11/10/2025
DYK that dialysis in Canada began with pioneering efforts in the mid-1940s, evolving into a standard treatment by the 1960s.
In 1963, the Ottawa General Hospital unveiled the city’s first dialysis machine (only the third in all of Canada). Due to limited resources, only a few patients were selected for the life-saving procedure based on strict criteria (e.g., being married with children, between 20-40 years old, and in otherwise good health).
See The Historical Society of Ottawa's Post at:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17kCjD9vBh/
An Ottawa customs clerk received Canada’s first successful kidney transplant -- on November 7, 1963.
The following month, the Ottawa General Hospital unveiled the city’s first dialysis machine (only the third in all of Canada).
With only a single dialysis machine, a hospital committee was forced to choose which handful of the many candidates would qualify for the life-saving procedure.
The criteria were stiff. Unless you were married with children, between 20 and 40 years and in otherwise good health, you weren’t even in the running.
Rachel Dicaire, a 25-year old mother from Alexandria, Ontario, was the first chronic patient to begin receiving dialysis on the Ottawa General’s new machine, in April 1964.
By early 1965, there were still only twenty patients in all of Canada receiving dialysis.
Hard as it is to believe, less than sixty years ago, kidney disease was still a virtual death sentence.
The arrival of kidney transplants and dialysis machines in the 1960s began to change all that.
The HSO’s James Powell reflects on Ottawa’s early days of life-saving kidney treatments:
https://todayinottawashistory.wordpress.com/2021/11/06/kidney-transplants-and-artifical-kidneys
