During the period of social reform and medical science within Canada, people began to look for ways to fix larger social problems. The literate and educated middle class citizens exercised their power through many avenues in order to fix and deal with societal issues and problems of Canada. They felt that society needed to change in order to move forward. Alan Hunt explains in his article, Measuring Morals: The Beginnings of the Social Survey Movement in Canada, 1913-1917, that the surveying was a way of a society getting to know itself. A society to know itself instilled and encouraged moral and societal reform. Middle class people, through these surveys, pinpointed the moral condition of the society. Understanding all this, gave rise and power to the social gospel as an agent of reform.[1] Not only were middle class reformers concerned with the moral well-being of citizens, but also the health of the nation. Maureen Lux in Care for the ‘Racially Careless’: Indian Hospitals in the Canadian West, 1920s-1950s, takes a look at the “Indian tuberculous.” The middle class was establishing medical advances and reform across Canada, however the Native people were not included in this system. They were either housed in separate wings or entirely separate hospitals with lower sophistication, as they were a menace to their white middle class neighbours.[2] “The modernizing hospital with patients anxious to purchase its services saw no need to take up valuable beds and offend middle-class sensibilities by admitting Aboriginal patients.”[3] Middle class reformers were making societal reform, however in this case it was not accessible for all. Finally in Industrial Efficiency, Social Order and Moral Purity: Housing Reform Thought in English Canada, 1900-1950, Sean Purdy discusses the middle class ideals of family being an important facet to the way urban planners designed cities. These middle class reformers used urban planning as a way to reform society, which pushed for “industrial efficiency, moral righteous-ness and social stability.”[4] Middle class people were pushing to fix societal problems that they hope would be identified by social survey. Through medical care and urban planning, middle class reformers tried to influence and steer change to fix the perceived societal problems, to reflect the ideals of the middle class. Canada, as citizens and a nation, were being uprooted through the middle class reform movement, which altered many of the institutions and ideals of Canadian people.
[1] Alan Hunt, “Measuring Morals: The Beginnings of the Social Survey Movement in Canada, 1913-1917,” Histoire Sociale/Social History, 35 (2002): 172, 191-194
[2] Maureen Lux, “Care for the ‘Racially Careless’: Indian Hospitals in the Canadian West, 1920s-1950s,” Canadian Historical Review, 91 (2010): 421-434
[3] Ibid., 419
[4] Sean Purdy, “Industrial Efficiency, Social Order and Moral Purity: Housing Reform Thought in English Canada, 1900-1950.” Urban History Review / Revue d’histoire urbaine 25, no. 2 (March 1997): 30, 38
