TORONTO -- An assembly comprised of 200 students, faculty, and invited guests were on hand Jan. 19, 1995 to see a special anniversary banner raised alongside the Canadian flag in a ceremony commemorating 50 years of chiropractic education at Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College (CMCC).
"Fifty years ago, the chiropractic profession took a step of extraordinary vision," remarked CMCC President Dr. Jean Moss to the crowd. "The flag we have just raised is a tribute to that vision. It symbolizes 50 years of excellence in education, research, and in the unity and strength we have brought to the chiropractic profession in Canada."
The beginnings of the college can be traced to the Dominion Council of Canadian Chiropractors (later renamed the Canadian Chiropractic Association), which was formed in Ottawa in 1943. It was the Dominion Council that set the framework to establish the Canadian Memorial College of Chiropractic.
The doors of the college opened Sept. 19, 1945, 50 years to the day that Canadian-born D.D. Palmer gave his first adjustment. The 'memorial' in its name is in memory of D.D. Palmer.
The school was originally housed in what had been a private hotel in downtown Toronto. The college expanded by adding a three-story building to the back of the renovated hotel, but was forced in 1968 to relinquish the site and move to a new campus on Bayview Avenue.
CMCC's first graduating class (1949-50) comprised 118 students, 90 percent of which were World War II veterans.
CMCC was in the vanguard of chiropractic education in offering their students clinical rounds in hospitals. In 1974, CMCC began a resident postgraduate program at University Hospital, University of Saskatchewan with the guidance of Professor William Kirkaldy-Willis. CMCC opened its first off-campus clinic in 1976. The college presently has three clinics and approximately 600 students. The college was also in the forefront by developed chiropractic's first scientific literature database in 1975 (Peterson, Wiese: Chiropractic, an Illustrated History, 1995).
CMCC is a nonprofit institution and is accredited by the Council on Chiropractic Education (Canada), which has similar standards to its US counterpart. The college is unique in that each member of the Canadian Chiropractic Association is required to contribute $575 each year to help support the college.
Many relevant diagnostic signs are not performed deliberately by the examiner or by the patient at the examiner’s direction. They are observed as the patient reacts to their condition. Fortin’s finger sign, Minor’s sign, and Vanzetti’s sign are three examples of this principle.
On Feb. 1, 2024, two more legislators – John R. Carter (R-Texas) and Robert “Bob” Good (R-Va.) – co-sponsored the Chiropractic Medicare Coverage Modernization Act of 2023, bringing the co-sponsor total to 155, two more than the total achieved over the entire two-year congressional cycle in which identical legislation last appeared (2021-22).
While working at the Lovelace Medical Center in Albuquerque, N.M., one of the primary care physicians stated that imaging every patient prior to receiving chiropractic was not medically necessary. It was at that point I reconsidered the need for the imaging of every patient to avoid malpractice.
