n 1921, the Ontario government created the Division of Public Health Education, the first of its kind in Canada. By the 1920s, the focus of public health in Ontario had shifted from concerns about housing, sewers, and clean water to health education and the prevention of disease.

Certain diseases, such as smallpox and typhoid fever, were well controlled through vaccination efforts by the 1920s. Yet other diseases continued to claim lives. Tuberculosis - TB - proved to be the most virulent of these. Its devastation prompted the Provincial Board of Health to carry out a huge public awareness and prevention campaign, producing and distributing pamphlets, lectures, displays, and traveling exhibitions.

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Tuberculosis exhibit at the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE), [ca. 1924]
Public Health Nursing Branch
Reference Code: RG 10-30-2, 2.4.8
Archives of Ontario, I0005217

Most Canadians think that tuberculosis is a disease of the past - while it hasn't been entirely eliminated, TB certainly is a rarity in 21st-century Ontario.

For decades, though, TB was an urban scourge. It claimed thousands of lives and touched families everywhere. In the 1920s and ’30s, TB seemed to affect every family. In 1908, regulations had been passed to try to control the spread of TB, including compulsory reporting of all known cases. But they had little effect.

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Charts showing tuberculosis mortality by age and
sex in Ontario, 1930–1956
Tuberculosis Prevention Branch Annual Report, 1956
Tuberculosis Reports
Reference Code: RG 10-97
Archives of Ontario, I0040132

In 1924, the provincial Health Department started the first traveling diagnostic clinic for TB. Free mass screenings at the chest clinics helped educate both doctors and the public about the prevalence and devastating effects of TB, taught people how to prevent the disease, and made everyone much more “tuberculosis-conscious.”

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Woman being tested for tuberculosis on the Ontario
Tuberculosis Association Chest X-Ray Train, [ca. 1950]
Canada Pictures Limited. Ministry of Health
Reference Code: RG 10-145
Archives of Ontario, I0005205

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Man being tested for tuberculosis, [ca. 1950]
Ministry of Health
Reference Code: RG 10-145
Archives of Ontario, I0005202

Although there had been TB sanatoria in Ontario since the late 1890s, more isolation and treatment centres were set up across the province. And public health officials went into both workplaces and schools across the province, testing for TB and distributing educational materials.

Tuberculosis information booths were also set up at fall fairs such as the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, and in community halls in smaller centres.

Tuberculosis exhibit at the Canadian
National Exhibition (CNE), 1928
Public Health Nursing Branch
Reference Code: RG 10-30-2, 2.5.30
Archives of Ontario, I0005220

People standing in front of an Ontario Department of Health Mobile
Tuberculosis Testing Clinic, [ca. 1960]
Ministry of Health
Reference Code: RG 10-145
Archives of Ontario, I0005213

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Pages from The Sir Oliver Mowat Memorial Sanatorium pamphlet
Kingston, Ont. : British Whig Publishing Co., [192-?]
Reference Code: PAMPH N.D. “K” No. 4
Archives of Ontario

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Newspaper advertisement, Timmins, 1944
Scrapbook re mass x-ray surveys
Reference Code: RG 10-145-2-2
Archives of Ontario, I0040192

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Chart showing increasing number of mass TB surveys, 1942-1948. Tuberculosis Prevention Branch Annual Report, 1948
Tuberculosis Reports
Reference Code: RG 10-97
Archives of Ontario, I0040130

Exterior view of the Ontario Tuberculosis Association Chest X-Ray Train, [ca. 1950]
Gordon W. Powley
Ministry of Health 
Reference Code: RG 10-145
Archives of Ontario, I0005204

Tuberculosis testing clinic, [ca. 1960]
Ministry of Health
Reference Code: RG 10-145
Archives of Ontario, I0005210

Like the impetus provided by the health challenges faced by veterans after World War One, in the ’20s and ’30s the threat of tuberculosis brought health education and promotion to a new level. And Ontarians responded. The Dominion Council of Health, at its 1939 annual meeting, took note of the public enthusiasm for health education: