James Wilford Good (1852 – 1926)
James Good was born in Kincardine, Upper Canada to John and Isabella Anderson Good. He graduated from Trinity Medical School in Toronto and took postgraduate studies in Edinburgh. He went to Winnipeg in 1879 he became a physician and then a surgeon at the Winnipeg General Hospital and at Hôpital de Saint-Boniface. He studied eye, ear, nose and throat diseases in Vienna and became the first ophthalmologist in western Canada. He was a founding member of the Manitoba Medical College and became professor of clinical surgery and a lecturer of ophthalmology and otology. He was the dean of the college from 1887 to 1898 when he left for the Klondike.1)
Dr. Good had a medical practice in Dawson and was appointed medical health officer for the [district]. The three doctors in town (Good, Alfred Thompson, and Reverend Andrew Grant) faced rampant typhoid fever and scurvy, and worked at St. Mary’s Hospital, the Good Samaritan Hospital, and the mounted police hospital. Good returned to Winnipeg in 1900 where he resumed teaching theoretical ophthalmology and otology at the Manitoba Medical College and gave entertaining public lectures at the college.2)
During the First World War, Dr. Good worked for the French Red Cross and served at the Ulster Volunteer Hospital in Paris in 1916. He returned home after six months and then went back overseas as an honorary major with the Canadian Army Medical Corps specializing in facial wounds at Westcliffe, England. He travelled widely during his life and brought expertise back to Canada including Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Smith who visited the Winnipeg General Hospital from India and demonstrated his cataract operation. He purchased a supply of radium and was the first in western Canada to treat Laryngeal cancer. Dr. Good moved to Vancouver in 1921. He died with considerable wealth and left it to various charities. Good Street in Winnipeg is named for him.3)