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D

r. J. Roddick Byers contracted tuberculosis in Sherbrooke, where, he later acknowledged, he had been overworking, delivering four babies a night and taking no time off. He took the rest cure at the Trudeau sanitarium in Saranac Lake, New York, where he developed a good relationship with Dr. Hugh Klinghorn, an ex-patient himself who served on the ward and was devoted to the study of tuberculosis.

In the story of D. Lorne McGibbon, in the Ballyhoo #24, we outlined how McGibbon had sent Byers up to Ste-Agathe to get the hospital started in 1908. McGibbon gave him the money and authority to buy up as much land as needed north of the village, the land where the hospital is today. Byers acquired 200 acres. The three men worked together over the next few years to assure that their plans for a hospital would be realised. Dr. Byers said that he repeatedly had to rebuff the tendency to build what he called "chicken coops" and went on to say, "they had started 'sans' in the Maritimes in tents." He held out for a proper hospital.

To keep his benefactor happy, he had to begin operating immediately, so he also acquired a boarding house on the corner of Prefontaine and Albert Streets and opened with 8 beds. It took three more years before the San itself opened with 44 beds. The original sanatorium building can still be seen by driving up des Ardoises (the extension of Albert Street) and looking to your right.

When the war started Dr. Byers foresaw the disaster that was coming with 100,000 Canadians enlisted in the Armed Forces. He made an appointment with the minister and went up to Ottawa to tell him how important it would be to prepare for the huge number of TB patients that would be coming out of the trenches. The minister reassured Byers, showing him a study that revealed that there were only 50 cases of lung disease overseas.

That same autumn, Dr. Byers received a call from a senior army officer telling him that he was henceforth Lieutenant Byers and that there were 76 TB patients arriving in Halifax. The new officer was ordered to take as many as his facilities could handle. He tore out partition walls, closed down the lab and had the Military Hospitals Commission acquire the Laurentide Inn, bringing his capacity from 52 to 128 beds. Again he had a fight on his hands to see that new accommodations would be built to his standards. By this point he was Captain Byers.

Treatment for tuberculosis consisted almost exclusively of the rest cure combined occasionally with a painful operation called 'artificial pneumothorax', collapsing of the lung. Captain Byers and his staff soon had on their hands almost a hundred young men, most barely into their twenties, who were told that they must do nothing but rest. Their prospects seemed to consist of dying, being tortured or sleeping. In his retirement Dr. Byers laughed as he told Fred Poland of The Montreal Star that he had a lot of his soldiers slipping into the village and getting drunk or going AWOL. He said it didn't help their condition and they would turn up ten days later in much worse shape.

Captain Byers began knocking on doors in Ottawa until the government gave him the funding to create occupational therapies for the soldiers. They were given a 'work prescription' tailored to their stages of recovery and thereafter had to report to their sergeant on their progress. The therapy progressed through carpentry to music, art and schooling for rehabilitation. In three years they had qualified 78 civil servants in two languages and absenteeism went from 50% to 2%.

Byers' management of the San was so successful that he eventually received a delegation of 50 people from the American military to study his scheme, which was then adopted in the USA.

In 1919 the Laurentian Society for the Treatment and Control of Tuberculosis transferred the San by deed of gift to the federal government and its capacity was increased to 250 beds. Health being a provincial jurisdiction, the federal government committed itself to transferring the facility to the province in 5 years, but during its tenure it added a central heating plant and five new pavilions. By the beginning of1924 the last soldiers had left and the property was transferred to the province. Captain Byers became Dr. Byers in private practice in Montreal as a TB specialist and spent a good part of his time fighting for medical pensions for his soldiers.

Dr. Byers eventually retired to Gananoque, Ontario, where he died in 1960.

References: The Montreal Star, The Laurentian Chest Hospital Story 1908- 1968. Thanks also to David Byers of Montreal

Joseph Graham has written a book that features a select number of stories of Laurentian places and how they got their names. To learn more, click here.

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This material may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the written permission of the author. © Joseph Graham