Jeanette “Jan” Alwyn Houghton nee Joyce (1924-2015) was a graduate of the Hamilton General Hospital School of Nursing Class of 1946B. She helped organize reunions and was the official class representative with the Hamilton Civic Hospitals Nursing Alumnae Association. Jeanette would act as an "unofficial archivist" for her class.
Victor Himmelfarb was born on November 7th, 1909, to Jacob Himmelfarb and Annie Himmelfarb, who were both from Poland. Born and raised in Toronto, Himmelfarb received education at Ogden Public School and Jarvis Collegiate. After apprenticing as a pharmacist for two years, he went to the Ontario College of Pharmacy in 1931 and graduated two years later. After graduation, Himmelfarb found a job as a pharmacist on Queen Street near Spadina while at the same time paying close attention to world politics and conflicts. Aiming to get into the war and cracking against Hitler and fascism, Himmelfarb went by himself from Toronto to Spain in 1937. He travelled by way of France, from where he marched over the Pyrenees Mountains into a town of Figueras, and went through Valencia and Barcelona up to Albacete, where the headquarters of the International Brigades was located. He joined the International Brigades as a pharmacist, serving in several hospitals in different localities and finally wound up as a lieutenant.
Himmelfarb left Spain in January of 1939, travelling back to Canada with the Canadian representative and was interviewed by Gregory Clark on the way from Halifax to Toronto. During the Second World War, he worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs for over five years. Himmelfarb later joined the Mackenzie Papineau Veterans Association in Toronto.
He passed away in 1985.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
