The Royal Vic: The Story of Montreal's Royal Victoria Hospital, 1894-1994

Cynthia R. Comacchio is an assistant professor of history at Wilfrid
Laurier University and the author of Nations Are Built of Babies: Saving
Ontario’s Mothers and Children.

This centenary volume presents an interesting, engaging, and beautifully
illustrated history of the landmark Montreal hospital founded by
millionaire entrepreneurs Donald Smith and George Stephen (cousins who
were also founding partners of the Canadian Pacific Railway) with the
help of William Van Horne (president of the CPR) in 1894.

The author recounts how these three formidable businessmen became
interested in the project, and provides an overview of the hospital’s
history, from its inaugural ceremony; through decades of medical
research and advancement, expansion, responses to specific community
needs (as during the world wars), and shifting attitudes toward the form
and function of hospitals; to the present. Chapters detail the
hospital’s actual construction; its staffing (with attention paid to
doctors, nurses, administration, and support); its public funding
appeals and the work of the ladies’ auxiliary; and the instigation of
the University Clinic (conceived by Sir William Osler in 1925, with the
threefold purpose of supporting McGill University’s Department of
Medicine in its care of the sick, teaching of medicine, and scientific
investigation of disease).

The Royal Vic’s story should inspire those interested in
institutional history and the social history of health, health-care
delivery, and medicine to fill in Neville Terry’s historical framework
with further research.