Interview with Alva Taylor, Treating tuberculosis at Charles Camsell Hospital
I am meeting with Alva Taylor at her home and she is going to provide us with some information about the TB Centre at the Charles Camsell Hospital. Thank you for having the interview with me. I am wondering if maybe we could just start with you giving me some information about yourself and how long you have been in Edmonton?
Well I came to Edmonton in the autumn of 1943 and I have been here ever since. That was of the time that I call the American invasion because that’s when the American Army people were here during World War II. They were involved, of course as you know, with the Alaska Highway Project and the [? Canal ] Project up in the North Wells Development. So all the population of the city was about 95,000 at that time – quite different – but a very friendly city, and I always enjoyed it.
Where did you come from?
Manitoba.
So you are a Canadian and have lived in the west all of your life?
That is right.
Actually that sounds very interesting. You said you came here during the time of the American Invasion. Maybe you could tell me a little bit more about that?
Well, there were quite a large number of the American Army personnel and the married people… the married men often had their families with them, certainly their wives and then if they could get their children. And so they rented pretty well all the available accommodations and the one thing that they did do, they paid the babysitters more than what the locals did so they didn’t have a problem acquiring babysitters.
How much would have rent had been for an apartment or house?
I paid eighteen dollars per month for room and board but that was at my cousin’s, and then a couple of years later a friend and I shared a little apartment which was a self contained small apartment, very unique little place, very comfortable, and we paid thirty-seven fifty per month and that included our heat, our lights and our water.
That is amazing when you think of now. Do you remember which area of the city that was?
In the community of Oliver, I have always lived in the community of Oliver ever since I came here.
Did you have a family of your own?
No.
So you went into Nursing School?
I took my Nurse training in Saint Boniface Hospital in Manitoba. Saint Boniface is a part of Winnipeg now but it was a city in its own right when I was a student.
I guess I kind of change venues on you there; you were talking about when you were renting an apartment and the American Soldiers were here. Is there any particular stories about that, that you remember that you wanted to share with us?
I don’t think so. You know it was an interesting time and a busy time, the little airport was quite busy with all the traffic into the north.
Now you were already a nurse when you came here?
Yes
You were sharing an apartment with a friend. Was that when you started working at the Charles Camsell Hospital?
No, I first started working at the Royal Alexandra Hospital and then I went to the Charles Camsell in 1947.
If you maybe just in your own words tell me about what you did at the Charles Camsell and give me some history of the hospital itself that would be great.
Well probably if I tell a little bit about the building and the hospital… The original brick building had been a classical college for boys, it was a Catholic Educational College for boys, and when the Americans came they were looking for buildings that could be available for headquarters for their work and they purchased the college plus I think there were three city blocks of property that the Jesuits formed because it was a Jesuit College and so the Americans purchased that and at the end of the war when they no longer required the buildings they were taken over by the Canadian Army.
And that would have been which year?
1945. The Canadian Government took the buildings over from the Americans and there was a great need for hospital facilities for treatment of tuberculosis among the Treaty Indian and Inuit people as they call them now, those days we referred to them as the Eskimos, there was quite a high incidents of tuberculosis among them. Dr. [?Meltzer] who had been in the Canadian Army and had served overseas during the war, had been the medical superintendent at the [?Minnet] Sanatorium in southern Manitoba so he had special training in tuberculosis along with his experience. He was available for employment after the war so he was appointed the Superintendent and Director of Tuberculosis Control for what then known as Indian Health Services for the Government of Canada. His responsibility then was for Alberta, Northwestern Saskatchewan, Northeastern British Columbia plus the Western Artic. The area was tremendous and the population was scattered.
And we are still in the late 40’s correct?
Yes
You were going to tell me how you came upon your position at the Tuberculosis Center.
When I met Dr, Meltzer at a mutual friend’s, who was the Superintendent at that particular time of the hospital Charles Camsell It wasn’t called that at the very beginning, it was first opened for treatment of tuberculosis. There were a number of army personnel moved there because as I said the Canadian Army had taken the buildings over from the Americans and so they had some nurses and nursing orderlies from the services who were on staff and then they recruited local people for various other positions in the hospital. As already mentioned that there was a great need for beds for treatment of tuberculosis so it didn’t take very long to fill the beds.
When the Canadian Army had taken the buildings over from the Americans there were all these redwood buildings that the Americans had put up for staff quarters, so the Army took six of these buildings and linked them up to into three groups of two buildings and these we called the wings wards and they were connected to the Jesuit College brick building by a corridor. There were a number of army or service personnel who had developed tuberculosis during their war service so they were hospitalized there… I think, if I remember correctly there was over two hundred army personnel or close to that. They were looked after through the department of Veterans Affairs and the Native people had a section at headquarters in Ottawa that were responsible for them; it was called Indian Health Services. In the very beginning it was mainly the Treaty Indian people that were admitted for tuberculosis and as their X-Ray surveys were set up and these were done in the summer when travel was easier for everyone instead of people having to count on having their X-ray staff taking the X-ray equipment out to the centers where the people lived.
From these surveys we were gradually admitting more and more of the Native people who had tuberculosis, this included small children right through to the grandparents. One of the sad things is the people lived in close proximity in their smaller dwellings and there would often be three generations living in one accommodation, the small children that were infected unknowingly by their grandparents. We had all ages in all stages of tuberculosis.
You had stated before that you had started off as the Director of Nursing for the hospital. What was it called at that time?
By the time I went there it was called the Charles Camsell Hospital and it was named for Dr. Charles who was not a medical doctor he was geologist but he was born in the Northwest Territories and he was very familiar with Territories and the people and he had a government position and he was working in Ottawa. He was a person who pressured at the Ottawa level to have treatment centers for tuberculosis.
Can you just give a brief medical about what tuberculosis is and some of the things you dealt with?
Tuberculosis is caused by the tubercular visili which is a long, long history of being people being in Europe… particularly in Europe developing tuberculosis and you probably remember back in the days the country that had the best treatment for tuberculosis was Switzerland. The feeling was with the knowledge had at that time that the mountain air would be better for people with this chest condition of tuberculosis. That was where a lot the first work for treating the disease began. People who had never been exposed to tuberculosis are much more susceptible to developing it because the longer the populations are exposed to it the greater is their ability to developing some resistance to the disease.
Why didn’t you get it when you worked there?
Well by this time they had developed a vaccine named [? unclear] which was named for the doctor who did so much research and developed this vaccine. That was available for staff that were non-reactors and when I say non-reactors we were all given this tubercular skin test and if it was positive it meant we had been exposed to tuberculosis and that we had developed some immunity towards the disease. One of the things that they did try to do was to have people they employed have tubercular tests, but by the time this vaccine was available, it was given to the people that were negative and it helped them to develop resistance. Plus we wore masks and gowns and hand washing was very important. [We had to beware] of sputum because many times the people who were first admitted, and who had quite a lot of disease did have sputum. [They] probably had cavitations in their lungs and therefore were coughing up sputum that had tubercular visili so our technique had to be careful – proper bed rest, proper amount of sleep. Bed rest was for the patients but for the staff adequate sleep and good meals, outdoor exercise, keeping active… You did your best to keep yourself healthy and to be careful of your technique. For the negative reactors if they were given the BCG vaccine they would start to build up their own body resistance to the organism and then there was very little likelihood of you developing it and we had low incidents of staff member being infected by tuberculosis.
You must have been fairly educated about tuberculosis to even take the position?
No I learnt on the job. More that was needed was the administrative aspect. That was my responsibility. It included arranging for, in conjunction with the medical staff, educational presentations for the staff and then from the nursing point of view our technique about masks, gowns and hand washing, etc.
How long did you do that for? The date was September 1971 that Alva left the Charles Camsell Hospital. Did you retire at that time?
No, I transferred to Canada Manpower Center as Manpower Councilor, I had a few more years to put in to be eligible for my pension and I wanted a change so that is what I did. It was interesting that I could change my occupation and I could apply a lot of what I did in the way of interviewing and work in nursing administration to the position of a Manpower Councilor.
The growth that you saw within the hospital over that 25 years, was it quite a bit? Because it eventually opened up into a regular hospital, did it not?
Yes, we were very gratified that we were able to get the tuberculosis under control. Then there were beds available for acute care, and we were the only government hospital for Indian people who lived close to Edmonton. As the tuberculosis declined the active care treatment increased.
One of the things we of course wanted for a long time was a new hospital. What we did have was the Jesuit College which certainly was not a hospital and then the staff quarters that Americans had built, and one of those was set up as a non-tuberculosis care of children. We were the referral hospital for the Aboriginal people in Alberta. As we had less Tuberculosis we had more space available for active treatment. Wings wards were temporary buildings anyway and there were in need of replacement, and so we kept “begging” really, and for a new building and we were certainly pleased when we managed to get one. But by that time the big crunch was over and we did a lot of pediatrics, we had a maternity ward in the new building, so most of the woman came in and had their babies in the hospital, from the Edmonton area and therefore we had quite a large need for pediatric beds.
At the other general active treatment, for any hospital, we were able to look after everyone, much better; when I say much better not the care, the medical care and nursing care was not compromised from the building, the thing was there was more space and you had more modern equipment and it was much easier to care for people once we got the new building. It was quite an interesting reaction, some of the patients like the old building better, which is quite understandable, and some like the new building better and the people who were on say the 6th or 7th floor, particularly people from the north as they could see the planes landing at the Municipal airport and of course that was for the Northern people fly in and went home from. They would stand and watch the planes come and go. They were great people to look after, all of them, whether they were from the north or south, Inuit or Aboriginal, they were great people to look after.
Did you make some long-term relationships over the years?
We certainly did with people that were on staff. One of the things that happened not too long after the war was that the school for nursing aids was established in Calgary. We encouraged some of our Native girls that were working on staff to take the course. Two from Northeastern Alberta went together to Calgary. There was not a school for nursing aids in Edmonton as this was just developed after war and it was centered in Calgary. Both the girls went and got their nursing aid training and then they came back and worked at the Camsell. Everything just gradually improved and grew.
What year was it that the new hospital was built?
[New hospital was opened in the late 60’s]
We were talking about the expansion of the new hospital and you continued to be the Director of Nursing for the new hospital, so that must have been a big change for you?
Well, it was a wonderful change because we had our own space and equipment. We often had to improvise in the old hospital but that was something the staff were very good at and it is the same old thing, you rise to a challenge, and then you get to your new place and the challenges are gone. You get what you need and what you are dreaming of and what you wanted and it is great. I’m am not saying we wanted to change that but what I am saying is then you realize that some of the challenge, that the physical aspect of the building and it’s detriments you don’t have any more but that was alright because we had been looking forward so long to this change, to this improvement and we became more of a community hospital.
By the time the new hospital was built the tuberculosis was well under control, happily, so it was a new focus. The people in the area were pleased to have an outpatient department available to them and facilities in the building, as we had beds available where they could be admitted. We had a very nice little maternity unit, about 20 beds and some of the local people where happy to come here and have their babies. They enjoyed seeing the little Indian babies and meeting their mothers. On the maternity unit we had a dining room and they could all have their meals together and get to know one another, so it was sort of a cultural exchange.
I like the way that you worded that it was a “ cultural exchange”, because that would have been quite interesting working through that because people lived so remotely and then bringing everybody together.
Even the people on the reserves close to Edmonton, Lac St. Anne I think was the furthest one, it was a little further to Lac St. Anne than to Duffield… Automobile travel was available by that time, but when I first went on staff there in 1947 people came from quite far distances with the team and wagon to visit their relatives and hospital. I can’t give you the exact history but there is the Lac St. Anne Pilgrimage towards the end of July each year, people came from long distances with team and wagon and stop at then they would stop at they hospital on their way to Lac St. Anne to visit their friends and or relatives; this is one time where we threw rest period open, we would say they don’t have very long and they do need to visit as visits are very important. I know that patients really appreciated that and I know that the people going through and wanting to stop to visit wouldn’t understand quite as well what it meant to give up rest period to allow them to visit. They would visit people from their own area even though they were not related but they knew each other and that meant a lot to the patients to see people from home.
So what are your personal thoughts now that the hospital is closed down after all the struggles to get it? It sure didn’t last very long.
I think it is terribly sad, I don’t know why it had to be closed.
I think a lot of people agree with you on that one.
I do know that people who live in that community were quite upset about it because they liked the hospital, it was in their area, there was an outpatient department, an emergency. They felt that they were close in proximity and they felt close personally because it was their community. Many people in the community used to come and visit the patients and take them out maybe to the exhibition if they were on off high routine and other activities. We were sort of a family community within a city.
Sounds like a lot of volunteers from the community were very involved in the hospital.
Right.
You said you lived in the Oliver area all your life…
I mean in Edmonton.
I bet you have seen lots of changes just in your own community? I am looking around and I am seeing buildings being built everywhere, it has changed.
Very much so, it is sort of sad in one way; I know we can’t stop progress and shouldn’t stop it, if it is progress, [but] we should if it isn’t. It is quite astonishing when you think back [over] ten-year periods how much has changed.