History of the Moncton Hospital: A Proud Past, a Healthy Future, 1895-1995

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

Written by a Moncton physician, this is a carefully researched and
detailed centenary tribute to the city’s hospital. Since the hospital
kept no official archives of historical records, the author was obliged
to fill in the gaps in the information provided by a few scattered
annual reports and some departmental records with material gleaned from
local newspapers. Given the thinness of the historical source base, the
book’s focus is necessarily on the medical staff, although MacLellan
does cover major developments in administration and nursing. It is
interesting to note that, in keeping with a national pattern, local
women’s organizations—here primarily the King’s Daughters—were
instrumental in both promoting and raising funds for a medical facility
for the community. Local clergymen were also actively involved, which
would lead historians to surmise that as in other places, the hospital
movement was probably motivated by late-l9th-century social gospel
fervor. The Moncton Hospital was supposed to have been a Diamond Jubilee
project, but the city balked at the expense, agreeing instead to
renovate the existing almshouse, which became the hospital’s first
home in 1898.

The book is arranged chronologically, with each chapter covering a
decade of the hospital’s history since 1895. The decade’s major
hospital events are discussed first, followed by biographical sketches
of incoming medical staff, and concluding with a statistical accounting
of the hospital’s services for that year. Most of the information
provided is biographical, but MacLellan does take care to place the
hospital’s evolution within the context of its community’s needs and
the wider setting of advances in medical science.