This series documents Dr. Evans’ professional involvement, often as chair or a member of the board of directors, of many of the organizations noted in his biographical sketch (and some that are not). Organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation, where the bulk of the files obviously remain in the head offices, are still documented sufficiently to provide an overview of Dr. Evans involvement. A few organizations – the African Medical Research Foundation-Canada, the Commonwealth Fund, and Vartana, for example – have little documentation (the last because it is so new). Most organizations fall in between and for two, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and the Medical and Related Science Research District (MaRS), the files are so extensive that each rates its own series (see Series 3 and 4).
The files contain correspondence, memoranda, minutes of meetings, reports and associated background material. Dr. Evans made extensive handwritten notes and many of his memoranda are scattered throughout the files, along with annotated material he was working with. The arrangement is alphabetical by the name of the organization.
Dr. Evans was frequently approached as new initiatives were started in the fields of medicine, education and related social policy. One of these was the Boreal Institute, a charity founded in 2004 that focuses on contributing to economic and social development, internationally and in Canada by serving as an enabler and capacity builder for civil society. By the end of the year he had arranged for seed funding for the Institute and had attracted a number of influential backers such as Joseph Rotman. In 1998 Dr. Evans became involved in an ongoing reassessment of the role of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), a review that included, over the next three years, a series of discussions and meetings at the highest level, including Prime Minister Chrétien’s office. Another project was the Cancer Research Institute of Ontario, founded in 2003. It immediately won the support of MaRS and its chair, Dr. Evans, who also was selected chair of the Institute in 2005. The single file in this series documents the work of its Ad Hoc Advisory Group. In 1995 Dr. Evans’ served on a panel that assessed the work of the Essential National Health Research concept as carried out by the Council on Health Research for Development, based in Geneva. He was also a member of the Hospital for Sick Children Foundation. The principal file here relates to the Apotex/Nancy Olivieri controversy.
Dr. Evans has been closely associated with the Pew Charitable Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Bank which, collectively, supported a United Nations initiative, the International Health Policy Program. The files document his involvement with the program from 1994 to 1996. Another organization with close links to the Pew Charitable Foundation is the John E. Fetzer Institute, Inc. of Kalamazoo, Michigan that, in 1995, hired Dr. Evans as a consultant to assist in planning and implementing its program. This he did, partly through chairing its advisory committee on frontier medicine, on which he kept detailed files.
The project that established Dr. Evans’ reputation at the international level was his innovative work as founding dean of the Faculty of Medicine at McMaster University and, in particular, the construction of its innovative Health Sciences Centre. Most of the records pertaining to his deanship and the Centre project are, understandably, at McMaster University, but this series contains Dr. Evans’ copy of its original program, with accompanying planning reports and some photographs. There is also an oral history interview with him on the beginning of the faculty, with accompanying photographs, and two later files on other administrative matters.
In 2004 Dr. Evans was invited by the Premier of Ontario to chair a new body, the Minister’s Commercialization Advisory Council, the inaugural meeting of which was held in January 2005 and which continued throughout the year. Following these files are two others, one each on the Ontario Cancer Research Network, which he chaired from 2003 to 2005 and on the Ontario Research Council. There are no files on the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research of which Evans became chair in 2005.
The Pew Charitable Trusts funds a wide variety of research projects, two of which are documented in this series. In 1993 the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, launched a project called “Renewing our democratic heart” and invited Dr. Evans to become a member of its board of directors. Meetings held throughout 1993 and 1994 are documented here. He also agreed to chair the advisory board for the Pew Global Stewardship Initiative which studied American population policy, consumption patterns, and stewardship in relation to the formation of policy nationally and internationally. The files run through to mid-1996 and also document the contribution of Thomas Homer-Dixon of the University of Toronto.
Dr. Evans’ formal association with the Rockefeller Foundation began in 1979 when it asked him to head its Commission on the Future of Schools of Public Health, for which he produced an international study of public health and population-based medicine, ‘Measure and management in medicine and health services’. The work on this project extended to late 1981, even though he left the Foundation after several months for the World Bank. The files contain correspondence and meetings related to his study, along with his working files. There is also one unidentified notebook of notes on meeting(s) Dr. Evans attended, with a photo of attendees at one of the Bellagio conferences (see also Series 5). He joined the Foundation’s board of directors in 1982 and served as its chair from 1987 to 1995, the first Canadian to do so, and has maintained a close association with the Foundation. The single file from the period of his chairmanship documents his Foundation funded visit to Myanmar in November 1994 as UNICEF external advisor on health research and management for child survival and development.
In Toronto, Dr. Evans was a member of the steering committee of the Toronto City Summit Alliance, a coalition of civil leaders in the Toronto region. It met with officials, from the premier down, produced an action report and supported a number of initiatives to strengthen community service. It worked closely with the Toronto Region Research Alliance and other organizations such as MaRS. The files date from late 2003.
There are a few files on the University of Toronto: on the teaching of the cardiovascular programme in the Faculty of Medicine (1970), on an International Health meeting hosted by the Department of Medicine in 1998, on strategic planning for the Department of Surgery (2004), and on the Rotman School of Management (2002). Next is a single file on a board of directors meeting in June 2005 of Vartana, a charity with a mandate to develop Canada’s first financial institution dedicated to meeting the needs of voluntary sector organizations.
When Dr. Evans joined the World Bank in 1979, it was the beginning of a long relationship that often included the Rockefeller Foundation. The earliest files document his work with the Population, Health and Nutrition Department, which he founded, but most relate to his work from 1995 to 1997 with the Ad Hoc World Bank/Rockefeller Orphan Drug and Vaccine Project relating to the development, licensing and supply of AIDS vaccines to the under-developed world. The files contain detailed correspondence, notes, memoranda, minutes, and reports with government and corporate bodies.
The last files in this series document Dr. Evans’ work with the World Health Organization on two projects. The first was its Executive Board organizational study on “The role of WHO in training in public health and health programme management” (1981), followed by its Ad Hoc Review on Health Research in 1995-1996. The files contain notes, minutes, addresses, reports, and background material.