Fonds AM1066 - Children's Hospital Society fonds

In 1922 a Crippled Children's Fund was established by the Women's Institutes of British Columbia to aid a child on Hornby Island. Several subsequent and successful treatments of pediatric cases with the fund at Vancouver General Hospital inspired the Women's Institutes to incorporate the Women's Institute Hospital Association for Crippled Children in 1925. A rented house Marpole, converted to a 16-bed facility, served as the first hospital from 1927 to 1933. By 1933, successful fundraising and lobbying provided for the establishment of the 25-bed Crippled Children's Hospital (reflecting a name change of the association in 1932) on West 59th Avenue. In 1947, the hospital was renamed Children's Hospital, reflecting its evolution from a rehabilitative orthopedic facility into an acute care and general pediatric hospital. Significant developments in medical and surgical care, ambulatory services, and other programmes resulted in constant physical expansion of the hospital into a 100 bed facility by 1950. A growing lobby for a new Children's Hospital, aided by the efforts of the New Children's Hospital Society and the medical community culminated in the completion of the present Britiish Columbia's Children's Hospital (B.C. Children's Hospital) on Oak Street (1980). Throughout the years, the Women's Institutes have continued to give support to a hospital which has adapted to, and, in some cases pioneered the profound changes in the medical care of infants and children over the past 50 years.