This paper deals with the process of professionalization of nursing in Quebec at the beginning of the twentieth century. By examining the beginnings of the profession, it seeks to show how nurses used their female "caring" skills to characterize their occupation, turn it into a profession and thus define their place in the health care professions. Through professional associations, nurses changed their role from that of a benevolent and charitable endeavour to that of professional work for wages.Two Montreal hospitals — the Montreal General Hospital and Ste. Justine Hospital — are the focus of the article. The steps leading to the formation of the Association of Registered Nurses, in 1920, are retraced. The paper examines the different strategies used by the francophone and anglophone women's networks in promoting the recognition of their caring skills and practices. Nurses from the Montreal General Hospital use skills derived from their experience to affirm their specific competence, while those from Ste. Justine Hospital rely upon the women's community to gain recognition of women's new role in the organization of public health care. Each group, however, is aware of the need for improved education and for a greater formalization of nursing practices. Thus nurses quickly set up autonomous associations, designed to define professional norms and criteria for the use of public bodies.