Bell, Frederick McKelvey

  • Mark Osborne Humphries, “BELL, FREDERICK McKELVEY,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 16, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/bell_frederick_mckelvey_16E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Physician, surgeon, author, militia and army officer, and civil servant; b. 10 April 1878 in Kingston, Ont., son of William Perry Bell and his second wife, Christina (Christiana) McKelvey; m. 31 Oct. 1900 Henrietta E. Casgrain in Williamstown, Ont., and they had two sons and one daughter; d. 6 Jan. 1931 in New York City and was buried in Kingston’s Cataraqui Cemetery.
    • F. McKelvey Bell’s paternal ancestors emigrated from Scotland to northern New York in the early 1770s and sided with the British during the American Revolutionary War. After the conflict ended, they settled in Fredericksburgh Township, Upper Canada, as United Empire Loyalists. They became prominent in local business, medicine, and politics. McKelvey’s father, William, was a photographer, as was Robert Charles, one of the four sons from his first marriage, to Elizabeth Scott, who died in 1875. Another of McKelvey’s half-brothers, John Henry, was a physician who would serve as mayor of Kingston from 1903 to 1904.
    • Back in Canada in the late fall of 1904, Bell established a practice in Ottawa and accepted a post as a surgeon at St Luke’s Hospital. His early medical writings reveal him to be an attentive, careful, and reflective physician who was attracted to community service. He also took opportunities to promote himself and profit financially from his work. Like many young Canadian professionals, he joined the militia, becoming a lieutenant in the 5th (Princess Louise) Dragoon Guards in May 1907. An energetic young officer, he was made captain the following year and served in 1911 as treasurer of the Association of Medical Officers of the Canadian Militia.
    • When the First World War broke out in August 1914, Bell, who was now 36 years old and had a wife and three children, promptly volunteered for the Canadian Expeditionary Force. He was given the rank of major, placed in the Canadian Army Medical Corps (CAMC), and appointed a surgeon with No.2 Canadian Stationary Hospital, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Adam Tozeland Shillington, a colleague from St Luke’s. No.2 Stationary Hospital reached France in November, and Bell was thus one of the first Canadians to arrive at the Western Front. The hospital, a 300-bed surgical unit, was stationed in Le Touquet (Le Touquet-Paris-Plage) and later in Boulogne. The injured soldiers, and those who cared for them, inspired Bell to write The first Canadians in France, a fictionalized narrative account of his time overseas, after he returned home.
    • Bell’s efficiency and organizational expertise singled him out, and in January 1916 Jones selected him as acting deputy at the CAMC headquarters in Ottawa. Promoted temporary lieutenant-colonel that spring, Bell had an exclusively administrative role in the capital. He proved an effective staff officer, and in May 1917 he was made full lieutenant-colonel and sent to Halifax to serve as the assistant director of medical services for Military District No.6.
    • In February 1918 the Union government of Prime Minister Sir Robert Laird Borden created the Department of Soldiers’ Civil Re-establishment (DSCR) to manage the demobilization, retraining, and medical care of veterans. Bell was a natural choice to become the department’s director of medical services. The post was appealing because it gave him an opportunity to go back to public medicine and entailed a promotion and more responsibility. Bell looked on returned men with compassion, telling the Alberta Medical Association that the federal government could not expect them to simply “settle down to the humdrum existence of civil life” without significant state assistance. Much to his disappointment, the DSCR, headed by Sir James Alexander Lougheed, became known for the cold way in which it approached the medical treatment and pensioning of veterans. Bell came into conflict with Lougheed over his salary, the way that the department was carrying out its mission, and his inability to make appointments and develop policies free from ministerial interference. Lougheed, writing to Borden, accused Bell of careerism and filing improper expense claims. Bell submitted his resignation on 6 June 1919, stating, “I deeply regret being obliged to dissociate myself from the medical work in connection with the returned soldiers, but the utter lack of sympathy under which the medical branch of this Department has been obliged to proceed, has militated against absolute efficiency.”
  • Great Grandson of Proven United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=500
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