museum

The McGarry family is one of the most well-known medical families in Niagara’s history, with several generations of doctors and nurses practicing here in the heart of the city since 1865. Dr. James H. McGarry was heavily involved in the first years of the Niagara Falls General Hospital as well as in the group of local doctors known as the Niagara Falls Medical Society, who made up the majority of the city physicians there. He practiced medicine for over 50 years, and was one of many local doctors licensed to practice over the border because there was no hospital in Niagara Falls when he graduated from medical school. In studying medicine and having his children carry on the legacy, he was creating a second and third generation of family doctors – he was the son of Dr. James McGarry, yet another doctor known locally as ‘Old Dr. Jim’, who served as a surgeon in the Civil War before returning to Upper Canada and opening a practice at the intersection of Portage & Ferry. 

Born in 1871, James H. followed his father’s example. He studied medicine at the University of Toronto and opened his own practice at 699 Clifton Ave (now Zimmerman Ave) after he graduated which became the shared family practice when, later, a whopping 5 of his 6 children with his wife Alice Louise Coulson went into the medical profession. Four of his sons became doctors and his daughter Esther studied nursing, with his daughter Helen being the only one who did not follow the trend, and two of his sons served overseas as medical officers in World War 2. Two of his grandsons also practiced medicine, one staying in Niagara Falls, making over 200 years of practicing medicine in Niagara Falls in the McGarry family.

This was not for lack of interest in other areas. Howard Henry McGarry, the second-youngest son in the family, had a deep interest in radio technology before he was persuaded to go to medical school; Esther, according to family stories, made her father promise that her reward for graduating nursing school would be a horse. Once she acquired the horse in question, she ‘never did a nursing job again’ and instead ran the front desk at the family practice.

The McGarry family history is also intertwined with that of the first Niagara Falls General Hospital. When it opened in 1907 none of J.H. McGarry’s children were doctors yet, the oldest having been born in 1896. However J.H. McGarry was a key part of the Niagara Falls Medical Association, first the Vice President and then the President by 1908. When the hospital went through turmoil in its early years Dr. McGarry was at the forefront of representing the point of view of the doctors, and he was also a loud proponent of regulating the inconsistency of cross-border medical practice. Both of these conflicts are preserved in The McGarry collection which was taken in by the Niagara Falls History Museum in 2017.