Sponsorship and sacrifice in the historical development of Canadian physiotherapy

The Canadian physiotherapy profession developed from a small group of British nurse-masseuses, the Incorporated Society of Trained Maseuses (ISTM). In the early 20th century, ISTM-certified massage practitioners and remedial gymnasts began to organize to form a society that would strive for professional recognition and protection in Canada. The fledgling physiotherapy profession sought and received assistance from the medical profession. In return, physiotherapists accepted medical supervision. The two world wars provided impetus to the development of physiotherapy, in achieving both professional status and expansion of demand for physiotherapy services. By the 1960s, demand had produced nine new university physiotherapy programs in Canada. More physiotherapists were graduating in Canada than were arriving from other countries. Physiotherapists tolerated medical dominance during the 1950s and '60s, but grew increasingly restive while they developed their own professional competence, body of knowledge and political awareness. By the 1980s, most physiotherapists sought a collegial relationship with medicine. They no longer felt the need for medical sponsorship. The profession was involved in active struggle to achieve legislative recognition of its standards, modes of practice and claim for authority as a self-regulating profession, and in resistance to dominance by any other profession. This article places the development of physiotherapy in the historical, class, and gender context of Canadian society.