Michelle A. Hamilton                                                                                             Professor, Department of History, Western University Canada                          medicalartifacts@gmail.com                                                                                                                                                                                                      

RE: Open Letter Requesting Access to LHSC Archival Material 

Dear Dr. Schleifer Taylor, Dr. Chan, Ms. Lempriere, and LHSC Board of Directors,

I am writing to you in your capacity as the leadership of the London Health Sciences Centre to request again access to the historical material held at Victoria Hospital for research. At a minimum, transparency about the state and plans for future preservation or destruction of approximately 100 boxes of archival material and additional objects, all of which are public records and some of which date back to 1875, is needed. The following co-signers support this request. 

I am a Professor and former Director of Public History at Western University collaborating with the non-profit affordable housing consortium Vision SoHo Alliance, which purchased a block of the South Street Victoria Hospital campus, including the Faculty of Medicine and the War Memorial Children’s Hospital. The Alliance is also building 5 new buildings. For the past 2 years, my graduate students and I have been conducting archival research and interviewing former staff, physicians, and nurses, to create historical signs that will be erected around the perimeter of the block in 2026. These signs will link to an interactive website and be integrated into the Hear, Here London project which allows Londoners to listen to stories on their phone or online. The LHSC is missing a unique opportunity to mark the significant role of Victoria Hospital to Londoners and Canada. 

The Alliance recently hosted a tour of the War Memorial Children’s Hospital, the first building to undergo renovation. It opened in 1922 as a memorial in honour of those men and women who died in the First World War. Your collection holds the original brass plaque placed on the building to honour them. The Alliance wishes to remount it as a sign of remembrance. 

This is only one of the treasures that lies in the LHSC archives. There were at least 3 hospital museums and archives in London in the 1990s, but as each closed, they sent their material to South Street. When it closed, Museum London took most of the three-dimensional artifacts. But the photographs, nursing student albums, doctor's ledgers, and more moved to the Westminster campus. Mary Gillet in Communications protected them until 2017 when she retired. 

Let me emphasize that this material includes records unrelated to Victoria Hospital and in some cases to LHSC. There is material from University Hospital, the Beck Tuberculosis Sanitorium (Byron), the London Health Association, the military Westminster Hospital, and St. Joseph's Hospital. Frederick Banting, the discoverer of insulin to treat diabetes, researched at the medical school during the Second World War; these records are of significance to Banting House National Historic Site run by Diabetes Canada and Parks Canada. These are just a few examples of records important to all Canadians.

In 2021, I tried to open a conversation about collaboration. Later, I invited the Board to my students' two public research presentations. Western archivists even volunteered to catalogue and re-box the records in archivally-safe materials to ensure their conservation, at no cost. Since then, historians from other universities have requested research access. 

These are public records, and legally must be accessible, barring privacy issues. Of course, the law bars access to recent patient records. But the archives closed in the 1990s, so there is no later material in this collection, and I suspect there is no information dated after the Second World War. It was a professional archive run by a professional archivist who followed the law. Archives are different from patient records kept by the Health Information Management department.

It is my understanding that LHSC has approached archivists at Wilfrid Laurier and the University of Toronto to donate these records but both have recommended that Western Archives is the appropriate archive. Western Archives has an expert in medical history records who can restrict records of a private nature, if any. It is also my understanding that a committee has formed to assess the records but this committee does not include historians or archivists. We have been told that boxes have been marked for destruction. We fear that without expert advice, many one-of-a-kind records will be destroyed. 

I apologize for what might be considered bluntness, but this is a serious concern to Londoners and historians and archivists across Canada, and what seems to be secrecy around the material is frustrating. Paper records and photographs are fragile, and without proper temperature and humidity control, or being stored in archivally-safe boxes, can be completely destroyed.

I and Western Archives have always been open to collaborating with LHSC and are still happy to do so. As a public historian, I have led over twenty partnered projects, and my professional ethics mandate community outreach, collaboration, and promoting community history.

Sincerely, 

Michelle A. Hamilton, PhD