Throughout the week, we discussed the topic “Citizens and Nation” and with a greater focus on Social Reform and Medical Science. Within this we have the development of the social survey movement in Canada, and Indian Hospitals to care for the racially careless. In Alan Hunt’s article “Measuring Morals: The Beginnings of the Social Survey Movement in Canada, 1913-1917”, it discusses the emergence of the social survey movement in Canada in an “[attempt] to investigate the moral climate”[1]. Hunt starts by explicitly stating what these social surveys are and what they do, “the Canadian social surveys can be understood… as a form of [pastoral power which] focused on ensuring, sustaining, and improving the well-being of the population through attending to the lives of each and every individual… [they] identified social problems in the form of troublesome populations and locations and sought to institute forms of regulation that addressed individuals for their own benefit and for the well-being of the whole[2]”. A social problem that connects Hunt’s article and the article “Care for the ‘Racially Careless’: Indian Hospitals in the Canadian West, 1920-1950s” written by Maureen K. Lux, is the issue of Tuberculosis (TB) and affecting the population. Social survey’s main focus was to ensure the well-being of everyone, however, with the Aboriginals being depicted as the “racially careless” when it comes to the illness such as TB, this was hard to deal with and many new institutions were constructed to minimize the exposure affected Aboriginals had with the population. “Institutions of isolation [were developed such as] asylums… sanatoria, Indian reserves, and residential school”[3] to try to stop the spread of the disease and to help the Aboriginal population. In an effort to help the Aboriginal people with the disease and stop the spread of it throughout residential schools and other facilities, Indian women tried to help as best they could in this situation. In Cynthia Toman’s article “‘My chance has come at last!’: The Western Hospital, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and Indian Nurses in Canada, 1917-1929”, Toman talks about how Indian women were given the training need when there was a shortage of nurses in the time of World War 1. “Like other hospitals of the time, the Weston established a training school for nurses. This was done, in part, to prepare nurses to care for TB patients at the Weston and the two sanatoria at Muskoka, but also to provide an inexpensive… workforce for the hospital”[4].
Social surveys, the development of institutions to reduce the risk of spreading TB, and the training given to Indian women to become nurses to help sick patients, all contributes to the weekly topic of “Citizens and Nation” but also have a main focus on Social Reform and Medical Science. Social surveys cared for the well-being of the population, and influenced having a restriction and regulations on the Aboriginal population who had TB so it would not spread across the white population, and the Indian nurses helped to minimize the spread of the illness, which all greatly impacted the first half of the twentieth century. All the readings deal with the same focus in this time period and ultimately contribute to the wider historiography of the topic “Citizens and Nation”.
Footnotes:
[1] Alan Hunt, “Measuring Morals: The Beginnings of the Social Survey Movement in Canada, 1913-1917,” “Industrial Efficiency, Social Order and Moral Purity: Housing Reform Thought in English Canada, 1900-1950,” Histoire Sociale/Social History, 35, 69 (2002): 171.
[2] Ibid., 172.
[3] Maureen K. Lux, “Care for the ‘Racially Careless’: Indian Hospitals in the Canadian West, 1920s-1950s,” Canadian Historical Review, 91 (2010): 411.
[4] Cynthia Toman, “‘My chance has come at last!’: The Weston Hospital, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and Indian Nurses in Canada, 1971-1929,” Native Studies Review 19, 2 (2010): 107.
Bibliography:
Hunt, Alan. “Measuring Morals: The Beginnings of the Social Survey Movement in Canada, 1913-1917.” “Industrial Efficiency, Social Order and Moral Purity: Housing Reform Thought in English Canada, 1900-1950.” Histoire Sociale/Social History, 35, 69 (2002): 171-194.
Lux, Maureen K. “Care for the ‘Racially Careless’: Indian Hospitals in the Canadian West, 1920s-1950s.” Canadian Historical Review, 91 (2010): 407-434.
Toman, Cynthia. “‘My chance has come at last!’: The Weston Hospital, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and Indian Nurses in Canada, 1971-1929.” Native Studies Review 19, 2 (2010): 95-119.
