Media Exhibits
On June 4, 1890, when the Medicine Hat General hospital officially opened, a milestone was accomplished in the development of western Canada. The first hospital between Winnipeg and Vancouver was now complete. Since its inception, under the guidance of Canadian Pacific Railway superintendent John Niblock, it led a storied and stellar rise into existence. It had only been 18 months since fundraising began, and now it was finished, glorious in its splendor. Not only was it a striking example of Victorian architecture, it was a truly modern functional hospital. Medicine Hat was now the envy of every community in the west, including Calgary and Regina, both of which had failed in their attempts to build hospitals. But the challenge was not over, and it would soon be discovered that operating the first hospital would be an even more difficult task than its construction.
There is little doubt that when the first staff approached the hospital they were struck with awe at the sight. The stylish mansard roof with windowed cupola towered graciously over the polished hand hewn sandstone exterior. Equally impressive was the entrance with its gilded front doors leading into a vestibule surrounded by stained glass. Venturing inside they would have toured the 8 wards comprising 24 beds, an operating theatre, an isolation ward, reception room, a library/reading room, kitchen, and a furnace room with its patented coal fired Plaxton hot water heater. It had all the amenities required of a modern hospital. Finally they would have ventured to the second floor and under one half of the mansard roof found the nurses residence. For their exclusive use, three bedrooms and a sitting room handsomely appointed in the style of the day. Nothing more could be asked for, the opulence and professional outlay of the structure would have been entirely convincing that this would be a fine place to work. Nowhere, would there have been any indication of the challenges they were about to face.
When the grit, determination and sacrifice of pioneering come to mind one has to look no further than the first staff of the Medicine Hat General Hospital. In charge would be Dr. Albert Olver the first medical superintendent. Graduating at the top of his class from the Manitoba Medical School in 1886, Olver had been in Medicine Hat for two years, working as the railway physician under Mr. Niblock. Highly regarded by the community at large, his appointment as medical superintendent came as no surprise. Reporting directly to him was the nursing staff. Miss Grace Reynolds who would hold the position of Matron, had a direct link to the very genesis of nursing. She had trained at Leeds in England under a Miss Gordon who had been a pupil of Florence Nightingale. Reporting to her would be Miss Mary Ellen Birtles a recent graduate of the Winnipeg General Hospital. In the coming months the three would work closely together.
From their nicely appointed residence, Miss Reynolds and Miss Birtles set to work taking command of the operations of the facility. Amazingly they were the only staff for the entire institution. The required daily chores and tasks pushed the two to their limits. The apparent convenience of the in house residence quickly dissolved into a “twenty four hours a day, seven days a week” commitment. In 1939, in her memoirs Miss Mary Ellen Birtles would recall:
“Miss Reynolds and I managed the work between us. She prepared the meals and looked after the downstairs work; I attended to the furnace and did the upstairs work, dusting etc. besides attending to the patients. When any surgical work had to be done we had to arrange the work accordingly. Miss Reynolds gave the anesthetic and I looked after the instruments and waited on the doctor. There was no sterilizer so we had to resort to boiling the instruments in a large saucepan with a steamer on it for towels and dressings”.
The conditions were such that if the nurses were able to attend church on Sunday, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon, that was their time off for the week. With this single weekly exception, the two were on duty.
To complete this seemingly impossible list of duties, an enormous amount of discipline and focus was required. This resulted in at least two protests being launched by patients complaining about the strict regulation and control enforced by Miss Reynolds. In each of the instances Miss Reynolds would offer her resignation as a solution to the problem. Mr. Niblock and the Board of Directors knew better, however, and her first two resignations were not only refused, but returned with a humble apology and a raise in pay.
The evidence of the staffs labour was no more apparent than when the first annual report to the Board of Directors was delivered in January of 1891. Dr. Olver spoke first, reporting on the myriad of conditions and diseases that had been treated in addition to the 101 operations that had been conducted on the 124 patients that had been resident. Each patient had stayed an average of 28.2 days, resulting in a total of 3,501 patient treatment days. Not surprisingly, Mr. Niblock went on to speak of the untiring zeal of the nursing staff in completing these duties. Clearly the first year of operations at the Medicine Hat General had been difficult, but none the less, a success.
The trials of endurance, however, were not over and the second year of operation at the Medicine Hat General Hospital would prove to be even more difficult than the first. The year began with an array of broken and crushed bones from ranching and railway accidents. Along with this were a variety of dislocations, abscesses and diseases common to life in the frontier. But then, as spring turned to summer, a new and deadly threat emerged - the dreaded typhoid.
A rampaging epidemic hit the community hard and every bed in the hospital soon had an afflicted patient in it. Dr. Olver worked doggedly along with the nurses, then suddenly became feverish himself, contacting the disease. Soon he was bed ridden beside his patients. Nurse Birtles yielded next and a Miss Locke was quickly brought in to assist. Dr. Calder, a former professional partner of Dr. Olver’s was summoned and stepped in to assist with hospital duties. Next Dr. Haultain from Maple Creek was sent for, followed by Dr. D.B. Brett from Banff each providing needed support. For three weeks Dr. Olver’s condition worsened, then improved, then worsened again as his case become one of the most severe. The visiting physicians did the best they could but it was to no avail. The hospitals first medical superintendent Dr. Albert Olver succumbed to typhoid, dieing at 8:30 p.m., August 31, 1891 at the young age of 30 years.
The impact of this event deeply affected not only the institution but the community at large. Despite the ongoing epidemic, a large and fitting funeral was prepared by the Masonic lodge, with assistance from the Odd Fellows Society. For two days his body lay in state at the Masonic Hall before a long funeral cortege wound its way through the town. A brief stop was made at Dr. Olver’s former residence on North Railway Street, where his wife and “two prattling babes” joined in before making its way to the old cemetery behind St. Barnabas church. Future mayor W.M. Finlay conducted an impressive burial service and then Dr. Albert Olver was laid in his final resting place.
Mercifully, new cases of typhoid began to diminish, and the hospital and town were finally released from the pall of the epidemic. After six weeks, Nurse Birtles was able to successfully fight the disease and recover. In the interim, Dr. Calder was appointed as temporary Medical Superintendent and then in November, his position made permanent. This was closely followed by the third resignation of Miss Reynolds. This time it would not be refused and returned. She was getting married, and would soon become Mrs. Calder. There was much joy at this cheerful news and Mr. Niblock spoke eloquently of her good service. As a parting gift a $50 silver tea service was purchased and presented on behalf of the hospital. This was the last major event of the second year of operations of the still new but now experienced institution of the Medicine Hat General Hospital. The toll had been high, but the community and the hospital had survived and things were looking up.
The feelings of optimism in the New Year of 1892 were clearly evident. Discussions of improvements, additions and modifications dominated board meetings. At the second annual general meeting, Mr. Niblock attempted to resign his position as President but the rest of the board would have no part of it and he was re-elected by acclimation. In the coming months, the purse strings would loosen and a cook was hired relieving the nurses of some of their toils. This was closely followed by a janitor further improving conditions. When the talk began about hiring a second doctor it became clear that the pioneering stage of the Medicine Hat General Hospital was over and that a new phase of growth and development was about to begin.
The future was now visibly set. There would be other epidemics and challenges ahead but each would be overcome and progress made. Soon Medicine Hat’s first school of nursing would be established by the new Matron, Miss Agnus Miller. With the assistance and collaboration of the now retired Mrs. Grace Calder the school would run for over 75 years providing hundreds of qualified nurses not only for the Medicine Hat General but western Canada and the world. Now, over 100 years later, it is difficult to comprehend that Alberta’s hospital legacy began in a small but striking Victorian structure in the frontier town of Medicine Hat.
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