By Nancy Miller Chenier
Envisage a densely populated Lowertown with its mixture of houses, industries, hospitals, outdoor privies and inadequate city drains. Think about the episodes of contagious diseases like smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, typhoid and the slowly evolving scientific knowledge. And consider that all public-health decisions were balanced against the budgetary, religious and language biases of municipal aldermen. Now, imagine being Adolphe Robillard, Ottawa’s medical health officer in the 1880s and 1890s.
Adolphe Robillard was a member of a large and illustrious francophone family. His father, Antoine, cut stone to build the Rideau Canal and in the 1830s brought his wife Emilie and a growing family to the Ottawa area. Here he became a significant property owner and prominent contractor. Adolphe was born in 1836 and his early years at his Clarence Street home in Bytown shaped his life.
In 1860, after four years of study and the presentation of a thesis on puerperal fever, Adolphe graduated from McGill University Medical Faculty as a Doctor of Medicine and Surgery. On returning to Ottawa he established a practice at 11 York Street. After marriage to Sophia Cross, another Lowertowner, in 1868, he lived at 218 Murray Street. Over time, in addition to general practice and a stake in a Rideau Street drug store, he advertised as an oculist and aorist (eye and ear specialist).
Dr. Robillard was an optimist and early in his career as a municipal medical health officer, he asserted that Ottawa could be one of the healthiest cities in Canada. But he was also realistic, and in the absence of political support and definitive science and some religious opposition, he was practical about public-health measures.
Communicable diseases were a common occurrence at the time. When Dr. Robillard assumed his responsibilities in 1880, smallpox had a mortality rate of over 40 percent. During his tenure, this highly contagious virus emerged several times, spreading readily from crowded dwellings and through train travel. He got support from local newspapers that promoted free vaccinations for “the most easily preventable of all epidemics.” He asserted that quarantine and isolation were important control measures, but City Council discussions about a new isolation hospital sometimes degenerated into arguments about whether Catholics and Protestants should have completely separate wards.
Typhoid was a periodic seasonal challenge. and in the 1880s, Dr. Robillard identified bacterial contamination in the city water. According to the Ottawa Journal, when he expressed his conviction that water was the trouble, the city’s Board of Health pooh-poohed the idea. He also argued for improvements in personal hygiene and public sanitation to prevent the spread through food, hands and other objects.
In 1894, during an outbreak of diphtheria, Dr. Robillard recommended contact tracing as one method to control the respiratory bacteria. He convinced the Board of Health to work with the Chief of Police to secure daily lists of all pupils absent from the city schools. He then insisted on the provision of a horse and rig so that he could visit the house of each absentee to ascertain if a contagious disease was the reason for the pupil’s absence.
Adolphe Robillard had some major challenges when trying to control epidemics. He had to work continuously to dispel misinformation about various diseases and to convince aldermen that the City should spend money on public- health measures. He was a health professional in a time of tensions and divisions between Uppertown and Lowertown, French and English, Catholic and Protestant. And in his private life, he had to deal with the premature death of his wife and several children.
Sometime in the early 1900s, he disappeared from local news coverage. Perhaps he moved west to join family settled there. In 1908, he is on record as delivering a grandson in the Peace River area of Alberta.