The Ontario Vaccine Farm, 1885–1916

The first production in Ontario of a biological preparation to prevent an infectious disease began in Palmerston in 1885 with the establishment of the Ontario Vaccine Farm. The Ontario Board of Health, formed a few years before, wished to have an assured supply of smallpox vaccine to meet the needs of the province. The Board did not want to be dependent on production sources in the USA and Montreal, particularly in times of epidemics when the Board received many requests from Ontario doctors to supply vaccine. In 1884 an outbreak of smallpox occurred in the Township of Hungerford, north of Belleville, and in the following year there was fear that the devastating epidemic in Montreal would spread to Ontario. The Vaccine Farm was the one-man effort of an enterprising, energetic general practitioner in Palmerston, Dr. Alexander Stewart. He scarified calves, harvested the fluid from the vesicles, prepared the points, and distributed them to doctors and municipalities on request. This cottage industry, which was subsidized by the provincial government, sold vaccine to Ontario doctors for 31 years until it was closed in 1916. The Ontario Vaccine Farm fulfilled an important need in its day, but uncertainties about the potency and preservation of some batches led the government to put its support behind the fledgling Connaught Laboratories of Toronto, an organization better able to supply sterile vaccine of uniform, enduring potency.