Limbs, artificial
orthopedic work at one location, which it did, taking over the Salvation Army’s Booth Memorial Training College at Yonge and Davisville for that purpose. When the new orthopedic hospital opened in 1917, the limb factory moved there as well. The idea was that attaching the factory to the hospital would give orthopedic specialists more input on how the limbs were made, and provide training opportunities for doctors in the still-developing field. “The MHC promised to produce ‘the best arms and legs devised anywhere in the world,’ as well as orthopedic apparatus such as splints, braces and orthopedic shoes,” wrote Ruby Heap.
The Davisville factory also fulfilled the MHC’s other mission of helping soldiers readjust to the workforce, especially if their disabilities prevented them from returning to their pre-war jobs: it hired amputees to make artificial limbs and orthopedic shoes. With the best limb-makers from the United States already recruited to factories in England and France, the commission considered it a priority to train Canadians in the craft.
By August 1918, the Toronto limb factory was serving about 40 soldiers a week from across Canada. “It is the pride of the Davisville plant’s management that not a single case referred to it, and there have been about 3,000, has been turned away as hopeless,” the Star wrote.
“The MHC promised to produce ‘the best arms and legs devised anywhere in the world,’ as well as orthopedic apparatus such as splints, braces and orthopedic shoes.”
RUBY HEAP