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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anti-vaccine activism in Canada | 1/4 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-vaccine_activism_in_Canada | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:10:57.738826+00:00 | kb-cron |
From its origins in the 19th century to the 2022 convoy protests, the Canadian anti-vaccination movement has been resisting public health efforts to promote vaccinations through mass demonstrations, political advocacy and judicial activism. It has been led by a succession of groups, with Vaccine Choice Canada being the most prominent as of 2025.
== Context == The Canadian anti-vaccination movement developed in parallel to its British and American equivalents in the late 19th and early 20th century, in response to legislation by provincial governments, municipalities and school boards attempting to check the spread of infectious diseases. The British anti-vaccination movement developed rapidly in the mid-19th century, with the Anti-vaccination League founded in response to the Vaccination Act of 1853. Anti-vaccination organizations founded in the United States between 1879 and 1885 were directly influenced by British activists such as William Tebb. By the end of the 19th century, the British anti-vaccination movement had developed from a loose community of interest that included homeopaths, hydrotherapists and faith healers to an international network of associations.
Along with the development of inoculation, public health structures were starting to take shape in Canadian cities. Legislation allowing for the formation of temporary local public health boards to respond to epidemics was passed in Upper Canada in 1833; these boards were to operate continuously by 1849 and by 1886, some 400 health boards would be in operation in what is now Ontario. A provincial board of health created in 1882 normally played only an advisory role, but ordered school closures and suspended stagecoaches when called upon to manage a smallpox epidemic in Eastern Ontario in 1884. Toronto appointed William Canniff as its first Medical Officer of Health in 1883.
== First Anti-vaccination League and the 1875 riot ==
Montreal started appointing medical officers of health in 1870. The population of what was then Canada's largest city was demanding better sanitation in the rapidly-expanding industrial centre. There was, however, significant unease with vaccination, especially in the francophone neighborhoods and the surrounding villages. Doctors who opposed vaccination had exerted a significant influence, contributing to low rates of inoculation. Those included Alexander Milton Ross, who maintained correspondence with British anti-vaccination activists. His French Canadian counterpart was Joseph Emery Coderre, a co-founder of the Montreal Medical Society. Coderre organized debates between the city's medical doctors, presenting evidence that, to his mind, showed smallpox vaccination was both ineffective and harmful. Coderre established Canada's first Anti-vaccination league in 1872, recruiting primarily among physicians, but also aldermen and lawyers. He argued some 2,000 physicians were anti-vaccinationists, but was unable to make his point of view prevail among his colleagues of the Society, which continued to support a free and voluntary vaccinations program managed by Medical Health Officer Alphonse Barnabé LaRocque. Montreal's mayor, William Hingston, strongly supported vaccination and chaired the city's Health Committee. When the municipal council debated a by-law permitting compulsory vaccination on August 9, 1875, a crowd led by lawyer Henri St. Pierre and other leaders of the league threw stones and injured two council members, then damaged LaRocque's home. The proposed by-law was dropped. In 1876, LaRocque attributed reluctance encountered among the city's French-speaking working-class to the League's influence, despite being the very population that was more vulnerable to infectious diseases, living in close quarters among the factories and slaughterhouses of the lower town. In addition to exaggerating the incidence and severity of adverse reaction to the vaccine, Coderre's League equated vaccination with British imperialism, thus tapping into existing linguistic tensions.
== 1885 Montreal smallpox epidemic ==
Historian Michael Bliss argues the anti-vaccination movement found favourable conditions in Montreal in 1885: impressive side effects to the vaccine from faulty vaccination procedures early in the epidemic, language tensions exacerbated by the trial and execution of Louis Riel, economic disparities between anglophone and francophone neighbourhoods, and a timid early response from civil authorities. Smallpox probably arrived in Montreal in January 1885 with one or several train conductors and was allowed to spread through the urban population through poor containment and a disorganized public health response. In addition to normal side effects, an initial batch of vaccines was contaminated during manufacture and caused cases of skin infections; this provoked a three-months cessation of the campaign at a critical stage and a hardening of public opinion. By the end of the Summer, there might have been as many as 4,000 cases in Montreal, with the epidemic spreading to other population centers. The Catholic clergy, already singing the praises of vaccination from the pulpit, agreed to visit people identified by the Health Board as having refused vaccination to enlist their cooperation. The Canadian Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League was founded at that time by Ross, Coderre and several physicians involved in his first League, as well as businessman W.T. Costigan and Dean of McGill Law School William Kerr. The new league also counted several high-profile anti-vaccinators from abroad, most notably William Tebb and the American Robert Gunn. That second league's objections to smallpox vaccination centred on three claims: that the vaccines were ineffective, arguing it failed to prevent smallpox; that they caused other diseases such as tuberculosis; and that they infringed upon the rights of citizens.