Health, charity, and citizenship: Protestant hospitals in rural Saskatchewan, Canada 1906-1942

ABSTRACT

In this study, the authors explore the history of two rural Presbyterian mission hospitals in Saskatchewan, Canada, during the early twentieth century. At this time, medical missionaries were encouraged to offer hospital care to support the early homesteaders of the Canadian prairies, linked to the construction of the ‘frontier’ British-Anglo empire. Small religious hospitals were initially seen as fundamental to the expansion of the nation-state, but many faced closure or financial ruin during the economic bust of the 1930s. Utilizing hospital, missionary and church records, they analyse how missionaries provided hospital care to a diverse community of primarily Eastern European immigrants. They argue that the nature of this hospital work varied greatly depending on the local context and hospital type. They demonstrate that the benefits of modernity were unevenly distributed among hospitals during this time. Presbyterian mission hospitals were holistic religious, medical and social institutions. In addition to providing medical and nursing care, missionaries in Presbyterian hospitals offered various forms of charity work. They were as concerned with the soul as they were with the body and as interested in improving community mores as they were with healing individual sickness. The course of history followed by these hospitals supported the narrative expressed by leftist Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) premier Tommy Douglas that radical change was required to prevent the financial demise of Saskatchewan hospitals after the Great Depression. The proliferation of union and community hospitals also reduced the former significance of these early Presbyterian hospitals. The study of small rural missionary hospitals in Canada reveals that hospitals were far from uniform during the early twentieth century, and provides a useful comparison for other missionary hospitals in diverse colonial contexts, prior to the development of state hospital insurance.

KEYWORDS:

• Hospital history
• Canadian historiography
• medical history
• missionary history

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Mrs Scott to Miss Dean, February 3, 1928, SA-141, File 6, Anna Turnbull Memorial Hospital, 1916–1939 (folder 2), Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, 1; Report for 1931, SA-141, File 6, Anna Turnbull Memorial Hospital, 1916–1939 (folder 2), insert between 1 and 2. See also Annual Report of the Anna Turnbull Memorial Hospital Wakaw, Sask, for 1930, File 9, Box 120, Series 17, 83–058C, United Church of Canada Archives.

2. ‘Medical Missions History,’ compiled and written by the Women’s Missionary Society of the United Church of Canora (1948–1949), File A, Box 1, Series 17, Box 115, Accession 83.058C United Church of Canada Archives, 12.

3. See Strong-Boag, Fostering Nation? Canada Confronts Its History of Childhood Disadvantage, 41–3. For a historical analysis of children’s (usually shorter-term) experiences in hospital, see Gleason, “Treated Bodies: Hospitalization,” 102–18.

4. See ‘1930 Annual Report Anna Turnbull Memorial Hospital Wakaw, Saskatchewan,’ Dr. R.G. Scott’s Papers, SA-141, File 6, Anna Turnbull Memorial Hospital, 1916–1939 (folder 2), Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan. For another perspective on the social welfare role of the hospital, see ‘Social Welfare,’ Dr. R.G. Scott’s Papers, SA-141, File 6, Anna Turnbull Memorial Hospital, 1916–1939 (folder 2), Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan.

5. Gagan and Gagan, For Patients of Moderate Means; Long and Golden, eds., The American General Hospital; Risse, ed. Mending Bodies, Saving Souls; and Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers.

6. As per the title of Chapter 2 in Gagan and Gagan, For Patients of Moderate Means.

7. Gagan and Gagan, For Patients of Moderate Means.

8. Ibid., 49.

9. Taylor, Health Insurance and Canadian Public Policy.

10. Gagan and Gagan, For Patients of Moderate Means, 191, 194.

11. Ibid., 8, 69–70.

12. Douglas, Thomas, and Higginbotham, The Making of a Socialist, 7.

13. Houston, Steps on the Road to Medicare, 125.

14. Ostry, “The Foundations of National Public Hospital Insurance,” 26.

15. Jones, Radical Medicine, see Chapter 3.

16. Ibid., 282–3.

17. Marchildon, “Canada: Health System Review,” 61–78.

18. Doyle, “Healthcare before Welfare States,” 174–204.

19. Belich, Replenishing the Earth, 550.

20. Archer, Saskatchewan: A History, 267–8.

21. Lux, Medicine that Walks.

22. Carter, Lost Harvests, 209–13; and Daschuk, Clearing the Plains, 168.

23. Anderson, Settling Saskatchewan, 2.

24. Daschuk, Clearing the Plains, 173.

25. Manton, “Qua Iboe by Motorcycle and Launch.”

26. Lux, Separate Beds, 13. See also Gagan and Gagan, For Patients of Moderate Means.

27. Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture of the Province of Saskatchewan, 1907, Government Publications, Ag. 4.1, Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, 234.

28. Robinson, Saskatchewan Registered Nurses’ Association.

29. Occasional Paper, No. 47, Diocese of Qu’Appelle, Assiniboia, February 1897, Diocese of Qu’Appelle Archives, Saskatchewan Provincial Archives, 12–13.

30. Statistics Canada, “Archived – Historical Statistics, Population and Population Density Per Square Mile.” https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/cv.action?pid=1710006701

31. Annual Report of the Bureau of Public Health, 30.

32. Ibid.

33. Gibbon, The Victorian Order of Nurses for Canada 50th Anniversary, 1897–1947.

34. Gibbon and Mathewson, Three Centuries, 250–76.

35. Gibbon and Mathewson, Three Centuries, 275.

36. Ibid., 214.

37. Semple, The Lord’s Dominion.

38. See Doyle, “Missionary Medicine and Primary Health Care in Uganda,” Chapter 9, and Grypma, “Neither Angels of Mercy nor Foreign Devils,” 97–119.

39. Doyle, Zu Selhausen, and Weisdorf, “The Blessings of Medicine?”

40. Ncube, “The Problem of the Health of the Native,” 807–26.

41. Waiser, “The Myth of Multiculturalism.”

42. Ibid., 61.

43. Annual Report of the Bureau of Public Health, Saskatchewan, 1913, Government Publications, PH 1, Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, 16.

44. Annual Report of the Bureau of Public Health, 1913, 16.

45. See Boychuk, The Making and Meaning of Hospital Policy in the United States and Canada, 46.

46. Annual Report of the Bureau of Public Health, 1915, 31.

47. See Vandenberg and Boschma, “The Evolution of Early Hospitals in British Columbia,” 73–118.

48. Annual Report of the Bureau of Public Health, Saskatchewan, 1917–18, 30.

49. Glassford, “Marching As to War.”

50. Annual Report of the Department of Public Health, Saskatchewan, 1930, 42.

51. Annual Report of the Department of Public Health, Saskatchewan, 1935, 45.

52. See ‘Medical Missions History,’ compiled and written by the Women’s Missionary Society of the United Church of Canora (1948–1949), File A, Box 1, Series 17, Box 115 of 218, Accession 83.058C United Church of Canada Archives, 13, 20.

53. Ibid.

54. ‘Medical Missions History,’ 20.

55. Report given by Dr Grant, Hugh Waddell Memorial Hospital, Canora, March 7, 1914, File 25, Box 3, Accession 79.182C, United Church of Canada Archives, 2. For an image of the hospital, see A.676.XIX, Church Histories-Wakaw, United Church of Canada Saskatchewan Conference Records, Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan.

56. See Boychuk, The Making and Meaning of Hospital Policy in the United States and Canada, 42.

57. United Church of Canada, ‘Commission on Church Hospitals,’ File 2, Box 1, Accession No. 82.080C, United Church of Canada Archives, 5.

58. See, for example, The Story of Our Missions, A.381.VI.A, United Church of Canada Saskatchewan Conference, Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, 200.

59. Kaiser, “Protestant Home Missionaries in Saskatchewan and the Concept of Applied Christianity, 1918–1930,” 75.

60. Hospital Committee Report, 1929, File 1, Box 115, Series 17, Accession No. 83.058C, United Church of Canada Archives, 10.

61. Dr Scott to Mrs Kipp, November 30, 1917, Dr R.G. Scott’s Papers, SA-141, File 6, Anna Turnbull Memorial Hospital, 1916–1939 (folder 1), Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan.

62. Kipp, ‘Our Medical Missions in Canada,’ pamphlet, n.d., File 1, SA-141, Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, 2. The document was produced after the incorporation of the United Church of Canada in 1925.

63. Dr Scott to Mrs Kipp, December 30, 1926, Dr R.G. Scott’s Papers, SA-141, File 6, Anna Turnbull Memorial Hospital, 1916–1939 (folder 1), Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, 2.

64. See Chambers, A Legal History of Adoption in Ontario.

65. See Reid, “Records of the Women’s Home Missionary Society, 1907–1914,” 1.

66. Ibid., 1.

67. Mrs Clara Scott to Mrs Kipp, March 7, 1907, SA-141, File 1, Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, 1.

68. Christie and Gauvreau, A Full-Orbed Christianity, 188.

69. ‘A Voice from Wakaw,’ Woman’s Home Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church in Canada (W.D.), 1912, SA-141, File 8, Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, 8–9.

70. Dr Scott to the Star-Phoenix, August 18, 1938, SA-141, File 8, Newspaper Clippings, Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, 1–2.

71. Historian Mary Louise Pratt defines contact zones as: ‘social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination.’ See Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 4.

72. Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture of the North-West Territories, 1898, Government Publications, Ag. 1, Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, 90.

73. Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture of the North-West Territories, 1898, Government Publications, Ag. 1, Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, 90, italics added.

74. Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture of the North-West Territories, 1900, Government Publications, Ag. 1, Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, 97.

75. Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture, 1906, 55.

76. Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture, 1905, 47.

77. ‘Geneva Mission,’ 83.058C, Box 120, File 11, Series 17, United Church of Canada Archives, 1.

78. Wakaw Heritage Society, A Land Harvested by Faith, 5.

79. ‘Geneva Mission,’ 83.058C, Box 120, File 11, Series 17, United Church of Canada Archives, 1.

80. A Land Harvested by Faith, 7; ‘Dr. R.G. Scott Honored on Retiring from Wakaw Post,’ reprinted from The Prince Albert Daily Herald, August 19, 1946, SA-141, File 8, Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan.

81. Dr Scott to Mrs Kipp, March 22, 1928, Dr R.G. Scott’s Papers, SA-141, File 6, Anna Turnbull Memorial Hospital, 1916–1939 (folder 2), Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, 1.

82. Appendix, Mrs Clara Scott to Mrs Laird, March 2, 1928, Dr R.G. Scott’s Papers, SA-141, File 6, Anna Turnbull Memorial Hospital, 1916–1939 (folder 2), Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, 1.

83. Becker, A., ‘The Lake Geneva Mission Wakaw, Saskatchewan,’ Saskatchewan History, A.676.XIX, United Church of Canada Collection, Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, 58.

84. Mrs Scott, ‘Report of Hospital 1929,’ Dr R.G. Scott’s Papers, SA-141, File 6, Anna Turnbull Memorial Hospital, 1916–1939 (folder 2), Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, 1; Statistics, 1929, 2.

85. ‘Geneva Mission,’ File 11, Box 120, Series 17, Accession 83–058 C, United Church of Canada Archives, 4.

86. Dr Scott to Mrs Kipp, July 28, 1926, Dr R.G. Scott’s Papers, SA-141, File 6, Anna Turnbull Memorial Hospital, 1916–1939 (folder 1), Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, 1.

87. Dr Scott to Mrs Scott, June 2, 1918, Dr R.G. Scott’s Papers, SA-141, File 1, Family Correspondence, 1903–1934 (folder 2), Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan.

88. ‘Wakaw,’ Dr R.G. Scott’s Papers, SA-141, File 6, Anna Turnbull Memorial Hospital, 1916–1939 (folder 2), Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan.

89. ‘Report of Home Mission Hospitals,’ File 3, First Annual Report of the WMS (1914–1915), A.381.VI.A, United Church of Canada Saskatchewan Conference, 35.

90. ‘Report for 1931,’ Dr R.G. Scott’s Papers, SA-141, File 6, Anna Turnbull Memorial Hospital, 1916–1939 (folder 2), Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan.

91. While grants were often piecemeal, depending on hospital needs and the WMS’s financial abilities, for comparison, the 1930 annual report of the Anna Turnbull Memorial Hospital noted ‘receipts from the “W.M.S.” Toronto, $2,480.00’. See file 9, box 120, series 17, accession number 83.058C, United Church of Canada Archives. In contrast, in a circa 1923 overview of the hospital history, it was noted that the hospital was ‘Almost self supporting. The salary of two nurses is all that the W.M.S. are asked to pay’ and that ‘Were it not that so many indigent patients are treated at the hospital, it had no need to ask help now.’ See ‘Wakaw (Geneva Mission),’ file 11, box 120, series 17, accession number 83.058C, United Church of Canada Archives.

92. As a comparison, in 1918, nurses’ monthly salaries were raised to $60.00. See Dr R.G. Scott to Mrs Kipp, November 13, 1918, Dr R.G. Scott’s Papers, SA-141, File 6, Anna Turnbull Memorial Hospital, 1916–1939 (folder 1), Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, 2.

93. Dr R.G. Scott to Rev. A.G. Sinclair, April 18, 1938, Dr R.G. Scott’s Papers, SA-141, File 4, Sinclair, Rev. A.G., 1920–1944, Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan.

94. Dr R.G. Scott to Rev. A.G. Sinclair, January 12, 1939, Dr R.G. Scott’s Papers, SA-141, File 4, Sinclair, Rev. A.G., 1920–1944, Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan.

95. ‘Medical Missions History,’ compiled and written by the Women’s Missionary Society of the United Church of Canora (1948–1949), File A, Box 1, Series 17, Box 115 of 218, Accession 83.058C United Church of Canada Archives, 62.

96. Annual Report of the Department of Public Health, 1941, 60.

Additional information

Funding

President’s SSHRC Research Fund – Insight Grant, University of Saskatchewan; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [97742].

Notes on contributors

Helen Vandenberg

Helen Vandenberg is an Assistant Professor in Nursing at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. She specializes in the history of hospitals and nursing in Western Canada during the early twentieth century.

Erin Gallagher-Cohoon

Erin Gallagher-Cohoon is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Queen’s University, Canada. Her PhD research explores the history of queer parenting in Canada.