The Welfare Activities Of Metropolitan In Canada

The welfare activities of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company had already borne encouraging dividends in terms of human lives saved. The Nursing Service founded in 1910 had taken on new branches in cities all over Canada, as the result of affiliations with the French Sisters of Hope, with the Victorian Order of Nurses, and with individual nurses.

In 1921 the affiliation with the French nursing group was discontinued and a staff of fulltime Metropolitan Nurses appointed. Three of these were sent to the Province of Quebec, and assisted in a health demonstration in Thetford Mines which was to have far reaching results for the French Canadian people in terms of maternal, infant, and child welfare.

By the early twenties, "La Metropolitaine," as it was known, had become deeply rooted in the community life of French speaking Canada and had placed a considerable volume of life insurance rates through industrial low cost life insurance and term life insurance among the population. By the forties, 40% of the Canadian business was in the Province of Quebec. From the beginning the districts operating in Quebec had employed French speaking personnel, and issued policy contracts, business forms, and welfare literature in French.

The infant mortality in the Province of Quebec was distressingly high. In 1921 Dr. Frankel determined to show that this waste in child life was needless and could be reduced by proper public health methods. With characteristic force and persuasiveness, he journeyed straight to headquarters: to Monseigneur Roy, the Roman Catholic Auxiliary Bishop of Quebec.

It was a tribute to Dr. Frankel’s own conviction and to the Bishop’s immediate understanding that the company secured the complete cooperation of Monseigneur Roy and of the local Catholic clergy. These churchmen were to prove an important factor in the success of this and other health projects involving affordable life insurance and other life insurance basics in French Canada.

Thetford Mines, an asbestos mining town with a population of 9,000, practically 100% French Canadians, was selected by the Bishop for the demonstration. The experiment began with special training in New York of three French speaking nurses in the most advanced methods of prenatal and postnatal care. They then opened classes and clinics for mothers, went into homes in the little town, and soon won many converts to their health work.

The Mayor, M. Rousseau, was very helpful throughout the entire period. Largely through his interest, the town voted a sum of money to assist in furnishing the maternity center. With the leading citizens of the community, he organized a Public Health Committee which later carried on the work that the company had started.

A local physician, Dr. Sirois, the first Public Health Officer of the community, was later to become an authority on prenatal and infant welfare, and the nurse in charge, Miss Alice Ahern, was to become the company’s Assistant Superintendent of Nursing in Canadian Territory.

At the end of about three years the infant mortality rate, which had been 300 per thousand live births when the Metropolitan started the experiment, had been reduced to 96 per thousand in December 1923, when the company withdrew, which constitutes a reduction of 68%.

These heartening results had repercussions far beyond the confines of the little mining community. While the demonstration was still operating, the Premier of the Province of Quebec had asked for a report, which was published in a leading Quebec paper, “Le Soleil.”

During the course of the next session of the Provincial Legislature he asked the Government for an appropriation of $500,000 to carry on a similar five-year campaign against infant mortality and tuberculosis. All members of the Government and of the opposition voted the money without a dissenting vote. The Government did not hesitate to say that the demonstration in Thetford Mines and the tuberculosis demonstration of the company in Framingham, Mass., had given the original impetus to their action.

When public health authorities became aware of the effectiveness of the procedures used in the demonstrations, they launched reforms on a wide scale. In the Province of Quebec the rapid spread of low cost life insurance, the best life insurance (term life), and nursing service, both Government and Metropolitan, brought into focus another problem: the insufficient training in public health of the French Canadian nurse.

In 1925 the Metropolitan was instrumental in bringing about the establishment of the world’s first university school for the training of French speaking nurses at the University of Montreal. Early in 1926 the Company helped to establish a Chair of Industrial Hygiene at McGill University.

This project, established in affiliation with the industrial clinic at the Montreal General Hospital, had as its object the training of industrial physicians and public health officers in treating occupational diseases. The Metropolitan financed the department in its early years, and withdrew when the success of the project assured the provision of funds for its continuance.