A relational ethic of rural home support on two Gulf Island communities, 1978-2018.

Since their widespread establishment in the 1970s, home support services across Canada have been subject to shifting state logics, policies, and funding models. The impacts and responses of local actors differ across historical, socio-cultural, and geographical settings. This paper traces the development and evolution of a small home support society on two rural islands off the coast of British Columbia, Canada. Using historical and current data sources, we demonstrate that local actors have consistently engaged a relational ethic that challenges neo-liberal discourses and practices. Our central thesis is that the islands' distinct social, cultural, and rural features set the context for particular constructions of relational care. We identify three themes central to a relational ethic of home support on two rural islands: the strength of intergenerational connections, community-embedded relationships, and care as compassionate civic engagement. Within each theme, we consider how shifting policy structures inform changes over time in the nature and delivery of home support. To conclude, we elaborate on the conditions that allow for relational care to flourish in a particular rural context, and on the potential relevance to other settings.

Competent professionals and modern methods: state medicine in British Columbia during the 1930s.

Little has been written about the formation of state medicine in early-twentieth-century Canada, particularly during the Depression era. Indeed, many historians and policy analysts have assumed that this was a time of stagnation and retrenchment in state health provision. To foster a more nuanced analysis of the formation of the Canadian medical state during the Depression decade, this article focuses on British Columbia and the public health initiatives brought in by the provincial Liberal government of T. D. Pattullo. In B.C., an energetic cadre of policymakers and bureaucrats sought to reform existing services by using professionally educated personnel, centralized administrative hierarchies, community education, and the surveillance of target health populations. Funding from the provincial government and the Rockefeller Foundation permitted considerable expansion in a range of public health sectors that included vital statistics, rural health centers, tuberculosis and venereal disease treatment schemes, and laboratory services. This article tells the story of this important period by bringing together details of the professional and personal lives of key individuals--the majority of whom were men--and exploring the new provincial health programs that were developed in B.C. during the interwar years.