The Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) is governed by the McMaster University Tenure and Promotion Policy. Each department can form their own Tenure and Promotion Committee (T&P) who makes recommendations on faculty concerning tenure and promotions.
John Charles Firmin was working on a farm north of Lethbridge, Alberta when he heard about the Spanish Civil War. With sympathy for the Republic and indignation over fascism and Nazism, he left Lethbridge for Toronto, from where he was sent to New York and then to Manhattan, heading across the ocean for France. He went from Le Havre to Carcassonne and after a long trip climbing over the Pyrenees, he finally reached Figueras in March 1938.
Joining the Mackenzie Papineau Battalion on March 28, 1938, he billeted in a camp in Figueras for about two weeks for training before going to Gandesa, where he was involved in a battle and badly wounded. He was carried to a field medical ambulance for treatment and then transferred to a prison hospital in Saragossa for operation. Following that he was sent to another hospital in Bilbao along with some of his Spanish comrades and received another operation on his arm. He spent the Christmas of 1938 in the hospital and stayed until his arm had healed up. Following his stay in Bilbao, he was kept in prisons in Burgos and Valdemoceda until May 1939, when he was released from Spain and returned to Canada. He later joined the Mackenzie Papineau Veterans Association in Toronto. He died in 1982 in Semans, Saskatchewan.
John Fowler was born on July 3, 1888 in West Ham, London, England. He enlisted in the Canadian army, machine gun section 169th Overseas Battalion CEF Camp Niagara, on February 14, 1916. He served in England and France (including Vimy Ridge). He was hospitalized with pneumonia and suspected tuberculosis in England and France in 1917. He spent five months at the Hamilton Sanatorium recovering from tuberculosis and bronchitis. He later spent five years in and out of various hospitals in New Jersey, Vancouver, and New Zealand seeking treatment. Although he was an engineer prior to the war, he was not able to work due to his collapsed lung. He spent his working years on a small pension supplemented by part-time self-employment. He was married to Harriet Elizabeth Fox (married on November 27, 1915) and they had one son together, William John Fowler (who served in the Second World War).
Gerry Glow was born July 6, 1913, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, to father Israel Glow, and mother Ida Gurvitch. Glow grew up alongside his brother Morris and was educated at St. Johns Technical Highschool. Following High School, Glow attended the University of Manitoba for one year. In 1937, Glow joined the Communist Party of Canada, and subsequently decided to fight in the Spanish Civil War, as he felt he had a duty to help the Spaniard’s fight for democracy. In 1937, Glow arrived in Spain, where he trained with the 2nd Battalion of Instruction, Canadian Company, before attending First Aid School in December of 1937. Glow then served with the 12th Brigade, 2nd Battalion, Company 2 from March to April of 1938. In July of 1938, Glow was transferred to the Mackenzie Papineau Battalion. Glow served in The Retreats from Belchite to Gandesa and the Ebro Crossing to Corbera.
Glow returned to Canada after the Spanish Civil War concluded and was involved in various strikes and demonstrations in Canada. He later worked in his brother Morris’s pharmacy and went on to marry Sally Bolt. Glow passed away February 23, 1997, in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Norman Miles Guiou was born February 26, 1893, in Ottawa to father Alonzo Herrett Guiou and mother Robenia Wallace. Guiou was raised and educated in Ottawa and attended Lisgar Collegiate where he gained an interest in biology and medicine after participating in science classes under the tutelage of his teacher, William Smeaton. In 1911 Guiou pursued his MD at McGill University, Montreal. During his fourth year at McGill at the start of the First World War, he enlisted as a private and in the spring of 1915 went to France with the McGill Hospital Unit, where he was eventually promoted to sergeant. Due to the great need of doctors during the First World War, Guiou was sent back to McGill University in the summer of 1916 to complete his medical program and interned at the Montreal General Hospital for 2 months. It was during this internship that Guiou learned about blood transfusions and cross-matching blood. After this internship and completion of his MD, Guiou enlisted once more, and went to France as a Medical Officer at McGill Hospital under John McCrae, just outside Boulogne. During the remainder of the First World War, Guiou originated the use of direct donor blood transfusion to resuscitate wounded soldiers as far forward as the Regimental Aid Post, using modified citrate bottles developed by Dr. O.H Robertson.
After the First World War, Guiou married Mary Elizabeth Brown in 1923, and had a son- William Wallace Guiou in 1925. In 1926, William Wallace died to pneumonia at 3 months old, and a week later Mary Elizabeth also passed away. In 1928 Guiou married Ella Loyale Mix. During this time, Guiou pursued post graduate training in New York, and went on to work at the Ottawa Civic Hospital, where he was Senior Surgeon, and then Chief Gynaecologist. He was also chairperson of the Blood Transfusion and Parenteral Fluid Committee, where he was instrumental in convincing the administration to allow nurses to give blood.
In around 1935 Guiou was inspired by the volunteer blood donors of Toc H (a veteran’s group) and convinced the Ottawa Red Cross branch under Jim Potter to start the blood donor initiative, resulting in the creation of a blood clinic in 1938 and subsequent blood drives. Thanks to Guiou, Toc H and Jim Potter, more whole blood clinics would be opened in Ontario by the Red Cross, just prior to the start of the Second World War. During the Second World War, Guiou was a member of the National Red Cross Committee on Blood for the Wounded.
In 1964 Guiou was successful in convincing Ottawa to add fluoride to its water supply. In 1985 Guiou authored the book “Transfusion: A Canadian Surgeons Story of War and in Peace”, documenting his role in blood transfusions during the First World War and leading up to the Second World War. Guiou passed away August 10, 1992.
Guiou was a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Canada, an Honorary Member of the Canadian Red Cross Society, a Life Member of the Ontario Medical Association, and a past president of the Academy of Medicine, Ottawa. His work has been published in various scholarly journals internationally.
John Edwin Hagmeier was born on August 14th, 1884, in Hespeler, Ontario, to German immigrant Abraham Hagmeier and Elizabeth Braeb. JE Hagmeier is one of three children born to Abraham and Elizabeth. He had an older brother who died during birth, and a younger brother by three years, Louis Gordon Hagmeier. Hagmeier attended high school in Galt, Ontario, and then proceeded to attend the University of Toronto in 1907, at the age of twenty-three, pursuing his medical degree in conjunction with his brother Louis. In 1911 Hagmeier graduated from the University of Toronto with his MD and interned with Dr. Frederick Newton Gisborne Starr and his service at the Toronto General Hospital, and later at the Lying-In Hospital in gynecology, located in New York. On April 13th, 1914, JE Hagmeier married Beatta Moyer, who he had been seeing since his university years. Beata and JE Hagmeier went on to have three children- a boy and two girls. On May 24th, 1914, Hagmeier and his brother Louis Gordon Hagmeier opened their own medical offices in Berlin, Ontario (Berlin was later changed to Kitchener in 1916).
In 1921, after the First World War, the Hagmeier brothers purchased and operated the Del Monte Hotel located in Cambridge, ON with the help of Jacob Kaufman, and his son AR Kaufman, a prominent manufacturer and industrialist in Kitchener. The Hagmeier brothers rebranded the hotel as the “Preston Springs Hotel,” which took advantage of the natural mineral springs it was built on to also operate as a sanatorium and spa. The Preston Springs Hotel was outfitted with an x-ray room and an operating room, and drew worldwide attention and celebrity clients, such as Dr. Banting and Babe Ruth. The Hagmeier brothers worked exclusively at the Preston Springs Hotel from 1925-1941. In 1941 during the Second World War, the Preston Springs Hotel was leased and taken over by the Canadian Woman’s Army Corp. Two years later, the CWAC returned control to the Hagmeier brothers, who later sold complete ownership of the hotel to AR Kaufman, after facing a declining number of clients at the culmination of the Second World War. After selling the Preston Springs Hotel, Hagmeier returned to his medical practice in Kitchener where he practiced medicine until 1969.
In 1960, Hagmeier’s wife Beata Moyer died from a cerebral hemorrhage. He married Margaret Smart later that same year. John Edwin Hagmeier passed away in 1982.
The Hamilton Academy of Medicine (HAM) is a local voluntary professional association and a territorial branch society of District 4 of the Ontario Medical Association (OMA). Its role is to strengthen the camaraderie among the physicians and surgeons of Hamilton and the surrounding region and to offer them opportunities to engage with scientific, political, and social developments impacting the medical profession.
A precursor of HAM, the Hamilton Medical and Surgical Society, was established on February 3, 1863. Its principal function was to host the annual election of the six doctors who would have hospital privileges. After this function was lost, and confronted with disputes among its members, on October 24, 1899, it was decided to abandon this organization and begin again.
On November 7, 1899, a new association, the Hamilton Medical Society (HMS), was established. Prior to WWI, its members met once a month from September to May to listen to presentations by fellow members or guest speakers. From 1906, they held an annual clinical day, which consisted of presentations at one of the hospitals followed by a dinner.
Following WWI, in 1919, HMS affiliated with the OMA, one of the first local medical societies to do so, and adopted a new constitution that was in line with that of OMA. This greatly expanded its purpose. While its focused remained on education, it began to organize social events such as picnics and golf tournaments.
In 1919, as a result of its affiliation with OMA, the HMS established an Executive, made up of the President, Vice-President, Secretary, and Treasurer. The Executive was responsible for policy and for arranging the annual program. Another notable change was the introduction of standing and special committees to handle social and political issues of particular concern to doctors as they arose.
In 1931, HMS changed its name to the Hamilton Academy of Medicine (HAM) and opened its first permanent headquarters in the newly built Medical Arts Building at 1 Young Street in downtown Hamilton. To legally incorporate, it applied for and was issued letters patent on February 25, 1932. In addition, HAM's constitution and bylaws were revised. A Council was introduced, made up of the Executive, OMA Delegate, and the Chairs of current standing and special committees. The Council, which met quarterly, became responsible for policy and planning.
In 1934, the first Section—subgroup of members of a particular medical or surgical specialty—of HAM, the Section of General Practice (later renamed Section of Family Medicine), was established. It would be joined by sixteen others over the following decades.
In 1936, HAM relocated its headquarters to 286 Victoria Avenue North, the building which had formerly housed the Babies’ Dispensary Guild, a municipal property leased to the Hamilton General Hospital. Rent was a nominal $1 plus free use of its library by the Hospital. This remained its headquarters until 1990, when it sold its library to the Hospital and returned to the Medical Arts Building, its current home.
The Hamilton General Hospital Training School for Nurses was established at City Hospital in 1890. It was initially a two-year-long apprenticeship style program led by the head nurse and physicians, but expanded to a three-year program involving formal instruction and on-the-job training. The Hamilton General Hospital School of Nursing was discontinued in 1973 when Mohawk College took over the program.
The site of Hamilton General Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario was originally home to City Hospital. The City owned facility was moved in 1882 to a plot of farmland that was purchased for $4,600. The Hamilton General Training School of Nursing was established at City Hospital in 1890, and in 1901 the Hamilton City Hospital Alumnae Association was founded. Meanwhile, the hospital’s services were continually expanded; A maternity hospital opened in 1892, and an operating theatre was built in 1893. In 1914, a separate children’s ward was established, funded largely by private contributions and the sale of souvenirs.
In 1917 City Hospital became Hamilton General Hospital. The city’s first cancer clinic was established there in 1938. In 1962, Hamilton General Hospital amalgamated with the Nora Frances Henderson Hospital and the Mountain Hospital to become a single corporation known as Hamilton Civic Hospitals. Fifteen years later in 1997, that corporation joined Chedoke Hospitals to establish Hamilton Health Sciences.
Dr. (Robert) Brian Haynes is a professor emeritus at McMaster University Faculty of Health Sciences in the Health Information Research Unit. His work focused on clinical epidemiologist/internist with experience in clinical care (diabetes), clinical informatics and health services research in general, and practitioner performance and patient adherence in particular. Dr. Haynes research activities fall in the domain of knowledge translation research, at the interface between health care research and clinical practice, including information retrieval, critical appraisal of evidence, summarization, synthesis, dissemination, and application of evidence in support of health care.
Haynes completed his pre-medical studies from University of Calgary in 1967 and then enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine at University of Alberta until 1971. He completed his M.Sc. and Ph.D., under David Sackett from McMaster University in 1973 and 1975 respectively. In 1977, he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada (internal medicine).
In 2010, Dr. Haynes became an Officer of the Order of Canada.
In 2016, Dr. Haynes retired from the university faculty poster and medical practice.
