Print preview Close

Showing 8 results

Archival description
Hastings (John E. F.) Family fonds Series
Print preview View:

Elgin Rowland Hastings

This series is comprised almost wholly of material assembled by Elgin Hastings while a student in the then new five-year Bachelor of Medicine program at the University of Toronto between 1908 and 1913. The records consist primarily of a comprehensive collection of course notes, laboratory notes and drawings. Hastings kept detailed notes, dated his notebooks and many of the lectures and exercises, and often recorded the name of the professor or tutor teaching the course. He also preserved a list of all the courses for which he had registered at the beginning of each academic year and the professors who taught them. He did, however, take some additional courses that were not listed; one example is a course in psychiatry taught by Ernest Jones during the Easter term 1912. The course notes are arranged by academic year and alphabetically by name of course within each year.

The series also contains certificates relating to Hastings’ medical education and professional certification, a student handbook, memorabilia of his extra-curricular activities, photographs of some of his classmates, photographs including family members and the graduating Class of 1913 (Medicine), and a transcript of the evidence given in a court case in 1914 (two pages of Hastings’ evidence have been torn out).

Helen Mary Ferguson Hastings

This small series documents her education and her teaching experience up to the time of her marriage. There are several files of letters, mostly from family members, received at the time of and shortly after her marriage; and later correspondence with Elgin, her mother, various relatives and friends and Ulrike Dobe, her future daughter-in-law. There is also a file of correspondence with her sister, Bessie, during the last years of the latter’s life, along with a copy of her will, and correspondence regarding her estate. This is followed by a file of letters to her sister-in-law, Louise Hastings, written in 1959. Other files contain memorabilia and activities with the Women’s Canadian Club of Toronto. Finally, there is a photograph of John Andrew Duff (1860 – 1903) and classmates in civil engineering, School of Practical Science, taken about 1887. Duff was an uncle (his sister, Mary, was Helen’s mother) who received his BA from University College in 1887. In the fall of that year he entered civil engineering at the School of Practical Science, where he was registered for one year. He served with the University of Toronto Battalion, Queen’s Own Rifles, at the 1885 North West Rebellion and was briefly on the faculty of the School of Practical Science (SPS) until his untimely death from tuberculosis in 1903.

Personal files

This series contains material documenting the personal side of Dr. Hastings’ life. It begins with genealogical and biographical information about and articles regarding Hastings and his family, followed by copies of his curriculum vitae (1961 – 1994). Other items include his baby book (1928), membership cards and memorabilia, and miscellaneous writings. There is a file of badges and certificates from the Royal Life Saving Society and files on awards and honours, in particular from the Pan American Health Organization, the University of Toronto alumni, the Canadian Public Health Association (those from the Ontario Public Health Association and the City of Toronto are not in this series). There are several files on trips, beginning when Hastings was a teenager, and on the deaths of his parents.

The larger part of this series consists of daybooks documenting Dr. Hastings’ activities between 1955 and 1967. These take the form of quarterly volumes, a few of which are missing. There are also a number of casual and formal photographs of Dr. Hastings and slides of his father’s funeral. The arrangement of the daybooks and the photographs is chronological.

Education

John Hastings began his education at the Normal Model School in Toronto in 1933, went on to the University of Toronto Schools in 1939, and from there into the pre-medicine program at the University of Toronto in 1945. He received his MD in 1951, then did post-graduate work in the School of Hygiene, receiving his Diploma in Public Health (DPH) in 1954. Missing from this series are files relating to his specialty qualification of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in Public Health (FRCP(C)) and the Diploma in International Health Planning (DIHP) from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health.

This series documents Hastings’ progress through the educational system and the development of his academic and non-curricular activities. The files on the Normal Model School contain certificates, class assignments, press clippings, drafts of two plays that Hastings wrote, and the school badge. Hastings’ interests in drama were carried over to the University of Toronto Schools, where he wrote a number of plays, drafts of which have survived in this series, and one of which was published in its yearbook, the Twig, in 1943. At UTS, he also honed his public speaking and debating skills; the predominant themes of his public addresses being democracy, the British Empire and World War II. Hastings was a reporter to the Twig for his form and editor in 1943 – 1944 (his editorial files have survived). He was also a member of the school band and the cadets, developed an early interest in politics and became an active member of the Young Progressive Conservatives for a number of years. At the same time he maintained a high academic standing.

In 1944 Hastings entered a worldwide essay competition sponsored by the Royal Empire Society. His entry was one of three to receive a prize. This encouraged him to enter other essay contests while a pre-medical student at the University of Toronto (1945 – 1947). As an undergraduate at the U of T, he was a member of the Hart House Debates Committee from 1949 to 1951 and served as its secretary for two years; his detailed notes reveal something of the parry and thrust of debating at that time. Among other activities, Hastings was a student member of the Board of Stewards of Hart House and the U of T Historical Club. In 1948 he participated in the Mock Parliament, attended by then Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent. The remainder of this series contains notes, correspondence, certificates, and photographs relating to Hastings’ acquisition of his medical degree and his post-graduate diploma in public health.

A detailed listing of his activities while a student is found in B2002-0014/014(09).

Correspondence

Dr. Hastings has produced and received a voluminous amount of correspondence over the years, a fair amount of which he threw out because of space limitations. He still (2004) possesses a substantial volume of professional and some personal correspondence.

This series includes some professional correspondence but much of it consists of letters to and from Dr. Hastings’ parents, his grandmother Ferguson, his aunts, Bessie Ferguson, Betty Graham (1900 – 1990) and Louise Hastings, and other relatives and friends met over a lifetime of public service and devotion to his church. The last influenced many of his interests outside his academic and administrative work at University of Toronto and is reflected in thirty years of correspondence arising from visits to India and Japan beginning in the early 1950s.

While most of the correspondence is filed chronologically, the first files contain exchanges of letters with the Drever family (especially Michael Drever, who later became an internationally recognized plastic surgeon in Toronto, and, with his wife, life-long friends), the constitutional expert and later Senator Eugene Forsey, who was also a family friend, and the relatives mentioned above. Dr. Hastings met the Drevers from Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1959, when he went on a tour of Latin America to observe preventive medicine and public health teaching. He returned to Uruguay at the end of 1964 as a member of the World Health Organization/Pan American Health Organization program on health planning in Latin America that also entailed visits to Chile and Argentina.

Dr. Hastings first went to India in 1953 as the University of Toronto’s representative to the World University Service of Canada’s International Seminar (the files for which are in Series 5). While there he first visited the Christian Medical College and Hospital in Vellore, near Madras, that received support from the Canadian Council of Churches through its Vellore/Ludhiana Committee, of which he was a member from 1962 to 1975 and to which he was an advisor from 1975 to 1981. Over the years Dr. Hastings was to provide financial support to several promising young people he met in India and elsewhere, helping some with their education overseas and others to immigrate to Canada. In 1955 he had the opportunity to go abroad again, this time as a faculty member of the WUSC International Seminar, Japan, followed by a month for studying medical education and medical care in that country. He wrote a widely praised report on his return and kept up a voluminous correspondence with many of the people he had met. In later years Dr. Hastings came to regard these two visits as seminal events in his life. Other valued friendships were made through his international work over the years.

The first files of chronological correspondence is primarily with his parents, consisting largely of letters sent and received while at Camp Kagawong on Balsam Lake near Fenelon Falls, Ontario where Hastings was to spend many summers from 1938 and where he was a camper and later a counsellor, section director and camp doctor. From 1953 and his visit to India, the chronological arrangement is divided in each year into the following categories: general, parents (later ‘mother’, India and (from 1955) Japan.

The volume of correspondence tails off in the mid – 1970s; one file covers the years 1986 – 1997.

Professional Activities: University of Toronto

In the three years before Dr. Hastings was hired full-time at the University of Toronto in 1956, he combined a donship at South House, Burwash Hall, Victoria College with teaching courses in the Department of Public Health Administration, where he was employed as a fellow in medical care administration (he received two fellowships). He made enduring friendships from his period as a don and the relative freedom he was given allowed him, as has been shown in the last series, to travel to India and Japan with the World University Service of Canada (further files on his travels with WUSC are found in Series 5). In July of 1954 he embarked on a trip to western Canada to gain first-hand experience of the integration of medical care administration with the administration of a provincial health department. He worked in the Medical Services Division of the Department of Health in Saskatchewan until the end of August. Then, for three weeks, he traveled by train to the West Coast, stopping en route to consult with health officials in Alberta and British Columbia, before returning to Toronto.

This first section of this series documents Dr. Hastings’ history of employment at the University, his activities in his early years, some of his teaching experience, and various ceremonial occasions. It begins with detailed files on Dr. Hastings’ two years (1953 – 1955) as a residence don, including correspondence, notes on residence discipline and items about student life generally. Next are the notebooks, diaries and letters documenting his trip across Canada. These are followed by a file (box 023, file 13) with correspondence and course material relating to his activities as a fellow in public health and preventive medicine and by files documenting the history of his employment at the University of Toronto. Next come the few files of lecture material (ca. 1953 – 1961, 1981 – 1982) in this accession, including documentation on a thesis supervised (1989 – 1991). This portion of the series concludes with files on ceremonies at the University and at York University between 1957 and 1965, including the installation of two chancellors and of Claude Bissell as president, and a file on the honorary doctorate bestowed on Halfdan Mahler, former Director General of the World Health Organization, in 1990, for which Dr. Hastings gave the citation.

The remainder of the files in this series is arranged from the broader University activities to the more specific; they document in detail Dr. Hastings’ role in planning and policy making. The first section contains files (box 025 (01)-(02)) on activities of the Governing Council relating to a sub-committee of its Planning and Resources Committee, of which Hastings was a member, and to the School of Hygiene. They are followed by presidential and presidential advisory committees and task forces on the Future of the School of Hygiene (1972); on Gerontology, which Hastings chaired (1976 – 1977); the Future of Health Care in Ontario (1991), Health Services (1993); provostial reviews of the Faculty of Medicine (1986 – 1987 and 1992); and the Decanal Community Health Review Task Force (1987 – 1988).

The second section, beginning with box 025, file 11, documents the activities of the Faculty of Medicine, primarily in its relationship to the School of Hygiene and community health programs at the University of Toronto. Included are such activities and events as the 60th anniversary of the School of Hygiene (1988); the Task Force on Professional Masters Programs in Community Health (1975 – 1977) and the Interfaculty Committee of Heath Science Deans on Outreach Project (1978 – 1979), both of which Hastings chaired; the Community Health Review and Planning Task Force (1978 – 1979); the faculty’s external review of the Division of Community Health (1978 – 1980) and its Decanal Community Health Review Task Force (1987 – 1988), of which Hastings was a member and which is thoroughly documented (see box 027).

The files relating to activities of the School of Hygiene from the 1950s to the 1970s (box 028), include its comparative study on the health care delivery systems in Sault Ste. Marie and St. Catharines; Dr. Hastings had a deep and long-term interest in the Sault project. Later Dr. Hastings was a member of the advisory committee on the history of the School of Hygiene, Within Reach of Everyone; his work on the second volume is documented. There are also files on the anniversary symposium of the School (1973) and undergraduate students’ reaction to the Hastings report of 1972 (see also Series 7).

Next are a few files documenting Dr. Hastings’s involvement with the Department of Health Administration, primarily between 1973 and 1981. The principal activity documented is the Canadian Health Administrator Study (1978 – 1981), for which Dr. Hastings was the principal investigator. Other files document the W. K. Kellogg Foundation grants, seminars and a name change in 2001 to the Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation.

The fifth section (box 029) begins with the formation of the Division of Community Health in the Faculty of Medicine in 1975, as the School of Hygiene was being dismantled, and the appointment of Dr. Hastings, by a Presidential Search Committee, as first associate dean. The principal subsequent activities documented here are the annual refresher course (1978), an advisory task force on the development of a professional master’s degree (1975 – 1978), a strategic plan for the Division (1990), and the 1992 divisional report. The files on the Graduate Department of Community Health (box 030) concentrate on program changes and reviews between 1979 and 1996 and on student research days (1990, 1997 and 1998). Issues relating to environmental health at the University of Toronto have traditionally been spread across several disciplines. The Faculty of Medicine’s Occupational and Environmental Health Unit was one such body in the early 1980s. In 1988 Dr. Hastings was appointed a member of a task force on environmental and human health, and throughout 1990 a work party on environmental and human health was the venue for discussions between the U of T and McMaster University over the creation of a joint Institute of Environment and Health which emerged during the following two years. Records here document the discussions and planning that took place and include the inaugural workshop in November 1991.

The next three boxes (031-033) contain records detailing the planning for and the first decade (1988-2001) of the Division of Community Health’s Centre for Health Promotion.
Included are initial proposals for the Centre, files on the interim management committee and the search first for an interim and then a permanent director, and meetings of the Centre’s advisory board. There are also files on workshops and seminars and a proposal on devolution submitted to the Premier’s Council on Health, Well-Being and Social Justice in 1993. These are followed by files on the Centre for International Health and the Department of Public Health Sciences, a 1997 merger of the departments of Behavioural Science and Preventive Medicine and Biostatistics. This section concludes with another task force (2002), on the future of the Centre for Health Promotion.

There then follows files documenting two City of Toronto projects from the end of the 1980s, the Board of Health’s Healthy Toronto 2000: a strategy for a healthier city, which his friend and colleague, Dr. Cope Schwenger, headed and the city’s health care fund, both of which attracted considerable interest in the Faculty of Medicine. These are followed by files on Hastings’ participation in an advisory committee of the Wellesley Hospital relating to its urban community health project.

The series concludes with files on seven research proposals, of which five were rejected. The accepted projects were an annotated bibliography on the rationalization of child and material health services (1990) and of stakeholder perceptions of changes in the health care system (1991).

Other professional activities

Dr. Hastings’ professional activities are largely related to his interests in community medicine and often have close links to his work at the University of Toronto. The files are arranged alphabetically by the name of the organization or event with which they are most closely associated.

The series begins with a file on his participation in a round table discussion on “surveillance and the role of public health” for the Commission of Inquiry on the Blood System in Canada (Krever Commission) in 1995. This is followed by background material for and memoranda, statements and briefs, with which Dr. Hastings was involved, that were submitted to the Royal Commission on Health Services between 1961 and 1963, along with subsequent press coverage. He and Dr. William Mosley of the School of Hygiene submitted a massive report, “Organized community health services” in 1963, following a brief, drafts of which are preserved here, presented by the School’s director, Dr. Andrew Rhodes, the previous year. The School of Hygiene was one of only a few medically-related groups to support a Public Medicare program at the time and, thereby, became known in some quarters as “The Little Red School House”.

Hastings was also a member of committees of the Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA), the United Church of Canada and the Canadian Council of Social Development that submitted briefs in 1962.

Other files document Dr. Hastings’ activities with Canadian College of Health Service Executives, for which he chaired the Extendicare Award Selection Committee for 1984 – 1986; in the mid – 1980s, the Canadian Council on Social Development (formerly the Canadian Welfare Council), on whose board he served for a number of years and for which he helped develop strategies for community health services; and the Canadian Hospital Association, for which he participated in a study on the Future of Hospitals in Canada.

Dr. Hastings was made an honorary life member of the Canadian Public Health Association and of the Ontario Public Health Association for his many contributions. The files (boxes 036-038) document his activities as CPHA president (1996 – 1997), as a member of its board of directors and several committees, including public health practices, archives, higher education and, especially, the International Health Secretariat (1988 – 1992) and its review, and a planning committee for a national workshop on public health education (1991). Dr. Hastings found the work with CPHA particularly satisfying, especially his close working relationship and friendship with Gerald Dafoe, the executive director, and Margaret Hilson, the assistant executive director for international programs. There is a substantial file on the drafting of a national health plan for the Palestinian people (1993). Other files include the restructuring of Ontario health services (1997), the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, and the Association’s annual conferences for 1980 and from 1991 to 2000. There are also a number of briefs and reports.

The files on the Canadian Welfare Council (later the Canadian Council on Social Development) document the activities of its special committee on health services’ submissions to the Royal Commission on Health Services. These are followed by files on health issues faced by the City of Toronto in 1992 and 2002; Dr. Hastings had been a member of the liaison committees of the University of Toronto with the teaching health units for East York, North York and the City of Toronto.

In 1971, Dr. Hastings went on full-time leave for a year from the University of Toronto to direct a major study of community health centres for the Conference of Health Ministers of Canada. His files (boxes 039-041) include correspondence, memoranda, notes, budgets, position papers, minutes of meetings, interim and progress reports, and working seminars, along with drafts of the final report and reactions to it. The files in B2023-0013 also includes 17 case studies from the 8 provinces where community health centers had been initiated, a seminar paper, and a review of the report by the Ontario Council of Health. The template for the case studies was created by Professor Peter New, a medical sociologist at the University of Toronto, who was commissioned by Professor Anne Crichton of UBC on behalf of Hastings; the purpose of the case studies was to bring together the findings of the studies so they could be incorporated into the final report. The report, instantly dubbed “The Hastings Report”, was widely praised and cemented Dr. Hastings’ reputation as a leading authority in his field. The extensive range of research papers for the project were published by the Canadian Public Health Association.

Other activities documented in this series include two conferences on epidemiology, one in Cali, Colombia (the founding meeting of the International Epidemiological Association, of which Dr. Hastings was a member for many years) during his tour of public health services in South America in 1959 and the other a joint National Cancer Institute of Canada/U of T meeting in 1988. There are files for conferences on comparative health services at Ditchley, England (1972) and Dublin (1980), and for consulting on health administration in selected countries of Western Europe for the Informatie en Communicatie Unie in the Netherlands (1981) and the Oakville-Trafalgar Memorial Hospital (1992). There is also a copy of an undated (ca. 1976) and unpublished report on an overview of the Canadian health system.

Dr. Hastings’ association with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) dates from the 1960s. Late in 1964 he was a participant in a special program on health planning sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO), the PAHO and the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, for which he visited Chile, Uruguay and Argentina, already referred to in Series 3. The files here date largely from 1974, when he critiqued a long-term planning report for the WHO, and his consultancy two years later for that organization on health services in Brazil and Chile. This and other work lead to him receiving the PAHO Administration Award for 1987. The majority of the PAHO files relate to the Canadian-Caribbean Health Initiative (boxes 042-044), a joint PAHO/University of Toronto/CPHA project for which, from its inception in 1988, Dr. Hastings served as chair of the steering committee. There are also files relating to the Caribbean Public Health Association and the Caribbean Regional Epidemiology Centre.

Dr. Hastings acted as a consultant and expert on many issues relating to community health, including two in Quebec -- Programs in Community Health (1980) and the Quebec Commission de l’Enquête sur les Services de Santé (1987, Rochon Commission), and pediatric issues for the Thames Valley District Health Council (1988). One of his early research projects (1966 – 1970) was a joint Canada-WHO study of the delivery of health services in Sault Ste. Marie, due to the then unique program in Canada of Algoma Steel Corporation offering its employees a choice of health benefits through the local district group health association or a private carrier. The findings were published in 1973, a follow-up study was carried out by the Ontario Ministry of Health in 1975, and a history of the Sault Ste. Marie and District Group Health Association followed in 1981.

In 1992 Dr. Hastings was invited to address a seminar on heath care systems organized by the Mexican Foundation for Health and the National Academy of Medicine, to be held the following March in Mexico City. He kept extensive files on the proceedings. In 1994 he was invited to be a member of a consultant group to the World Bank’s health project for the newly independent republic of Georgia. He kept detailed files on his activities, including correspondence, notes, reports, and photographs.

The series ends with several activities related to Dr. Hastings’ travels in the 1950s and the early 1960s to Asia, and to his involvement with the World Health Organization both at the beginning and the end of his career. In 1953, on the way back to Canada from his World University Service trip to India (see Series 3 and below), he stopped off in Britain to attend the first World Conference on Medical Education in London, to take in the Queen’s coronation, and to visit Scotland, especially Edinburgh and Iona. He kept a file on this conference and on the Third World Conference on Medical Education in New Delhi in 1966, after which he toured northern India, and making a side trip to Madras and Ludhiana, before going on to Hong Kong and Japan.

In 1960 a World Health Organization travel fellowship enabled Dr. Hastings to study medical care, public health and the teaching of social medicine in the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, the USSR, India, Ceylon, Singapore, and Japan. Again, he kept detailed records of his travels, including notes and accounts of his impressions, especially on the Soviet Union. Afterwards, he wrote a detailed report on his experiences. Later WHO–related activities include an employment offer as chief of WHO’s Organization of Medical Care Unit in Geneva (1969), which Dr. Hastings reluctantly turned down; and his work as member of WHO’s Expert Advisory Panel on Public Health Administration between 1974 and 1990.

In the summer of 1953, as one of three University of Toronto student representatives at the World University Service of Canada International Mysore Seminar, Dr. Hastings had an opportunity to gain first hand insights into and an understanding of the many problems facing developing countries. He visited India, Ceylon and Pakistan, and carefully preserved his correspondence, notes, reports and photographs. Two years later, he was a University faculty member on the WUSC International Japan Seminar, and spent a further month studying medical education and medical care in Japan through an arrangement with the World Health Organization. His correspondence, diaries, minutes of meetings, and notes served him well; he found himself much in demand on the lecture circuit, especially after his report on medical education in Japan and other articles reflecting on his experiences appeared in 1956 and 1957. The series ends with a 1962 report on the WUS student tuberculosis sanatorium in Japan and a file on the WUSC Chile Seminar in 1964.

B2002-0014/063 - /064 include materials related to his World University Service of Canada (WUSC) trips to India (1953) and Japan (1955) and reunion in 1996. B2002-0014/065 includes a scrapbook with photographs of 1955 trip to Japan.

Other activities

The records in this series underscore the impact of an upbringing where the tenets of Christianity, public service, and duty were emphasized. They begin with thirty years (1937 – 1969) of files on Camp Kagawong, a privately owned boy’s camp on Balsam Lake, where Dr. Hastings spent his summers as a young boy enjoying the outdoors. The leadership qualities he displayed led to his becoming a camp counsellor (1944 – 1945) and, from 1946 – 1950, director of the Bantam Section and instructor in nature, first aid, swimming and games. During those years he dramatized three folk tales for presentation. At the weekly chapel services, he often delivered homilies or ‘sermonettes’, a practice he continued throughout his association with the camp until a few years before it closed in 1975. He served as camp doctor for a number of his vacations between 1952 and 1967. Dr. Hastings’ activities at Camp Kagawong are well documented through notes, certificates, correspondence (much of which is in Series 3) scripts for theatrical presentations, chapel service programs and sermonettes, and some of the annual camp catalogues, photographs and artifacts. The arrangement of the files in this section is largely chronological.

The material on Camp Kagawong is followed by files on Canadian Council of Churches and its Vellore/Ludhiana Committee, of which Dr. Hastings was a member from 1962 – 1975 and to which he was an advisor from 1975 to 1981. These are followed by files on the Christian Medical College in Vellore, India, including extensive ones documenting the work of the International Review Team, of which he was a member, that visited Vellore in 1979 and produced a report on its findings the following year. His wife and daughter accompanied him on this trip.

Next are files on the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953; the Developing Countries Farm Radio Network, of which Dr. Hastings was a member of the board; Emmanuel College, where he was a University representative on its council and a member of its curriculum committee; the King’s College Fund which in 1985 organized a Canadian study tour of health services in Britain and, in the same period reciprocal study tours in Canada, based on the Department of Health Administration at the University of Toronto. (Dr. Hastings and his family lived at the King’s Fund College during several visits in London.) He was active in the youth clubs of the Progressive Conservative Party in the 1940s, attended the 1948 convention at which George Drew was selected leader, and took part in the federal election the following year.

Dr. Hastings’ place of worship for many years has been St. Andrew’s United Church at 117 Bloor Street East in Toronto. He played a very active role in its affairs, serving on its Session and Official Board since 1956, many of its committees, was a member of its Men’s Club and, on occasion, delivered the sermon of the week. The files cover the years from 1952 to 1973, when St. Andrew’s and the Yonge Street United Church amalgamated, and include correspondence, notices of services, minutes of meetings, reports, and drafts of three sermons.

This series ends with a number of files on Dr. Hastings’ involvement in several activities of the United Church of Canada, centering around his being a member of its task force on health services (1985 – 1987) and its Division of Mission in Canada’s health task group (1991 – 1994). Included are correspondence, minutes, memoranda, notes, drafts of reports, and a video, “Taking the pulse of Canadian health care” that grew out of the work of the health task group.