Volume #37, Issue #1, Fall, 2004/5765

Union Medical Practice in Saskatchewan, Canada,
1948

by Shirley Brown

Introduction
by Cyril E. Leonoff
WSJH Canadian Editor

Shirley Kirzner (Brown),
1946 Graduation Photo
Toronto Western Hospital

Henry and Shirley Brown were Canadian-born and educated offspring of traditional East European Jewish immigrant families. Henry Brown graduated from the University of Toronto Medical College in 1946, while concurrently Shirley Kirzner graduated in nursing at Toronto Western Hospital. The couple married after graduation.

Faced with a post-war shortage of medical practitioners, the Saskatchewan Government sponsored a program, termed “Union Practice,” to encourage physicians to set up family practices in rural communities. This was attractive to newly-graduated doctors who lacked the capital and experience to start up city offices.

In 1948 Henry and Shirley took the opportunity offered by Saskatchewan to obtain experience in general family practice and to pay off their education debts. The following reminiscence, told by Shirley in 1995, recounts the couple’s experiences in a Saskatchewan small town.
 

Dr. Henry Brown in normal
daily medical garb.

Later episodes in the Browns’ career and family life were related in WSJH 34/3, Spring 2002, pp. 258-262. After raising their two daughters, in 1967 Shirley Brown took a postgraduate diploma in Public Health at the University of British Columbia. Henry died in 1993 at the age of 70. In May 2003 Shirley celebrated her 80th birthday. She still practices nursing as a part-time volunteer at the local Seniors Wellness Clinic of the British Columbia Ministry of Health Services.

This account of our Saskatchewan experience was promised by my husband, Dr. Henry Brown, to the Jewish Historical Society of B.C. Unfortunately, his death intervened. Therefore I will attempt to fulfill his obligation, hoping that my recall will be adequate.
As our Saskatchewan experience was very much a shared one, I ask the readers’ understanding as I use the pronouns “I” and “we” interchangeably.

In 1948 we went to Earl Grey, a small, frontier railway-stop town about fifty miles north of Regina—population about 500 (probably including livestock). This was to assume what was then called a “Union Practice”—a family style medical service encompassing a large territory. This was certainly the forerunner of Medicare as we know it today. Doctors were assigned geographical areas and salaried. Henry’s motivation was to pay off debts for education and to gain experience in general family practice. After graduating from University of Toronto in 1946, he interned at the Toronto Mt. Sinai Hospital and had a one year residency in psychiatry in New York. [Editor’s note. Shirley also graduated as a nurse from Toronto Western Hospital in 1946]

We were young, energetic, and eagerly accepted the challenge of a pioneering lifestyle for which our urban sophisticated medical and nursing training prepared us inadequately.

The medical office occupied the first floor of an aging two storey, former bank building which swayed along with strong winds. Our living quarters were upstairs. We heated with five space heaters—all hungry monsters demanding to be fed constantly and variously with wood chips, sawdust and lump coal, dampered, and cleaned out; and not even rewarding us with adequate heat during the long Winter.

We did not enjoy the luxury of indoor plumbing. Water was fetched from a community well. In Winter we filled a huge horse trough with snow; and although it was very close to the most efficient Booker type space heater, the snow was very slow to melt; and of course yielded very little water. We often awoke to frozen wash water in the morning. How I learned to conserve that precious resource! Laundry and bath water was re-used for floor washing-an impossible task during the Winter because the rag would freeze to the floor of our office space. Survival of house plants was an impossibility. I had to give that up. Laundry which was hung outside to dry in Winter had to be carefully manoeuvred back in.

Imagine stiff longjohns, sheets and towels! That wonderful, fresh smell of laundry thawing is a precious memory.

Our insufferable “necessarium” facility was a chemical toilet, that had to be emptied into a “4-holer” public privy just beyond our back yard. We named this task our Midnight Mission—always hoping we would not meet up with anyone else doing the same.
The town pharmacist was next door and there was a good cooperation regarding Henry’s pharmaceutical preferences.
Henry’s unusual (to say the least) office garb during the Winter months was often a surplus air force flight suit, beaver hat, and boots, while the patients would undress for examination without complaint.

Deliveries were done in the egg candler’s house, on a makeshift table consisting of a wood plank across two wooden horses. Mrs. P. served as midwife before we arrived. I gave light anaesthetic, Henry delivered, with poor Mrs. P. being less than gracious at our intrusion into her important role.

Winter house calls were often a nightmare. The farmers would pick Henry up and they would travel across frozen fields by horse and cutter. The doctor would often have to sit with a very ill patient until an air ambulance, destined for a hospital in Regina, could be brought out. There was no telephone service after 10:00 p.m.; so the night calls posed an added problem.

I wish I had a photo of our telephone—a veritable museum piece. It was a large wooden wall-mounted rectangular box with a black mouthpiece protruding from the front, a crank on the side, and answered by a very friendly, feisty operator.

I dealt with any office emergencies while Henry was off on prolonged house calls. Occasionally I went along with him; and sometimes ended up with my feet in the oven of a farm house.
 

Horse-powered cutter (and driver) on which Dr. Brown
made his winter rounds, 1948
—All photos supplied by Cyril E. Leonoff

Our hospital facility was Southey—11 miles east of Earl Grey—a cottage hospital owned by old Doc H. I lived and worked there for about seven weeks while his nurse was on maternity leave. I gave anaesthetics, started intravenous, and prepared for surgery by sterilizing in a large pressure cooker—keeping the pressure up by feeding wood chips into the belly of a stove in the kitchen. Doc H. was very old-fashioned. We would grit our teeth and go along with his primitive techniques because, after all, he did get good results and the patients were so totally uncritical and appreciative, and enviably stoic. So very different from present day doctor-bashing!

What were the satisfactions during our year of hard work pioneering? Paramount was having Vera and Harry Raichman as our next door neighbours. We greeted each other with mutual exuberance. Imagine the good fortune to have a Jewish family next door in rural Saskatchewan! Harry, an agronomist, managed the general store as he could not support his family by his profession. They had two little boys and we became one happy family, celebrating the holidays together with much joy and satisfaction. Harry died shortly after we left Saskatchewan. Vera moved to Winnipeg with her boys and subsequently married Noah Wittrnan—a noted Yiddish scholar.

What did we do for recreation? There was little time for that! We loved bonspiel curling, we socialized with neighbours, often listened to the radio, played records, and wrote many letters to family and friends describing in detail our experiences to incredulous recipients.
Some memorable experiences . . . .

• getting lost just beyond the office in a total ‘white-out’ blizzard on my way to participate in a curling bonspiel, I was rescued in a near panic state and guided in the right direction by a neighbour.

• freezing my legs in white duty nylons because we had to get out and fix a flat tire en route to the hospital by a policemen who summoned us to a horrible Saturday morning post-party highway accident involving four teenagers in a car that had collided with a horse. The horse was writhing in agony and had to be shot; one of the young people was lying dead on the road, a very contorted body of broken bones, and the three others were seriously injured and required triage. Roadside first aid was given and an air ambulance was summoned from Regina hospital after emergency treatment was given at Southey Hospital.

• helping to organize a temporary mortuary at the community hall and sometimes offering emotional assistance to farmers who had to keep the bodies of loved ones in a barn when the graves could not be dug in the Winter.

• and then there were the twin boys delivered by Henry and to our amusement named Lloyd and Floyd.
We minimized our physical discomforts, and celebrated our invaluable professional opportunities for experience and admiration for the people we served.