On June 24, 1859 the Austrian and French armies clashed at Solferino, a town in northern Italy. After 16 hours of fighting, the battlefield was strewn with 40,000 dead and wounded men.

That same evening Henry Dunant, a Swiss citizen, arrived in the area on business. He was horrified by what he saw: for want of adequate medical services in both armies, thousands of wounded soldiers were left to suffer untended, abandoned to their fate. Dunant immediately set about organizing care for them, without discrimination, helped by civilians from neighbouring villages.

On returning to Switzerland, Henry Dunant was unable to forget the terrible scenes he had witnessed. He decided to write "A Memory of Solferino" which he published at his own expense and circulated to friends, philanthropists, military officers, politicians and certain reigning families. The book was an immediate success.

The Geneva Society for Public Welfare, a charitable association based in the Swiss city of the same name, decided to set up a five-member commission to consider how Henry Dunant's ideas might be implemented. This commission - made up of Gustave Moynier, Guillaume-Henri Dufour, Louis Appia, Thodore Maunoir and Dunant himself - met on February 17 and founded the International Committee for Relief to the Wounded in time of war, which later became the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Having established their Committee, the five founders (G.Moynier, H.-H.Dufour, H.Dunant, L.Appia, T.Maunoir) set about ensuring that the ideas put forward in Dunant's book would become a reality. In response to their invitation, 16 States and four philanthropic institutions sent representatives to the International Conference which opened in Geneva. It was at that Conference that the emblem - a red cross on a white ground - was adopted and the Red Cross as an institution came into being.

“Would it not be possible, in time of peace and quiet, to form relief societies for the purpose of having care given to the wounded in wartime by zealous, devoted and thoroughly qualified volunteers?”

“On certain special occasions, as, for example, when princes of the military art belonging to different nationalities meet (...), would it not be desirable that they should take advantage of this sort of congress to formulate some international principle, sanctioned by a Convention inviolate in character, which, once agreed upon and ratified, might constitute the basis for societies for the relief of the wounded?”

The first of these ideas led to the creation of the National Red Cross (and, later, Red Crescent) Societies, and the second to the development of modern international humanitarian law, which first found written expression in the Geneva Convention.

The founding of The Canadian Red Cross Society can be attributed to the courage and conviction of Dr. George Sterling Ryerson. In the spring of 1885, during Louis Riel's North West Rebellion, Ryerson planted the seed for what would later become the Canadian Red Cross when he needed something to distinguish the horse-drawn wagon being used to transport the wounded. He obtained red material from the artillery, tore off two strips and sewed them onto a white factory cotton. This was one of the first Red Cross flags ever flown in Canada.

In 1896, Dr. George Sterling Ryerson founded the first overseas branch of the British Red Cross, which later became the Canadian Red Cross.