Percy Elmer Moore (1899-1987)

Abstract

Over a 35-year career as a public servant, Dr. Percy Elmer Moore affected the course of native health care policy in the Canadian North more than any other single individual. As director of the Indian and Northern Health service programs of the federal Department of Health and Welfare from their inception in 1946 to his retirement in 1965, it was Moore who implanted a modern system of state-directed health care in the North. ... In 1946, after the Department of Health and Welfare was created, Moore was made director of its Indian and Northern Health Services. The challenge was to mobilize an immediate response to the grim health conditions facing Canada's Indian and Inuit peoples in the Canadian North. In typical Moore fashion, he responded aggressively to reports such as that of Dr. G.J. Wherrett, who, working under a grant provided by the Rockefeller Foundation and concerned with health and hospital services in the Mackenzie River District of the N.W.T., documented the existing problems in northern native health care. ... The crucial years in this post were 1946-55, when the department and Moore faced a number of challenges in their drive to modernize northern health services. For Wherrett, and later Moore, the voluntary sector, particularly the churches, were an obstacle to the implementation of a progressive health care system. While the churches had provided a start at dealing with the problem of native health care at a time when the government had accepted only limited responsibility for this matter, in the postwar era the concern was that inter-church competition (for example, in Aklavik) and the use of medical facilities for proselytizing had discouraged usage and led to underutilization of beds and duplication of services. ... Moore challenged the role of the churches in the operation of hospitals and rapidly implanted a system of state-run primary health care facilities, including nursing stations and lay dispensaries in the North. As well, he led efforts to interest non-governmental agencies in northern native health problems. ... For all these accomplishments, however, Percy Moore was not without his critics. ... In one exchange between the Anglican Bishop of the Arctic, Donald Marsh, and the Department of Health and Welfare, Moore is cited as being belligerent in opposing a northern-based sanitarium for TB treatment, a strategy advocated to lessen the negative social/psychological consequences for native peoples of southern care. ... Dr. Percy Moore died of Alzheimer's disease on 15 April 1987. Along with his wife of nearly fifty years, Edna, and his daughter, Mary, he left the memory that his energy and vision had brought many of the health benefits associated with the welfare state to Canada's northern peoples. For this he deserves a prominent place in the history of northern social policy.