{"id":411,"date":"2015-07-30T05:06:24","date_gmt":"2015-07-30T05:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/postconfederation\/?post_type=chapter&p=411"},"modified":"2019-07-12T23:10:14","modified_gmt":"2019-07-12T23:10:14","slug":"7-8-eugenics","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/postconfederation\/chapter\/7-8-eugenics\/","title":{"raw":"7.8 Eugenics","rendered":"7.8 Eugenics"},"content":{"raw":"[caption id=\"attachment_415\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"400\"]\"A<\/a> Figure 7.16 Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) was a largely self-trained British social scientist, a half-cousin of Charles Darwin, and the figure most readily associated with Eugenics. It is Galton who is credited with coining the dichotomy: nurture vs. nature.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nOne of the earliest and longest lasting of the reform movements was associated with the ideals of [pb_glossary id=\"7630\"]eugenics[\/pb_glossary]. Formulated in its modern context in 1883 by the English intellectual, Sir Francis Galton, eugenics took its lead from evolutionary and genetic theory, and was at the heart of what came to be known as [pb_glossary id=\"7631\"]scientific racism[\/pb_glossary].\r\n

Gene Theory<\/h1>\r\nThe core idea of the eugenic theory is that\u00a0genetic inheritance is\u00a0a factor in the success or failure of a society. Along with Galton, the proponents of eugenics \u201cbelieved that criminality, alcoholism, and feeble-mindedness were...inherited.\u201d[footnote]Angus McLaren, Our Own Master Race: Eugenics in Canada, 1885-1945<\/em> (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1990), 16.[\/footnote] Individuals who are mentally or physically (and, sometimes, morally) challenged are doomed, the eugenicists argue, to pass along those traits to their heirs (which, it is now widely understood, was never the case). A person with a severe mental challenge like Down syndrome, for example, was reckoned incapable of conceiving a child without Down syndrome. Poverty and laziness (often paired as personal qualities) were sometimes viewed as heritable as well. According to eugenic theory, poverty (a condition of life that can be instantly changed with money) was not caused by changes in the economy or social circumstances: it was the consequence of bad genes. Moral weakness was also aligned with \u201cfeeble-mindedness.\u201d This was especially true as regards eugenicists\u2019 views of sexually active women (who were responsible, it was argued, for a rising tide of illegitimate births) and sex trade workers.\r\n\r\nThe eugenicist strategy has been described as \u201cselective breeding,\u201d but that term does not do it justice.[footnote]R. Douglas Francis, Richard Jones, and Donald Smith, Destinies: Canadian History Since Confederation<\/em>, 6th edition (Toronto: Thomson Nelson, 2008), 173.[\/footnote] \u201cSelective breeding\u201d invariably involves selecting in<\/em>: that is, encouraging fit people (however defined) to have a significant number of children. But the eugenics message in Canada was more about selecting out<\/em>: to find ways to deter the reproduction of what they regarded as fated populations who were doomed by their genes to imperil themselves, successive generations, and the nation as a whole. In this campaign, they were not alone.\r\n\r\nPart of the late 19th century context of eugenics in English-Canada was the falling fertility rate, particularly when measured against that of French-Canada and immigrant communities (see Section 1.2<\/a>). Eugenicists internationally claimed that healthy societies were at risk from this [pb_glossary id=\"7632\"]fertility transition[\/pb_glossary]. Most of these cultures\u00a0were hostile to the idea of birth control because it would limit the reproduction of their own people, but the idea of sterilizing the least healthy and least valued citizens had considerable appeal.\r\n\r\nNazi Germany, of course, ran headlong down this path and became notorious for the forced sterilization of roughly 360,000 individuals who failed to meet one test or another of \"normalcy.\" The fascists did not have a monopoly on eugenics: it is reckoned that, in the United States from 1910 to the 1970s, no fewer than 60,000 \u201cfeebleminded\u201d citizens were forcibly sterilized. Canada sterilized proportionately fewer \u2014<\/span><\/strong> the total number is believed to be slightly in excess of 3,000 \u2013 but record keeping was inconsistent and there is little doubt that a true total is unknowable.[footnote]Randall Hansen and Desmond King, Sterilized by the State: Eugenics, Race, and the Population Scare in Twentieth-Century North America<\/em> (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 3.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nWhat is distinctive about this particular branch of social reform in Canada is that its advocates sought to change the human raw materials rather than the laws or conditions under which those humans lived. To quote the authority on this subject, historian Angus McLaren, \u201cThe eugenicists differed from most of their contemporaries not so much in envisaging a radically different future, but in supporting the intrusive social policies they felt were needed to bring it into being.\u201d [footnote] McLaren, Our Own Master Race,<\/em> 165.[\/footnote] While other social reformers were encouraging redemption through personal choice and institutional supports, the eugenicists were advocating change at the sharp end of a scalpel.\r\n

A Nation of Thoroughbreds<\/h1>\r\nEugenics in Canada had two principal roots. These were the deteriorating health of urban working people and a visible increase in the numbers (though not necessarily the incidence) of mental health cases. There was no shortage of evidence that urban work made people less well and the eugenicists feared that those weaknesses would be transmitted to successive generations. As for\u00a0the mentally ill, their institutionalization and observation got underway in the mid-19th century with the construction of redoubtable asylums in the major cities. It was not until the early 20th century, however, that eugenic thinking produced eugenic action. This took place at the provincial level because of the allocation of powers under the BNA Act<\/em>, but it was only Alberta and British Columbia that moved forward with forced sterilization policies and campaigns.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_416\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"500\"]\"A<\/a> Figure 7.17 The Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives, Red Deer, AB, n.d.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n<\/a>Originally the Albertan legislation of 1928 did not permit\u00a0involuntary sterilization but it was nevertheless coercive. Patients were more likely to be discharged from an asylum or hospital if\u00a0they elected to be sterilized; there was an incentive, then, to go under the knife. This was evidently insufficient as far as Edmonton was concerned, and under the Social Credit government of William Aberhart, the Board of Eugenics was given the power in 1938 to make sterilization compulsory. The Board\u2019s record of recommendations is astonishing: only 1% of cases considered were not recommended for immediate sterilization, and that tiny fraction was, in actuality, postponements. As one study of the Alberta Board of Eugenics states succinctly, \u201cnot once did it vote \"no\".\u201d[footnote]Hansen and King, Sterilized by the State<\/em>, 97.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nScholars working in this field think that British Columbia\u2019s experiment with eugenic policies was less dramatic in its numbers. The problem is that record keeping on this score was remarkably incomplete, and what records were kept were subsequently destroyed or lost. We do know, however, that sterilizations were performed on inmates in mental health and prison facilities beginning in 1933; perhaps a few hundred were affected.\r\n
\r\n\r\nThe eugenics movement in Western Canada and the application of sterilization is discussed by historian of institutionalization, Megan Davies (York University).\r\n