Do you have a Canadian Doctor on your Family Tree?

I have been working on my Johnston family tree to send to a cousin. It will not be a polished work as there is so much to do to get all the necessary citations. Lots of derrivative sources that need to be verified but I don't want to wait until I get that done to share the information. I am sending only the first four generations. As I am going through, I can't help myself from trying to get as many births, marriages and deaths entered that I can easily find on Ancestry. I also found some citations that need to be cleaned up from when they were originally entered into my software.

Okay - now the topic at hand - A Canadian Doctor -

Ralph Ernest Johnston b. 4 January 1887 in Sandfield Township, Manitoulin Island, Ontario, d. 1 November 1958, occupation teacher / Doctor. On 17 April 1916, Ralph enlisted. He was living at 808 3rd Avenue West in Calgary. In 1928, Ralph was living in Edson, Alberta. He lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba. They had two children.


Ralph Ernest Johnston is my first cousin, twice removed on my mother's side. I knew very little about him before I began my research. My mother knew that he had gone west and my aunt told me, he had become a doctor. In his sister, Eleanor's obituary, he is listed as being in Edson, Alberta. His attestation papers say he was living in Calgary and that he was a teacher.


As I was cleaning up the information, I decided to follow through on a reference I had noted.

 Johnston   Ralph E.   CMAJ   1958   volume 79  page 1026 reference from obituary database for doctors

Canadian Health Obituaries Index File http://osler.library.mcgill.ca/cfstand/

Fortunately, I discovered this weekend that the issues are online for the time period I am interested in.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/journals/188/  I couldn't find it on page 1026 as listed but it turned out that the obituaries continued on the next page in the issue that I wanted.

DR. RALPH E. JOHNSTON, 71, died on November 1. [1958] He was born in Ontario and went to Edmonton, Alta., in 1912. He graduated from the University of Alberta in 1924, later graduating in medicine from McGill University, Montreal. He served overseas with the 49th Battalion during the First Great War, returning to Edmonton in 1919. He began to practise in Sangudo, Alta., in 1925. Dr. Johnston is survived by his widow and two daughters.

This was found at the Archives Canadian Medical Association Journal. By looking at the appropriate issue, I located his obituary.

If you are searching for an obituary for a Canadian doctor, check out the index. You may be as lucky as I was to find some more information on my cousin.

© 2011 Janet Iles