The First Five Years: Public Health and the Canadian Public Health Association, 1910-1915: the Second in a Series of Five Historical Articles to Commemorate 100 Years of Cjph/la Sante Publique Et la Canadian Public Health Association: Les Cinq Premieres Annees, 1910-1915: Deuxieme D'une Serie de Cinq Articles Historiques Commemorant Le Centenaire de la RCSP (100 YEARS OF CJPH: SPECIAL HISTORICAL NOTES/LE CENTENAIRE DE LA RCSP: NOTES HISTORIQUES Speciales) (Report‪)‬

The first years of the Canadian Public Health Association, from 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 Canada'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 Commission'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)