Series 4 - Professional Activities: University of Toronto

1.68 m of textual and graphic records

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).

Textual
1953-1954: B2002-0014/022(20)-(21)
1953-1993: B2002-0014/023(01)-(14)
1952- 1993: B2002-0014/024(01)-(28)
1954: B2002-0014/009(05)
1972-1995: B2002-0014/025(01)-(13)
1975-1990: B2002-0014/026(01)-(09)
1987-1996: B2002-0014/027(01)-(07)
1954-1996: B2002-0014/028(01)-(23)
1974-2001: B2002-0014/029(01)-(17)
1979-1998: B2002-0014/030(01)-(20)
1988-1991: B2002-0014/031(01)-(11)
1988-2001: B2002-0014/032(01)-(14)
1990-2002: B2002-0014/033(01)-(14)
1974-1991: B2002-0014/034(01)-(07)

Graphic
1954-1956: B2002-0014/002P(06)-(08)
1955-1992: B2002-0014/001P(27)-(31)

Open

File list for photographs only.

Records relating to the School of Hygiene’s submissions to the Royal Commission on Health Services are filed in Series 5.

A poster has been removed from B2002-0014/023(02) to /009(05);