John Michael Uhrich

Who was John Michael Uhrich?

John Michael Uhrich, M.D., was the ninth Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan from 1948 until 1951.

Uhrich was born in Formosa, Ontario and received his schooling in Walkerton and was briefly a schoolteacher before earning his medical degree at Northwestern University in Chicago.

During his summer breaks from university he would teach school in Saskatchewan. After graduation, he decided to settle in the province and established his medical practice at Hague, Saskatchewan in 1909.

He entered politics and was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan in the 1921 provincial election as the Liberal MLA for Rosthern.

Uhrich was appointed to the provincial cabinet in 1922 by Premier Charles Dunning and served as provincial secretary until 1923 when he was appointed the province's first Minister of Public Health. Under Uhrich the province expanded its role in the hospital system, which had been largely locally run to that point, and increased the number of hospitals. He also began public inspection of water and milk supplies and immunization programs against diphtheria and smallpox. In 1929, the government assumed the cost of treating tuberculosis.