The First Five Years: Public Health and the Canadian Public Health Association, 1910–1915

Abstract

1910 through the first year of World War I, were a period of shifting public health challenges and the emergence of a distinctive and cohesive Canadian approach to managing them. Driven by the vision and work of a fairly small group of dedicated public health leaders, this half-decade saw rapid growth of the Association, along with remarkably intense activity in the development of Cana-da's public health infrastructure, especially at the provincial level. There had been considerable momentum building in public health management in Canada, especially since the establishment of the first provincial board of health in 1882 in Ontario and with the other provinces following suit over the next two decades. 1 Federally , a Director General of Public Health had been appointed in 1899, 2 but a more significant step was taken in 1906 with the creation of the Commission on Conservation. This was a federal advisory committee focused on the conservation and better utilization of natural resources made up of the ministers of agriculture, mines, and the interior, provincial ministers of natural resources, and university experts. 3 Through the unique expertise of Dr. Peter H. Bryce, Chief Medical Officer of the Department of the Interior, and previously the first secretary of the Provincial Board of Health of Ontario (1882-1903), pressure built for broader federal public health initiatives, though the Commission was careful to tread the provincial jurisdictional line in matters of health. 4 The appointment in 1910 of Dr. Charles Hodgetts to take charge of the Com-mission's Health Branch, following service as the second Secretary of the Ontario Provincial Board of Health, furthered this momentum in Ottawa. 5 However, for most public health and medical professionals , particularly Bryce, and as had been clear in the Canadian medical press from as early as 1874, nothing short of a separate federal department of health would be satisfactory. 6 From their positions in the Commission's Public Health Section, Drs. Bryce and Hodgetts exercised their influence to call together the country's leading public health figures to a special conference Anderson and Coulter were part of a group of five doctors that had been granted an Ontario Charter for such an association. 7 At the Ottawa conference, they offered their Charter to the new Association, which could then apply for federal incorporation – granted in 1912 – along with the right to use The Public Health Journal as its official organ. 10 …