Part 2

A side light however, may serve to illumine the beclouded situation. With the formation of the Unionist Government the usual shuffle of portfolios was made and the then dominating Solicitor General, grown callous and hardened over a franchise Bill, which disfranchised many thousands of his fellow native-born citizens, had now become Minister of the Interior. That the desire for power and for the control appointments should override any higher consideration such as saving the lives of the Indians must be inferred from the following statement of the Hon. A. Meighen, Minister of the Interior and now Prime Minister. On June 8th, 1920, the estimates of the Indian Department were under consideration in Parliament. Page 3275 of Hansard has the following:--

Mr. D. D. McKenzie, “I understand that frightful ravages are being made amongst them (Indians) by tuberculosis and the conditions of life are certainly not such as to preserve them from the ravages of that dread disease. I should be pleased to know at the earliest possible moment if that branch of the Department was going to be transferred to the Department of Health.”

Mr. Meighen, “The Health Department has no power to take over the matter of the health of the Indians. That is not included in the Act establishing the department. It was purposely left out of the Act. I did not then think and do not think yet that it would be practicable for the Health Department to do that work, because they would require to duplicate the organization away in the remote regions, where Indian reserves are, and there would be established a sort of divided control and authority over the Indians.”

Mr. Beland, “Is tuberculosis increasing or decreasing amongst the Indians?”

Mr. Meighen, “I am afraid I cannot give a very encouraging answer to the question. We are not convinced that it is increasing, but it is not decreasing.”

[Sidenote: Red tape condemns the Indians because of a pitiable inertia.]

In this reply of the Minister we see fully illustrated the dominating influence, stimulated by the reactionary Deputy Minister, which prevents even the simplest effective efforts to deal with the health problem of the Indians along modern scientific lines. To say that confusion would arise is the equivalent of saying that co-operation between persons toward a desired social end is impracticable; whereas co-operation between Provincial and Federal Health Departments is the basis upon which real progress is being made, while further a world peace is being made possible in a league of once discordant nations. The Premier has frankly said he can give no encouraging answer to Dr. Beland’s question, while at the same moment he condemns the Indians to their fate by a pitiable confession of utter official helplessness and lack of initiative, based upon a cynical “non possumus.”

Thus we find a sum of only $10,000 has been annually placed in the estimates to control tuberculosis amongst 105,000 Indians scattered over Canada in over 300 bands, while the City of Ottawa, with about the same population and having three general hospitals spent thereon $342,860.54 in 1919 of which $33,364.70 is devoted to tuberculous patients alone. The many difficulties of our problem amongst the Indians have been frequently pointed out, but the means to cope with these have also been made plain. It can only be said that any cruder or weaker arguments by a Prime Minister holding the position of responsibility to these treaty wards of Canada could hardly be conceived, and such recall the satirical jibe of Voltaire, regarding the Treaty of Shackmaxon between Wm. Penn and the Indians, which he describes as “the only known treaty between savages and Christians that was never sworn to and never broken.”

The degree and extent of this criminal disregard for the treaty pledges to guard the welfare of the Indian wards of the nation may be gauged from the facts once more brought out at the meeting of the National Tuberculosis Association at its annual meeting held in Ottawa on March 17th, 1922. The superintendent of the Qu’Appelle Sanatorium, Sask., gave there the results of a special study of 1575 children of school age in which advantage was taken of the most modern scientific methods. Of these 175 were Indian children, and it is very remarkable that the fact given that some 93 per cent. of these showed evidence of tuberculous infection coincides completely with the work done by Dr. Lafferty and the writer in the Alberta Indian schools in 1909.

It is indeed pitiable that during the thirteen years since then this trail of disease and death has gone on almost unchecked by any serious efforts on the part of the Department of Indian Affairs, placed by the B. N. A. Act especially in charge of our Indian population, and that a Provincial Tuberculosis Commission now considers it to be its duty to publish the facts regarding these children living within its own Province.

EPILOGUE.

This story should have been written years ago and then given to the public; but in my oath of office as a Civil Servant swore that “without authority on that behalf, I shall not disclose or make known any matter or thing which comes to my knowledge by reason of my employment as Chief Medical Inspector of Indian Affairs.” Today I am free to speak, having been retired from the Civil Service and so am in a position to write the sequel to the story. It has already been stated that in 1918 and 1919 I had supplied to my then Minister of Immigration, the Hon. J. A. Calder and to the then President of the Council, the Hon. N. W. Rowell various memoranda regarding the establishment of a Federal Department of Health, amongst these being a draft of the Bill which later became the Act establishing the Department of Health. To my disappointment the position of Deputy Minister of Health to which I had a right to aspire after twenty-two years as Chief Medical Officer of Ontario, and fifteen years as Chief Medical Officer of Immigration and Indian Affairs was given to another, wholly outside the Federal Civil Service and in violation of the principle of promotion, which was supposed to prevail when the patronage system was to be done away with. The excuse was on the ground of my advancing years, although at that moment the position of Auditor General was being filled by the promotion of one who had reached sixty-five years, while a Historian to the Militia Department was appointed at a salary of $7,000 per year, who likewise had reached just then this age.

Naturally I felt that it would be impossible to carry on and retain my self respect as a subordinate, while performing the duties, which I had been engaged in for fifteen years as Chief Medical Officer and so asked that I be given other congenial work. That my claims to the position were deemed reasonable may be judged from the following letter addressed to my brother the Rev. Professor Bryce, D.D., of Winnipeg. Writing from Victoria, B. C., on March 9th, 1920, to myself he said, quoting from a letter received from the Hon. Mr. Calder in reply to one of his own:--

“I quite appreciate the views of your brother in reference to his situation here, and personally would be only too glad to do anything I can to help out. When the Public Health Department was created, your brother certainly had claims to the appointment as Deputy Minister. Owing to his advanced age however, Council finally concluded that a younger man should receive the appointment. The government has on several occasions considered the question of placing your brother in some other branch of the Service, and I have no doubt that this will be arranged in some way or other shortly. He is now an official of the Public Health Department. He could of course remain there but this apparently is not agreeable to him. As a consequence some other arrangement, if possible must be made.

Signed, J. A. Calder.”

My indignation at subsequent treatment may be imagined when the same Mr. Calder introduced the Act in 1920, commonly known as the Calder Act, providing for the “Retirement of Certain Members of the Civil Service.” This Act states that anyone retired thereunder shall receive 1/60 of his salary for each year of service. So it came about that on the 17th Sept. 1920, I received notice that I was recommended for retirement under this Act. The clause of the Act quoted for my information states:--

“Section 2(3). When it is decided to retire anyone under the provisions of this Act, notice in writing giving the reasons for such retirement shall be sent to such person, and he shall have the right to appeal to the Civil Service Commission, and the Commission, after giving such person an opportunity to be heard, shall make full report to the Governor in Council and the decision of the Council thereon shall be final.”

I appealed and in my appeal stated that no reason was assigned as provided in the Act, and further that I was still Chief Medical Officer in the Department of Indian Affairs as set out in the Order in Council of 1904.

As bearing on this point made in my appeal I find the following in Hansard of June 8th, 1921. The matter being dealt with is the amendment to the Calder Act:

Mr. Fielding: But cases have been brought to my attention of men in advanced years--some may think them old, I do not--being notified of their retirement, although they are blessed with good health and strength, both mental and physical, and are well able to discharge their duties. How is such a man dealt with?

Mr. Calder: No man will be notified unless a proper official has advised that his condition of life is such that in the public interest he should be retired....

Mr. Calder: That in the main has been the practice in the past and that is what the law contemplated last year. The question of age alone was not taken into consideration.

But it was hardly to be supposed that Dr. W. A. Roche, now Chairman of the Civil Service Commission, who during the years 1913-17 referred to had failed to utilise my services when he was Superintendent of Indian Affairs would now consider my services as necessary in that Department. So my protest was of no avail; my elimination from the Service had been decreed and I received the following Order in Council:

Ottawa, 14th Feb., 1921.

The Committee have had before them a report, dated Feb. 1st, 1921, from the acting Secretary of State, from the Civil Service Commission:

In accordance with the provisions of Cap. 67, 10-11 George V. “An Act to provide for the Retirement of Certain Members of the Public Service” the Civil Service has to report that Dr. P. H. Bryce of the Department of Health at Ottawa was recommended by the Deputy Minister of Health for retirement; that under Section 2 (3) of the said Act he was given a personal hearing, which has resulted in the Civil Service Commission now recommending that his appeal be not allowed, but that his retirement be made effective from the 1st of March, 1921. Dr. Bryce was born on August 17th, 1853, and is consequently sixty-seven years of age. He was appointed temporarily to the Service on Feb. 1st, 1904, and was made permanent on September 1st, 1908, and therefore will have been in the Service seventeen years and one month on the 1st March, 1921, the date upon which his retirement is proposed to be effective.

So it came about that I was retired in March, 1921, without any years being added to my term of Federal service, though I had been brought to Ottawa as an expert after 22 years in the Ontario Health Service, as is provided for in the Superannuation Act of 1870. Neither did I get any gratuity on leaving the Ontario Service after twenty-two years, the excuse being then given that I was improving my position.

The irony and injustice of this Order in Council will be seen when it is stated that a similar Order was passed on May 18th, 1921, retiring 231 persons from the Customs Department as being over sixty-five years of age; but which was recalled when the protests of the many friends of men who were faithfully performing their duties were made. These and hundreds of other Civil Servants of similar age are in different Departments still performing their duties.

In view, therefore, of all the facts herein recited I make my appeal for simple justice; that I be permitted to carry on my work as Chief Medical Officer of Indian Affairs, and I believe that I have the right to demand, after a thorough investigation into all the facts of the case, that the chief obstacle, as set forth in the story, to insuring the health and prosperity of the one hundred thousand Indians, the Wards of the nation, be removed.

Since the time of Edward I. the people have ever exercised their historic right to lay their petitions before the King and Parliament. I now desire herein respectfully to bring my appeal for the Indians of Canada before the King’s representative and the Parliament of Canada, feeling sure that justice will be done both to them and to myself.

P. H. BRYCE.

Transcriber’s note:

Minor punctuation and hyphenation errors in the original have been silently corrected.

A few grammatically incomplete sentences that appear to have a word missing have been left as printed.

Other corrections of spelling misprints have been recorded in HTML comments.