Peter Henderson Bryce was an official of the Ontario Health Department, Canada. As a public official he submitted reports that highlighted the mistreatment of Indigenous students in the Canadian Indian residential school system and advocated for the improvement of environmental conditions at the schools. He also worked on the health of immigrant populations in Canada.
Biography
Peter Bryce was born in Mount Pleasant, Ontario on August 17, 1853. He obtained his medical degree from the University of Toronto, where he studied natural science geology, and went on to study neurology in Paris. He lectured for a time at the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph, Ontario in science and applied chemistry. Bryce served as the first secretary of the Ontario Board of Health from 1882 to 1904, when he was appointed the Chief Medical Officer of the federal Department of Immigration. Bryce was hired by Indian Affairs Department in Ottawa to report on the health conditions of the Canadian residential school system in western Canada and British Columbia. His report was never released by the government but was published by Bryce in 1922 under the title The Story of a National Crime: Being a Record of the Health Conditions of the Indians of Canada from 1904 to 1921. Bryce claimed that Indigenous children enrolled in residential schools were deprived of adequate medical attention and sanitary living conditions. He suggested improvements to national policies regarding the care and education of Indigenous peoples. In a 1907 report Bryce cited an average mortality rate of between 14% and 24% at the schools and a shocking 42% infant mortality rate on the reserves, this due to sick children being sent home to die. Bryce noted that the lack of certainty about the exact number of deaths was, in part, due to the official reports submitted by school principals and "defective way in which the returns had been made." He appealed his forced retirement from the Civil Service in 1921 and was denied, subsequently publishing his suppressed report condemning the treatment of the Indigenous at the hands of the BNA. Bryce died on January 15, 1932 while travelling in the West Indies. Dr. Bryce is buried and honoured at Beechwood Cemetery in Ottawa, the same location as Nicholas Flood Davin, author of the 1879 Davin Report that called for the establishment of a residential school system in Canada and Duncan Campbell Scott who served as deputy superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs from 1913-1932. To assist reconciliation while also addressing historical and societal injustices, Beechwood Cemetery has a Reconciling History program, where “school children of all backgrounds...place paper hearts of gratitude and remembrance at Dr. Bryce’s grave site, as they do their own part for reconciliation" https://ottawacitizen.com/sponsored/life-sponsored/reconciling-history-with-canadas-first-nations-beechwood-cemeterys-program-of-national-healing-through-truth-and-education
