James Delamere Lafferty

Early life

Lafferty was born in Perth, Canada West, in 1849 and attended local schools. He had seven brothers and four sisters. Three of his brothers became physicians, and his brother Tom became a lawyer and moved to Calgary, Alberta.

Education He worked as deputy registrar of titles in Kingston to finance his further education. He graduated from Queen's University medical school in 1871. Lafferty practised medicine for a year in Perth before becoming a senior resident at Ward Island hospital (later Bellevue Hospital) in New York City and at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary. Lafferty next took a post-graduate course at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, England.

In Calgary, Lafferty took on the contracts to provide medical services for the CPR mainline and for the nearby Indian reservation.

In 1889, he was a founding member of the North West Territories Medical Association and, in the following year, was elected to the medical council for the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the North West Territories.

Lafferty served as NWT Medical Ordinance regulator, which included the geographic regions that became the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

When Alberta became a province of the Dominion of Canada, with the passage of the July 20, 1905, Alberta Act in the Canadian parliament, all existing societies or associations that regulated the medical profession, dentistry, pharmaceutical chemistry and others, under the Northwest Territories (NWT) Medical Ordinance, were dissolved.

Personal life

Three of Lafferty's brothers became physicians, and his brother Tom became a lawyer and moved to Calgary, Alberta. He was survived by his three of four sons, Guy, Geoffrey, and Heber and by his two sisters. His son Francis (Frank) predeceased him in 1919.