The Beginning
The Acupuncture Foundation of Canada (AFC) was incorporated in Ontario on February 1, 1974 as a charity by seven medical doctors who all had trained in acupuncture in various parts of the world. AFC was the parent organization of the Acupuncture Foundation of Canada Institute, which was federally incorporated as a not for profit organization in 1995 to carry on its educational program.
The main goal of the AFC in the mid-1970s was to offer training in acupuncture to physicians, at a time when North Americans had just begun to hear about this ancient medical art. The early courses were led by Dr. King Liu, a professor of biomedical engineering at Tulane University in the USA. Dr. Liu had met several of the founders of the AFC while studying acupuncture in France. They recognized his brilliance and asked him to help them design some introductory courses in acupuncture to offer physicians in Toronto.
Surprisingly, some practitioners who attended those early short courses got such good results right away that they are still using acupuncture over 30 years later.
In 1974, our planet was a very different place. Most North Americans had just begun to hear about this strange and wonderful medical treatment called acupuncture. The media (which had yet to be so dubbed) was filled with pictures and stories of the wonders of this amazing needle therapy. Interest, and skepticism, was high. Acupuncture was the most commonly reported topic in newspapers in 1975, and the reports were initially all positive. However, the media eventually began to print only negative stories for a few years, for some poorly-understood reason.
The situation regarding acupuncture in Canada was very different then. In most of the country, AFC members were the only practitioners openly using acupuncture. In 1974, for several months, Ontario physicians could perform acupuncture but could not charge for the procedure or bill OHIP, even for the office visit and assessment. AFC founder and medical acupuncture pioneer Dr. Clifford Woolfe, one of the founders of the AFC, lost income during that period but experienced the joy of seeing exciting results. That spurred him and his colleagues on to build AFC into the leading provider of acupuncture education to health professionals in Canada.
The late Dr. Elie Cass, second president of the Acupuncture Foundation of Canada, was its driving force in its infancy, establishing a clinic in downtown Toronto in 1975 that provided training and treatment for two years. It was an exciting concept that was clearly ahead of its time. The flurry of interest and support acupuncture got through the media in the early days dried up for a few years, beginning in about 1976. Ironically, November 1976 marked the first public announcement of the connection between acupuncture and endorphins, based on the work of Professor Bruce Pomeranz’ research team at the University of Toronto.
History of the AFC/I Education Program
In 1975 the AFC Education Committee wisely recruited Joseph Y. Wong, MD, FRCPC as Chief Lecturer for its burgeoning education program. Besides his encyclopedic knowledge of medicine and anatomy, Dr. Wong already had at that time 20 years of acupuncture experience. His medical specialty of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation lent itself well to his desire to integrate acupuncture with western medicine. He remained Chief Lecturer for AFC/I until 2001 when he retired from that position. Dr. Wong continues to teach special courses for AFCI from time to time.
The AFC started its examination in 1977, partially as an attempt to satisfy concerns by regulatory bodies for the safety of individuals being treated by physicians who had taken training with the organization.
In the beginning, AFC courses were restricted to medical doctors, then dentists were included. In 1982 the AFC Education Committee, with the support of most of the board of directors, opened the courses to physiotherapists. This controversial move proved to be an important one for acupuncture in Canada. Because of the proliferation of acupuncture as an adjunct to physiotherapy into all parts of Canada, Canadians have been open to the introduction of acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine right across this huge land in a way they might not have been otherwise.
In 1989 a new era began for AFC. Dr. Sona Tahan, a physician from Beirut, Lebanon who had trained in acupuncture in Shanghai, PRC had arrived in Toronto in 1986. She promptly found AFC and introduced herself to then AFC Director of Education, Dr. Linda Rapson. We had no idea that this delightful woman would become such an important person in AFC/I’s future. After she worked with the Education Committee for some time, the committee gained confidence that she could teach and asked her to design a course on classical acupuncture. This landmark introductory course took place in late October, 1989 to rave reviews and launched Dr. Tahan’s future career as AFC/I Director of Education, a position she held until 2007. She tried to retire several years earlier but agreed to stay on as Director of Education Curriculum in early 2004 when her job was made into two positions.
Dr. Tahan not only designed a series of courses on classical acupuncture that cover the Jing Luo system as it relates to pain as well as the Zang Fu system, she lead the move to revamp the whole AFCI curriculum during her tenure. Her insistence on quality at every point and her far-sightedness in designing and overseeing a system for mentoring new teachers has strengthened AFCI’s program immensely.
AFC had become recognized by provincial licensing bodies for medicine and physiotherapy as a national organization to contact regarding acupuncture issues by the mid-1980s. The AFC examination had become a prerequisite for physicians and physiotherapists to incorporate acupuncture into their practices in several provinces during the 1980s. By 1993, AFC courses had been held in all 10 Canadian provinces, in some locations many times.
In the 1990s the board of directors of the AFCI made a decision, based on a referendum of the members, to include chiropractors, baccalaureate nurses, naturopathic doctors and licensed acupuncturists in the membership. The integration of these various practitioners into the education process has proven to be both harmonious and helpful, since all the disciplines have something to teach the others.
In 1998 the AFCI revamped the curriculum that had been developed over many years, starting with the first AFC introductory course in 1974. Using the assistance of a consultant with a doctorate in education, a program was developed that included Distance Education via videotaped lectures (now available on DVD), written materials to study at home at one’s own pace, learning objectives and self-assessment questions. Rather than have students listen to the lectures ‘live’, the in-class time was structured to allow for interactive learning using cases, both written and live, to accompany the small group hands-on point location and needle insertion techniques that had always been part of AFC and AFCI courses.
This approach has been highly successful in allowing students to master the material at each course more easily and allows for review at any time. For more details on the AFCI curriculum click here.
AFC Launches AFCI, 1995
AFC was incorporated as a charity in Ontario in 1974. Over the years, the rules in Ontario regarding charities changed to the point that anyone who was on the board of directors of a charity could not be paid for any work for the charity. AFC board members worked as volunteers, but the new rules would not allow any of them to be paid for teaching and some board members were on the AFC faculty. This change led to the decision of the AFC in 1995 to incorporate a new entity, the Acupuncture Foundation of Canada Institute, as a not for profit association. It is incorporated federally, meaning across Canada, not just in one province. See AFCI Governance and Policies click here and Directors Officers Staff click here.
AFCI Affiliations
In 1988 AFC was a founding member of the Pan Pacific Medical Acupuncture Forum, an affiliation of the medical acupuncture societies in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States of America. This group meets every four years in the member countries by rotation for education and friendship. There is no formal structure to the group, thus no website. The next conference is in October 2008 in Toronto, –Link to PPMAF info---- for more information. The meeting in 2012 will be in Australia.
The founding meeting of what was then called the NAFTA Acupuncture Commission took place in 1994 in Acapulco, Mexico. President Dr. Linda Rapson represented AFC in joining with associations in Canada, the USA and Mexico that wanted to work together collegially across the North American continent to find commonality in acupuncture training and practice. This group has met many times since in all three countries. It is now known as the North American Council on Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (NACAOM).
Since 2000 AFCI has worked closely with The Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture Association of Canada (CMAAC) www.cmaac.ca/ and The Acupuncture Council of Ontario (ACO) www.aco-web.com/ towards our common goal of seeing regulation of acupuncture in Ontario become a reality. Link to Regulation in Canada click here.