Akt(e) 7 - Oral history interview with John Edwin Hagmeier

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.