Volume 7 • 2020 • Issue 1

15 Issue 1 | 2020 | A sk him where this perceptiveness comes from and he’ll explain how his Irish grandparents, and his wife Olga’s Ukrainian parents, arrived in a wave of migration and homesteading on the Canadian prairies in the 1880s and “struggled to establish a home,” he says. Dr. Crawford views history as a narrative of struggle and work. The reason to learn history is to appreciate how the struggles of others have benefited and constructed the present. “We should have a respect for what our predecessors have done through the years to make dentistry what it is today,” he says. “When I started in dentistry, we used an electric drill running off a motor. I’m astounded when I walk into a dental office today to see how far we’ve come in 60 years.” Ralph and Olga Crawford began a collection of dental artifacts and antiques in 1962, which now represents the largest collection of its kind in Canada, housed at the Museum of Health Care in Kingston, Ontario. According to curator Paul Robertson, the Crawford Dental Collection is “the most comprehensive cross- section of dental technology and practice in Canada over the past 200 years.” Among its artifacts and documents are a set of dentures made of deer teeth, an 1846 finger drill, 19th-century tooth keys for pulling Everyone’s life is shaped by the movement of history, but few are as aware of these historical forces as Dr. Ralph Crawford. The UnofficialHistorian of CanadianDentistry DR. RALPHCRAWFORD 2 3 1 Upper denture from the early 1800s. The anterior teeth are human, and the posterior teeth are ivory. N ews and E vents