From Calgary Herald
Newgenics ubiquitous in Alberta: conference
BY ANDREA SANDS, POSTMEDIA NEWS OCTOBER 23, 2010
EDMONTON - Alberta stopped its eugenics sterilization program three decades ago, but the practice of ``newgenics'' is still rampant, a conference heard Saturday.
``Eugenics is by no means a dead issue,'' Nicola Fairbrother said Saturday at a conference in Edmonton.
``Post-1972, the sterilization boards were dismantled and the sort of architecture in provincial government that dictated how people were sterilized was removed, but then new forms of eugenics really emerged.''
Fairbrother was one of a series of speakers at the two-day conference called Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada. It is part of a project headed by University of Alberta philosophy professor Rob Wilson to better document the history of eugenics in the West.
In 1928, Alberta introduced the Sexual Sterilization Act which allowed surgical sterilization of people deemed to be mentally defective. The policy remained in place in Alberta until 1972. Nearly 5,000 people came before the Eugenics Board and about 2,800 were sterilized.
Leilani Muir, 66, calls it ``a very black history.''
Muir was awarded $750,000 by an Alberta court in 1996 for wrongful sterilization after being misdiagnosed as mentally disabled and confined to an institution in the 1950s. She has spoken publicly since she won the lawsuit.
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Newgenics ubiquitous in Alberta: conference
BY ANDREA SANDS, POSTMEDIA NEWS OCTOBER 23, 2010
EDMONTON - Alberta stopped its eugenics sterilization program three decades ago, but the practice of ``newgenics'' is still rampant, a conference heard Saturday.
``Eugenics is by no means a dead issue,'' Nicola Fairbrother said Saturday at a conference in Edmonton.
``Post-1972, the sterilization boards were dismantled and the sort of architecture in provincial government that dictated how people were sterilized was removed, but then new forms of eugenics really emerged.''
Fairbrother was one of a series of speakers at the two-day conference called Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada. It is part of a project headed by University of Alberta philosophy professor Rob Wilson to better document the history of eugenics in the West.
In 1928, Alberta introduced the Sexual Sterilization Act which allowed surgical sterilization of people deemed to be mentally defective. The policy remained in place in Alberta until 1972. Nearly 5,000 people came before the Eugenics Board and about 2,800 were sterilized.
Leilani Muir, 66, calls it ``a very black history.''
Muir was awarded $750,000 by an Alberta court in 1996 for wrongful sterilization after being misdiagnosed as mentally disabled and confined to an institution in the 1950s. She has spoken publicly since she won the lawsuit.
READ MORE
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