Series TG 5 - Ontario Institute of Radiotherapy records

In 1931 the Province of Ontario established a Royal Commission to investigate and report on “‘the use of radium and X-Ray in the treatment of the sick.” The Commission’s report to the Ontario legislature (1932) recommended that a radiotherapy research and treatment centre be established in Toronto.

On November 24 1932 a ten-year agreement was signed between Dr. J.M Robb, Ontario Minister of Health and Mark Irish, Chairman of the TGH Board of Trustees to establish and support a TGH Department called the Ontario Institute of Radiotherapy. Early the next year the OIR was established by an Act of the Ontario legislature (R.S.O. 1933, c. 44).

<blockquote>“The government undertook to supply radium and radium emanations, [and] the hospital agreed to provide a building with fifty beds and facilities for the scientific study and applications of treatment by X-Rays, radium and radioactive substances” (W.G. Cosbie. The Toronto General Hospital, 1819-1965: A Chronicle. (Toronto: Macmillan, 1975) p. 188).</blockquote>

The OIR was governed by a Supervising Committee, chaired by the Chairman of the TGH Board of Trustees, and its first Director was Dr. Gordon E. Richards, Head of the TGH Department of Radiology. The Supervising Committee held its first meeting on February 26, 1934 and the first patients were admitted April 3, 1934. The OIR was located in the Dunlap Building on University Avenue.

The OIR was dissolved in 1952 when the Government of Ontario established the Ontario Cancer Institute on the grounds of the Wellesley Division of the TGH. Dr. Clifford L. Ash, Dr. Richards’ successor as Director of the OIR became the Director of the OCI while remaining head of the TGH Department of Radiotherapy. The old Dunlap Building quarters of the OIR remained in operation as the TGH Radiotherapy clinic.