The history of the disabled in Canada.
The Unfit (continued)
Disabled people have historically been sub-humanized, believed in capable of making their own choices, and unfit to live amongst the general public. This patronizing view of people with disabilities allowed 20th century eugenics programs to be carried out in the open, even with the approval of popular culture. [5]
Eugenics...[is the belief that] in order to have a superior society, only superior individuals should have children…
Many of this country’s most prominent women’s suffragists were enthusiastic supporters of eugenics [—including Nellie McClung].
“to bring children into the world, suffering from the handicaps caused by ignorance, poverty, or criminality of the parents, is an appalling crime against the innocent and hopeless, and yet one about practically nothing is said…
[I]t is no wonder that humanity produces so many specimens who, if they were silk stockings or boots, would be marked ‘seconds’.” -Nellie McClung
Eugenicists promoted a number of measures to ensure [that only the superior reproduced], most notably the sterilization of those deemed “unfit to breed.” Characteristics that could earn a person this distinction included:...having a mental or physical disability. [From 1928 to 1972]...2822 individuals were sterilized...without their consent. [6]
In Canada...[,t]he most vocal defenders of eugenics were to be found in the ranks of the medical professions,” reads Our Own Master Race, a 1990 text on the history of Canadian eugenics. [7]
Dr. Helen MacMurchy...was the first woman offered a position in the Toronto General Hospital’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology…
[S]tarting in 1906 [,s]he submitted reports on the feeble-minded to the Ontario government. She was appointed the province’s first inspector of the feebleminded in 1914 and briefly worked for the Ontario education department supervising special education classes…
[I]n 1920[,] she published her bestselling book The Almosts: A Study of the Feeble-Minded…
Using research she had conducted during her work as Ontario’s inspector of the feebleminded, MacMurchy educated Canadians (as well as Americans, since the book was published in Boston) beyond the medical and political communities on the unfit and degenerate menace afflicting the country—yet always with a feeling of empathy.
One had to treat the feeble-minded with care, she noted, yet never lose sight of the fact that they were abnormal and had to be treated as such. “It is the age of true democracy,” she wrote, “that will not only give everyone justice, but will redeem the waste products of humanity and give the mental defective all the chance he needs to keep away from the evils and temptations that he never will be grown-up enough to resist, and that society cannot afford to let him fall victim to.”
Should society, in fact, have failed these hopeless people, then the consequences would be severe. The feeble-minded might have been a small percentage of the total population, but as she maintained in a 1916 report—”with dubious statistical precision” as Canadian eugenics historian Angus McLaren has put it—they accounted for the vast majority of alcoholics, juvenile delinquents, unmarried mothers, and prostitutes…
Emily Murphy, an Alberta police magistrate (considered the first female judge in Canada as well as the British Empire), was...direct.
“We protect the public against diseased and distempered cattle,” she declared. “We should similarly protect them against the offal of humanity.” [8]
For much of the 1930s, one of Canada’s most visible eugenics boosters was a Dr. W. L. Hutton. His day job was as medical officer of health for the city of Brantford, but his passion was as president of the Ontario Eugenics Society…
In [1934]…, Hutton warned that Ontario was already burdened by 32,000 “insane” and “feeble-minded,” and that “urgent” mass-sterilization was needed to ensure the problem didn’t worsen. “It takes an army of officials to look after the social wreckage in our province today,” he said…
[In 1939, p]ractically overnight, Canada’s eugenicists saw all of their favourite arguments...co-opted by the perpetrators of one of history’s greatest crimes. [7] [D]isabled people were the first victims of the Holocaust. [9] It is estimated that close to 250,000 disabled people were murdered under the Nazi regime. [10]
[1] “Our history”, Saskatchewan Association for Community Living, 2002 https://www.sacl.org/who/history/
[2] edited by Spencer van Vloten, “The History of Inclusive Education in Canada”, BC Disability https://www.bcdisability.com/history-inclusive-education
[3] Katharine Maye Viscardis, “The History and Legacy of the ‘Orillia Asylum for Idiots’: Children’s Experience of Institutional Violence”, Trent University Library & Archives, 2020
[4] “Feeble-minded” https://academickids.com/encyclopedia/index.php/Feeble-minded
[5] Joshua St. Pierre, “Disability Rights”, Encyc
https://www.eugenicsarchive.ca/encyclopedia?id=535eeb377095aa000000021b
[6] Andrea Eidinger, “Inconvenient Pasts: Women’s Suffrage in English Canada”, Unwritten Histories, February 13, 2018 https://www.unwrittenhistories.com/inconvenient-pasts-womens-suffrage-in-english-canada/
[7] Tristin Hopper, “The time when Canada’s elite wanted to sterilize ‘insane’ and disabled people”, National Post, August 16, 2023
[8] Allan Levine, “Perfect People, Perfect Country”, Canada’s History, January 2, 2016
[9] Amanda Tink, “Disabled people were Holocaust victims, too: they were excluded from German society and murdered by Nazi programs”, The Conversation
[10] “Disabled People”, Holocaust Memorial Day Trust
https://www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/nazi-persecution/disabled-people/
