Saskatchewan's municipal doctors: A forerunner of the medicare system that developed 50 years later

By C. Stuart Houston, MD
CAN MED ASSOC JOURNAL
1994

Saskatchewan, a far-flung, agrarian and thinly populated province, was the first jurisdiction in Canada to employ municipal doctors and municipal hospitals, and the only province where the system was widely adopted. Why and how did Saskatchewan come to lead North America in introducing these important milestones on the road to medicare?

One answer lies in the cooperative spirit that developed as a way of coping with the exigencies of rural life. Communities came together for barn raisings and, later, to build skating rinks and curling rinks. Extending this spirit of cooperation to the provision of health care was a natural outgrowth, especially since people widely scattered in a new land had a hard time finding medical services.

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