Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

Publication: Ontario History

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COPYRIGHT 2006 Ontario Historical Society

Many of the fonds recently processed at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Archives are those of prominent Ontario psychiatrists who were involved in such important aspects of their profession as the development of new mental health facilities and programs, the transformation of policies and structure in the Ontario Ministry of Health, and the creation and revision of policies concerning medico-legal issues. Their records serve to document significant portions of the history of psychiatry in Canada.

Donald Elliott Zarfas Records

The Donald Elliott Zarfas fonds--about five metres of textual records along with photographs, audio cassettes and architectural drawings, predominantly from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s--is an excellent source of information about persons with developmental disabilities, including their reproductive rights and treatment, the care of dually-diagnosed persons (those with both developmental disabilities and psychiatric conditions), and the administrative reorganization of the Ontario Ministries of Health and Community and Social Services in the 1970s.

They reveal Dr. Zarfas's work as a government administrator in both Ministries (planning projects, reviews, studies, and administrative matters, particularly concerning the Mental Retardation Services Branch), as a consultant for numerous organizations for the developmentally disabled (studies, investigations, reviews and analyses), and as a university professor of psychiatry and paediatrics.

Growing up on the grounds of the Orillia Hospital School for infants, children and adults with developmental disabilities (his father was the hospital's business manager), Donald Zarfas acquired a life-long interest in and ultimately a career working with persons with developmental disabilities.

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Accordingly, after service in the RCAF and the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps Reserve (1941-46), he obtained a medical degree from Queen's University in 1952, a Diploma in Psychiatry from...

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