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This story was first published on August 13, 2011, in the Montreal Gazette.

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Even when working, the great majority of the population have little money to spare to spend on the doctor or the dentist.

The Gazette, Monday, Aug. 10, 1936

The Great Depression didn’t so much create a crisis in health care in Montreal as cruelly exaggerate a long-standing one.

In April 1936, a 46-year-old surgeon and member of the Communist Party stepped to the podium to address the Montreal Medico-Chirurgical Society. He told his audience that four out of 10 people had not seen a doctor or dentist during the previous year. Not just the poor but doctors suffered, too: with the fee-for-service system then prevalent, he continued, you have more than three doctors out of 10 receiving inadequate incomes.

This was the case nationwide. The situation in Montreal was significantly worse. The speaker that day was Norman Bethune, the stormy petrel of Canadian medicine, and the remedy, he made clear, was state-supported medical care.