Canada's 1st Surgeon General: Darby Bergin
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N 45° 01.933 W 074° 38.335
18T E 528442 N 4986592
Darby Bergin, M.D. M.P.
1st Surgeon General of Canada
1885 The Northwest Rebellion
Waymark Code: WM9RNV
Location: Ontario, Canada
Date Posted: 09/25/2010
Views: 35
Until the end of the 19th century, each Canadian regiment recruited its own medical practitioners, and the Canadian Militia had no over-arching medical service. In 1885, when a rebellion broke out in Canada’s Northwest Territories, the Dominion government responded with a full-scale military expedition. Recognizing that the “Northwest Field Force” would require professional medical and surgical support, the Minister of Militia and Defence appointed Doctor Darby Bergin of Cornwall, Ontario, to be Canada’s first Surgeon General, not only for his medical expertise but also for his influential contacts: he was also a Member of Parliament and a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Militia.
To supplement the medical personnel who accompanied each unit of the Northwest Field Force, Doctor Bergin mobilized two field hospitals and recruited four professional nurses from the Winnipeg General Hospital. All medical personnel with the expedition were under the supervision of the “Chief of the Medical Staff in the Field,” Doctor Thomas Roddick of McGill University. After the battle of Batoche, which ended the rebellion, Doctor Roddick set up a general hospital near the battlefield to treat all the wounded and sick of both sides. To staff it, Doctor Bergin despatched seven volunteer nurses from Ontario, under the leadership of Sister Hannah Grier Combe, a professional nurse and the Mother Superior of the Sisterhood of St. John the Divine.
He studied at Upper Canada College and McGill College, receiving his MD in 1847.
FIRST - Classification Variable: Person or Group
Date of FIRST: 03/31/1885
More Information - Web URL: [Web Link]
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