first COVID-19 vaccine. What we cannot see are all the hands that helped hers get there.

One of those hands belonged to Perlita Rebanal.

Years earlier, one Centralian had quietly helped another continue her nursing education. There were no television cameras and no Prime Minister sitting across the table. There was simply a young woman trying to finish nursing school and someone willing to help her along.

Perlita could not have known where Venus’s journey would lead. Perhaps none of us ever really knows how far a kindness travels once we send it into someone else’s life. A scholarship helps pay for school. A benefactor helps a young nurse through her review. Years pass, countries change, careers unfold, and one day that same young woman is standing in a hospital in Canada’s capital with a syringe in her hand, helping begin a new chapter in a pandemic that had changed the world.

That is the part of the photograph we cannot see. Behind the hand holding the syringe were other hands that had steadied it long before that morning.

Venus once told us she was waiting for the perfect time to personally thank the woman who helped her.

Perhaps the perfect time has already arrived.

That is the light she carries.