Frederick Wilbur JACKSON (1888-1958)
Frederick was born in Stonewall, Manitoba on 25 October 1888. He was the son of Samuel Jackson and Ida Isabella Clark. He received his education in Stonewall and Winnipeg, graduated in 1912 from the University of Manitoba with a Doctor of Medicine and received a diploma in public health in 1929 from the University of Toronto.
On 10 September 1913, he married Sarah Irene Tuckwell (1892-1975) at Winnipeg and they had three children: Samuel Wilbur Alfred (1915-?), Clayton Alfred (1919-1990), and Jocelyn Mary (1921-2009, wife of JA Cowan). Fred and Sarah divorced and he then married Pearl Jean Cranston (1904-1987) on 13 April 1933 at Winnipeg.
He had a private practice in rural Manitoba from 1912-1920, and served in the Canadian Expeditionary force in Canada and Overseas with the Number 5 Canadian General hospital at Salonica, Greece and England during WWI.
In 1928, he directed a health survey for the province and in 1929 he joined the provincial health department as director of the division devoted to the prevention of disease. Frederick was named deputy minister of health and public welfare for Manitoba in 1931 and served for 17 years. In 1948, he was ‘on loan’ for 18 months to the federal government and then joined the permanent staff. He was director of health insurance studies from 1948-1954 and director of health services from 1954-1955. for the federal government, retiring in 1955.
Civil Servant, Physician
From 1929-1937, he served as part-time secretary for the Manitoba Medical Association and was a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Manitoba. In 1943, Frederick was appointed as chairman of a Royal Commission to investigate the health and welfare of the Japanese people in interior settlements of British Columbia. He was an honorary life member of the Conference of State and Provincial health officers; a member of the subcommittee on medical care of the committee on administrative practice, American Public Health Association; and a member of the first expert advisory panel on public health administration, World Health Organization. He was, also, a member of the Manitoba Medical Association, the Winnipeg Medical Society, the American Public Health Association, the Central Council of Social Agencies for Greater Winnipeg, the post-graduate committee of the Faculty of Medicine University of Manitoba, the board of examiners of the Medical Council of Canada, the Dominion Council of Health, the Manitoba Advisory Committee to the Canadian Medical Procurement and Assignment Board, the Young Men’s section of the Winnipeg Board of Trade, and the Manitoba Sanitary Control Commission, and president of the Canadian Public Health Association
In 1956, Frederick became the first Canadian to receive the Sedgwick Memorial Medal, receiving the award in Atlantic City, NJ for ‘distinguished service in public health’. He, also, received the King George V Silver Jubilee medal and the King George VI Coronation medal for meritorious civil service. In 1950, he was awarded the gold medal of the Professional Institute of Civil Service of Canada for ‘the most outstanding contribution to national or world well-being’. In 1941, he was elected as an honorary member of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States.
He was described as ‘quiet, self-effacing man’.
Frederick died at his Winnipeg home, 210 Montgomery Avenue, on 10 January 1958 and was buried in the Thompson in the Park Cemetery.
Sources:
- Birth, Marriage and Death Registration, Manitoba Vital Statistics.
- Death Registration, British Columbia Vital Statistics
- “Health Plan Expert, Dr. FW Jackson Dies”, Winnipeg Free Press, 18 January 1958, page 11.
- Obituary [Clayton Alfred Jackson], Winnipeg Free Press, 14 March 1990, page 40.
- Obituary [Jocelyn Cowan], Erb & Good Funeral Home, erbgood.com
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