1 John M. MacEachran and Eugenics in Alberta Victorian Sensibilities, Idealist Philosophy, and Detached Efficiency

Henderikus J. Stam and Ashley Barlow

John M. MacEachran (1877–1971) was initially one of the more enigmatic, and eventually one of the more disreputable, characters in the history of Alberta’s long-running eugenics program.¹ The fact that he was also the only Canadian student of German experimental psychologist Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), as well as the founder of the Philosophy and Psychology Department at the University of Alberta, makes him of more than passing interest. Yet officially there is very little that we know about him save for the outward details of his life.² MacEachran was very careful, purposely or otherwise, to leave little behind and it has only been in the last few years that we have come to know more, albeit just a little more, about this seemingly paradoxical yet important figure at the centre of Alberta’s eugenics program.³ He drafted the founding constitution for the Canadian Psychological Association, in 1940, and he remained as head of the University of Alberta’s Department of Psychology until the end of World War II. His reputation as a successful university administrator was nevertheless severely tested after a very public re-examination of his work as the chair of the Alberta Eugenics Board (AEB) from 1929 to 1964. Although MacEachran died in 1971, a lawsuit brought by Leilani Muir against the Government of Alberta in 1995 raised the issue of her involuntary sterilization along with that of almost three thousand others.⁴

In this chapter, we review those details and evaluate the discontinuity between MacEachran’s public role as AEB chair and his place as the founding professor of philosophy and psychology at the University of Alberta. However, we will argue that the discontinuity is not quite as perplexing as it appears on the surface, if we consider MacEachran’s career and philosophy as an outgrowth of a nineteenth-century, Victorian-style world view married to a progressive notion of social engineering. What is truly perplexing is the way in which MacEachran remained resistant to change.

After his death, MacEachran’s role as a pioneer in Alberta’s first university would be overshadowed by his role as the chair of the province’s eugenics board. His portrait (see Figure 1.1) would be removed from the Department of Psychology, and his name removed from a seminar room, and discussions would ensue in both the philosophy and psychology departments (finally separated in the 1950s) at the University of Alberta as to how to re-evaluate his place in the history of the university and province.⁵ This even led to the revocation of the honours associated with MacEachran’s legacy.⁶

MACEACHRAN’S LIFE

The basic outlines of MacEachran’s life are generally well known,⁷ but somewhat more can be gleaned from the transcripts of an interview that MacEachran gave toward the end of his life.⁸ John Malcolm MacEachran was born into a farming family on January 15, 1877, near Glencoe, Ontario. His father, David MacEachran (b. 1850?) had emigrated from Scotland and married Christina MacAlpine (b. 1855?). John MacEachran had two sisters and five brothers, most of whom became farmers, yet he chose to become a teacher after attending what probably was the Model School in Strathroy until the age of eighteen in 1895 (he received what was known then as a first-class certificate). After taking up a teaching post at Ivan, Ontario (just northwest of London) for an unspecified period of time (though likely no more than a year or two), he decided to study at university. Salaries for teachers, especially rural teachers, were relatively low in Canada during the latter years of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century.⁹ MacEachran had decided to go to the University of Toronto but was dissuaded from doing so by a local clergyman, who suggested he should instead study with philosopher John Watson (1847–1939) at Queen’s University.¹⁰ Oddly, MacEachran claimed in a 1970 interview with Roger Myers that he had avoided the University of Toronto and gone to Queen’s because he was “not keen” on Presbyterian doctrine; Queen’s was in fact still dependent on the Presbyterian Church, at least until 1912, whereas the University of Toronto was by this time an openly secular institution.

Figure 1.1 Portrait of John M. MacEachran, ca. 1944, from the University of Alberta’s Department of Psychology. It was removed from the now-renamed MacEachran Conference Room. Likewise, his name was removed from a seminar room at the University of Alberta. Photograph courtesy of the University of Alberta Archives. Accession Number: 1971-217-4-001.

At Queen’s, MacEachran appeared to thrive under Watson’s tutelage, claiming later in life that he did not agree with Watson’s idealism—a peculiar claim given the few writings on philosophy MacEachran left behind.¹¹ Watson was a Scottish philosopher who had received his MA from the University of Glasgow in 1872 and then been appointed to Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ontario, on the basis of his reputation among the idealist Caird brothers—John (1820–98) and Edward (1835–1908), both professors in Glasgow.¹² As philosophers Leslie Armour and Elizabeth Trott note, Watson was recognized as the major proponent of Canadian idealism and a renowned metaphysician.¹³ Furthermore, he was instrumental in the creation of the United Church of Canada in 1925. MacEachran claimed that Watson received the second PhD that Queen’s had ever awarded, a claim that we could not substantiate and that was unknown to the archivists at Queen’s. MacEachran notes he spent four years with Watson, although this could simply be a reference to the former’s PhD studies.

MacEachran arrived at Queen’s in 1897 and received a master’s degree in 1902. He was appointed a fellow and tutor that year as an assistant to Watson; he received his PhD in 1906. Presumably his doctorate concerned idealist philosophy, particularly the philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) in Germany, although his dissertation appears to be lost.¹⁴ In his paper “Twenty-Five Years of Philosophical Speculation” (1932), MacEachran professed his deep respect for Watson’s style of critique and argument. He compared Watson’s critique of hedonist philosophies to David’s victory over Goliath. MacEachran was, in his own words, awed by the way that Watson managed “to dissect and negate each position of these philosophers by using their own arguments against them.” Watson’s style of argument, as well as the ideas he discussed in his textbooks, influenced MacEachran’s own opinions on education. Throughout much of his later writing, MacEachran espoused the value of education, and the power that educators had over society. In a speech entitled “A Dream of Olympus” presented to the Faculty Club at the University of Alberta, in which MacEachran compared professors and teachers to Greek gods, Watson’s influence on his own opinions and philosophical perspectives was evident.¹⁵ Watson advocated the virtues of self-discipline in his writings and MacEachran appeared to have carried these virtues forward into his own writing on education. Publicly at least, MacEachran showed nothing but respect for Watson and emulated his rather formal and grandiloquent style of writing.

After graduating from Queens, MacEachran wished to take up the study of psychology in Germany.¹⁶ In 1906, he left for Berlin (later he would recall this to be 1902, but that was clearly another mistake). He does not say with whom he wished to study but it is likely that he would have wanted to either meet or study with Carl Stumpf (1848–1936), the renowned philosopher and psychologist who founded the Institute of Psychology at the University of Berlin in 1900. According to Thomas Nelson, based on an interview with MacEachran, the latter and Stumpf were unable to establish an amiable research relationship and MacEachran remained in Berlin for only nine months.¹⁷ In his 1970 interview with Myers, MacEachran refers to an unnamed professor in Berlin (likely Stumpf) who had asked him, “What training have you had?,” presumably referring to his training in psychology. MacEachran said that he replied, “I have had none.” However, in his dissertation—published in Leipzig in 1910—he mentions that he attended lectures with Friedrich Paulsen (1846–1908), Otto Pfleiderer (1839–1908), Alois Riehl (1844–1924), Erich Schmidt (1853–1913), Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (1848–1931), and Heinrich Woelfflin (1864–1945), in addition to Stumpf. These were important figures in early twentieth-century German intellectual life: Paulsen was one of the most notable students of experimental psychologist Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–87); Pfleiderer was an influential liberal theologian; Riehl was a neo-Kantian philosopher who succeeded Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) in his university professorship in 1905; Schmidt had the chair of German language and literature in Berlin; Wilamowitz-Moellendorff was a renowned classicist; and Woelfflin was an art historian and critic.

In 1907, MacEachran went to Leipzig to study with Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig. The elder Wundt was by this time already seventy-five years old. Between 1876 and 1919, Wundt supervised a total of 186 dissertations at Leipzig, of which 33 were American.¹⁸ Although his recollections are sparse, MacEachran completed a thesis with Wundt on pragmatism in German (Pragmatismus).¹⁹ We know very little of his time in Leipzig, other than the odd anecdote he repeated from time to time about Wundt (for example, about Wundt’s poor hearing). It does appear that MacEachran spent at most two years in Leipzig, leaving in 1909, but some of this time was taken up travelling to other cities in Europe.

When he approached Wundt to determine whether he could study with him, MacEachran wanted Wundt to give him “an Arbeit in psychology.” Yet according to MacEachran, Wundt then said, “No, you are not a psychologist. You are a philosopher. You had better take something on philosophy.”²⁰ Although recalled more than sixty years after the fact, it was true that Wundt was writing his ten-volume Voelkerpsychologie at the time and was no longer actively engaged in experimental psychology research. Furthermore, MacEachran indeed had no training in psychology. Apparently, MacEachran himself suggested the topic of pragmatism and Wundt finally agreed—“because they didn’t know anything about pragmatism in Germany.”²¹ In 1907, while MacEachran was writing his thesis on pragmatism, American philosopher William James (1842–1910) coincidentally published his own book on the subject, of which MacEachran was quite critical.²² In 1910, MacEachran finished his thesis. It was published by Leipzig University under the title Pragmatismus: Inaugural-dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwuerde der hohen philosophischen Fakultaet (Pragmatism: Inaugural dissertation for the completion of the doctorate for the higher philosophical faculty). At Leipzig, MacEachran also later thanked Karl Gotthard Lamprecht (1856–1915), Johannes Volkelt (1848–1930), and Wilhelm Wirth (1876–1952) as his professors in his dissertation. This was not irrelevant to his dissertation nor presumably to his development as a scholar. Lamprecht had founded the Institut fuer Kultur- und Universalgeschichte at the University of Leipzig and thus was supportive of Wundt’s new work on the Voelkerpsychologie. Volkelt was an anti-positivist philosopher, and Wirth was one of Wundt’s assistants.

A number of commentators on MacEachran, including Nelson and Myers, have referred subsequently to MacEachran as a “pragmatist,” presumably both in its colloquial sense, as someone who is practical and reasonable, as well as in its philosophical sense.²³ However, MacEachran’s thesis was in fact a critique of pragmatism, not a sympathetic appraisal. Although he claimed that he had thought of going to study with William James, and he used James’s shorter version (the 1892 Briefer Course) of the Principles of Psychology in his early teaching career, MacEachran concludes his thesis by noting that pragmatism may have been seen as “a new humanism” and a “new Renaissance in the philosophy,”²⁴ but much of the pragmatist principles were already to be found in the philosophies of the Greek philosophers Protagoras (481–411 BC) and Socrates (ca. 470–399 BC), as well as in the German idealists Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), and even Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). MacEachran was particularly critical of pragmatism’s conception of truth.²⁵ He later described James’s writing as flippant and opportunistic.²⁶ Nevertheless, MacEachran provided a complete account of the pragmatic perspective. His conclusion was that while the “Pragmatists had affirmed that there was no one truth . . . so it turned out that there was no one Pragmatism.”²⁷ According to MacEachran, Wundt was very pleased with the thesis and the examination was quick and successful. MacEachran had succeeded in completing his second PhD. However, instead of remaining in Europe (MacEachran was fluent in German, and likely French as well) or taking up a position at an established American university where psychology’s reputation and growth was now ascendant, MacEachran chose to go to Edmonton, Alberta, a very small Prairie city with a population then of approximately twenty-three thousand people.²⁸ He remained there for the rest of his life, save for a brief foray as paymaster of the 196th (Western Universities) Battalion serving in France during World War I.²⁹ Apparently, Henry Marshall Tory (1864–1947), mathematics professor and inaugural president of the University of Alberta, had already hired MacEachran in 1908 but then wired him not to come since they did not need a philosopher that year (the first year that classes were offered at the University of Alberta). One account of this change was that Tory was allowed to hire only four professors in the university’s first year. However, in order to secure MacEachran’s place at the new university, Tory deliberately travelled to Paris to make amends and persuade MacEachran to come to Alberta (see Figure 1.2).³⁰ MacEachran agreed, cancelled the remainder of his planned European tour, and arrived in 1909 to teach philosophy and psychology.

Why MacEachran chose the University of Alberta as his first and only professorship remains unclear. As Nelson noted, MacEachran’s reasons were always vague but certainly influenced heavily by Tory.³¹ According to the classicist Walter Hugh Johns (1908–85), Tory’s first and most important duty was to recruit high-ranking professors from other schools in order to create a prestigious faculty for the university’s first semester.³² Tory decided not to hire any professor studying or working in Alberta, in order to promote the high educational standards of the University of Alberta. He thus embarked on his ambitious attempt to recruit only the best scholars from Canada and the United States. In staffing the Department of Philosophy and Psychology he must have logically turned to Germany, where the foundations of psychology were firm, and discovered MacEachran, a Canadian student of both philosophy and psychology possessing two distinct doctoral degrees. It is unclear how Tory persuaded MacEachran to travel to the new province of Alberta—founded just three years before the opening of the university in Edmonton—to teach at a university that had not yet been fully built. However, it is likely that MacEachran was intrigued by the opportunity to create a department tailored entirely to his own educational interests. MacEachran was to be the only professor in the Psychology and Philosophy department and would have the freedom to teach whatever he saw fit.³³ Furthermore, Nelson speculates that the challenge of creating a department that would meet Tory’s expectations intrigued MacEachran, and he thus accepted Tory’s offer. Despite the remoteness of the new province of Alberta and the daunting task of creating an entire department on his own, MacEachran likely saw this as a promising opportunity. It was not a fast-growing department; by 1938 it still only had three faculty members. When asked why he decided to stay in Edmonton for his entire career, MacEachran replied that “a man should stick to what he starts to do”—not a very forthcoming statement.³⁴

Figure 1.2 Portrait photograph of John M. MacEachran, ca. 1920, at about the time he began his career at the University of Alberta. Photograph courtesy of the University of Alberta Archives. Accession Number: 1971-217-003.

MacEachran did not appear to do any original research during his entire career at the university. Not that this mattered a great deal—the new university needed instructors and administrators to create the foundations of a modern institution of higher learning and teaching, which was a priority. In addition to a few short articles, MacEachran also left a seemingly unfinished book-length manuscript entitled An Outline of Modern Philosophy in the archives. This would likely have served as a textbook for undergraduate classes, and typed and copied chapters may very well have been passed out to students; indeed, it may have been created not as a text for publication but rather as simply his notes to students.³⁵ The University of Alberta provided MacEachran with multiple teaching and administrative duties over the length of his career. He was appointed the first provost, in 1914 (apparently because he was the only bachelor among the faculty), and was given the duties of handling student affairs and discipline.³⁶ He held multiple administrative appointments at the university over his career but none so important or controversial as the one he held outside the university: chairmanship of the Alberta Eugenics Board (AEB).³⁷

EUGENICS IN ALBERTA

The broad history of Alberta’s eugenics program is now widely known. It has been discussed at length in contemporary historical accounts, and elements of this program are also considered in chapters 2, 3, and 4.³⁸ In short, the United Farmers of Alberta government passed the Sexual Sterilization Act in 1928, enabling the creation of a eugenics board responsible for approving cases brought before it for sterilization. The original members of the AEB were Dr. Edgerton Pope (1874–1949), Dr. Edward G. Mason (1874–1947), MacEachran, and the secretary, Mrs. Jean H. Field (d. 1974?). The University of Alberta and the Council of the College of Physicians appointed Pope from Edmonton and Mason from Calgary. MacEachran and Field were appointed by the province’s Lieutenant Governor, William Legh Walsh (1857–1938).³⁹ The board, when presented with an inmate of a mental hospital, was tasked with examining and interviewing the patient. Sterilization would be recommended if board members unanimously agreed that the inmate could be safely “discharged if the danger of procreation with its attendant risk of multiplication of the evil by transmission of the disability to progeny were eliminated.”⁴⁰ The Sexual Sterilization Act required consent of the patient or, if in the board’s opinion the patient was incapable of giving consent, the spouse or parents of the inmate were permitted to consent on the inmate’s behalf before the board authorized the sterilization. In 1937, the legislation was amended to widen the definition of “mentally defective person” and thus increase the scope of potential sterilization candidates (see chapter 4). This amendment stated that a mentally defective person was any person “in whom there is a condition of arrested or incomplete development of mind existing before the age of eighteen years, whether arising from inherent causes or induced disease or injury.”⁴¹

A further revision of the act, in 1942, included new sections for those suffering from the neurological conditions of epilepsy and Huntington’s chorea. In the case of individuals suffering from Huntington’s chorea, if consent was not obtained, the AEB was still able to recommend sterilization of the individual. This occurred in such cases where the board believed such a procedure was in the best interest of a patient. The 1942 revision also removed the requirement of consent in the cases of mental defectives, while still requiring the consent of “psychotics” before sterilization would be approved.

Chief psychiatry social worker E. Mary Frost (b. 1918?) noted in 1942 that in its first year of operation the board recommended the sterilization of only four individuals, and sterilization of three of these individuals was completed. By 1936 (the year before the Sexual Sterilization Act was modified) the number of recommended operations had increased to 191, with 78 actually performed. In 1937, 202 sterilizations were recommended and 105 were performed.⁴² Although the number of sterilizations performed in 1937 seems to be much higher than in previous years, this number was actually equal to the 105 sterilizations performed in 1934, when the original act was still in effect. It would appear that changes to the legislation in 1937 did not have a direct and immediate effect on the number of sterilizations performed. Frost’s research indicated that the number of mental defective cases passed and subsequently sterilized remained similar to that of cases before 1937. Between 1932 and 1936 the number of recommended sterilizations was 779; between 1937 and 1941 the number of recommended sterilizations was also 779. After 1941, however, the number of sterilizations recommended by the AEB increased steadily until 1969, when only 63 operations were performed. It is also remarkable that the board spent less and less time reviewing cases brought before it. As members of the AEB grew more comfortable in their position, they would often spend only five to ten minutes reviewing cases, and more often than not, the board would recommend sterilization. AEB records from 1959 indicate that 95 cases were presented to the board that year and 94 of these were passed.⁴³ On June 2, 1972, the newly elected Progressive Conservative government of Premier Peter Lougheed (1928–2012) repealed the Sexual Sterilization Act.⁴⁴ By this time 2,822 individuals had been sterilized, with 4,725 cases actually passed by the AEB.⁴⁵

It is important to note that the Alberta government used three arguments to repeal the act. The first was that it was based on outdated medical knowledge and was ambiguous as well, allowing too much latitude in its interpretation. The second was that the act did not protect those involved in the sterilization program from civil liability. Most important, however, was the argument voiced by David King (b. 1946), then legislative secretary to Premier Lougheed and the sponsor of the motion to repeal the act:

That is, simply, that the act violates fundamental human rights. We are provided with an act, the basis of which is a presumption that society, or at least the government, knows what kinds of people can be allowed children and what kinds of people cannot.

In support of this position the act provides the opportunity—which, admittedly, has not recently been used but which exists in the act—for the government to order the sterilization of certain people without consent. It is our view that this is a reprehensible and intolerable philosophy and program for this province and this government.⁴⁶

Although there was some resistance from certain groups to the repeal of the Sexual Sterilization Act, it did not come from the AEB.⁴⁷ The Women of Unifarm, a rural women’s organization, actually met with members of cabinet to persuade the government to reintroduce eugenics legislation. They argued that “because we believe the unborn child has the basic right to begin life with as few handicaps as possible, we affirm that people certified to be mentally unfit to become parents should have their reproductive capabilities curtailed.”⁴⁸ However, given the newly elected Lougheed government’s proclaimed dedication to introducing a provincial bill of rights (which was done in March 1972), the Sexual Sterilization Act was widely seen as a clear obstacle to those rights.⁴⁹

A lawsuit brought against the Government of Alberta in 1995 by Leilani Muir, a survivor of sterilization, generated a great deal of publicity about a chapter of Alberta history that had up to then been relatively little known to those outside of medical or legal circles.⁵⁰ Muir’s successful challenge led to an apology from the government and a subsequent payment of $740,780 plus costs.⁵¹ It was this case that led to a range of academic works on eugenics in Alberta by historians and sociologists.⁵²

MACEACHRAN AND EUGENICS

Despite the large number of articles and books now published about the Alberta eugenics program, MacEachran’s influence beyond chairing the committee remains vague. He was, by all accounts, an intensely private man who was circumspect with others. As noted, Roger Myers, a historian of psychology from the University of Toronto, interviewed MacEachran in 1970 for an oral history project, the transcripts of which are now located in the Canadian Psychological Association archives at Library and Archives Canada. The interview contains virtually no comment on the nature of MacEachran’s work with the AEB. However, Myers reported later to a former faculty member of the University of Alberta that MacEachran had spoken at length about his experience with the board over a glass of Scotch whiskey after Myers had turned off the tape recorder.⁵³

Given the paucity of records left by MacEachran, speculation about his motivations for remaining on the AEB is largely groundless. He retired from the University of Alberta in 1945, at the age of sixty-eight. Nonetheless, he maintained his position as AEB chair until he was eighty-eight. The last meeting he attended—meeting no. 327—was on May 28, 1965. Heather Pringle, writing in Saturday Night magazine in 1997, noted that MacEachran “clung to the chairmanship like a bull terrier for nearly forty years.”⁵⁴ It was not for compensation—in Smith’s survey of the psychology department’s salary distribution in 1928, the year the AEB was established, MacEachran’s salary would have been $5,500 per year.⁵⁵ In contrast, his salary for chairing the board was only $375.⁵⁶ The AEB met only a few times per year, at different mental hospitals around the province. Chairing the board was neither physically taxing nor financially rewarding. MacEachran likely did the work because he believed it to be important; that is, he believed the generally held conception that sterilizing “mental defectives” was a genuine contribution to society. However, it also likely enhanced his stature among other professionals, and meetings were infrequent enough that he could continue such work after his university retirement without excessive strain.

The AEB files are remarkably absent of personal notes and indications of the life of the committee. The board went about its business quietly and efficiently, with little change in personnel over the years. Only twenty directing members constituted the board over the years of its operation, from 1929 to 1972.⁵⁷ And like MacEachran himself, the AEB itself was a model of bureaucratic efficiency. With remarkably little oversight, and with the overt assistance of the medical profession, the AEB operated out of the public eye. Occasional notes in the board meeting minutes indicate a nagging concern about legal issues. For example, in 1935, between meetings 72 (September 19) and 73 (December 18), an excerpt from the British Medical Journal was typed out and circulated among AEB members. The excerpt was part of a report on a meeting by the Section of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of the Royal Society of Medicine with the Eugenics Society, held on February 15, 1935, “for a discussion on sterilization of women, including indications—medical and eugenic—technique, and the legal position.”⁵⁸ The excerpt focused on the report by a Mr. Cecil Binney (1897–1966), barrister-at-law, who argued that “the sterilization operation might come within the Offences against the Person Act (1861), and it ha[s] long been held that the person’s consent was not a defence in a charge of maiming.” Furthermore, “with regard to lunatics and mental defectives, if the sterilization of normal persons was a crime, the sterilization of persons who could not give consent and did not properly understand what was proposed would be so much more a crime. . . . [Sterilization] in the case of lunatics and mentally deficient persons [was] always unlawful unless undertaken for health reasons.”⁵⁹ The excerpt was circulated within the AEB but there are no comments in the minutes about this or any acknowledgment that the members discussed it. Despite such lack of evidence regarding reception and discussion of the excerpt, its attachment to the minutes ensured that it must have come to the attention of the board.

No other Canadian province had a system in place like the province of Alberta, as is well known.⁶⁰ Further, numerous commentators have mentioned the speed at which the board’s work was done.⁶¹ By examining the number of cases discussed at the meetings, Jana Grekul estimates that the AEB spent an average of thirteen minutes per case across the decades of its existence.⁶² The amount of time varied per case, of course, but during the 1940s the average was about eight minutes.⁶³

Anomalous cases would take longer—and we present one here as an illustration of the kinds of discussions that were taken up by the board. This example is the case of a woman who requested a reversal of her operation, which led to some considerable discussion during the meeting of June 14, 1945.⁶⁴ The young woman had written to Dr. David L. McCullough (life dates unknown), the superintendent of the Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives in Red Deer, on January 23, 1945:

Being as I have been under your care since I was 11 1/2 yrs old I naturally feel that no Dr. could help me as much as you can doctor. My first important question is: Is it possible for me to have my sterile [sic] fixed, so that I can have children of my own? [My husband] is willing to pay for the operation if it must be done & I am willing with the help of God & my husband[’]s help to take the chance or risk what ever it maybe [sic] & I am counting on you doctor as my doctor & friend, to help me find the happiness that I am striving for.

Apparently there was no answer from McCullough; a subsequent letter was written on March 23, 1945:

I hope that you or Miss ____ will find time to answer the questions that I asked you in my last letter to you Doctor McCullough for as you know that I am over 25 years old now & to my idea if I can get fixed up now, while I am still young & I still have my health & strength, I think that I’d have an easier time & it would maybe heal up a lot better too, don’t you think so Doctor? I sure would like to have some children of my own if I possibly can, for I get pretty lonesome at times, especially when [my husband] is away & I am by myself nearly all the time & I hardly get away from here at all & I sure get lonesome & fed up at times. There are times when I feel & think that married life isn’t so wonderful at all, especially when its a childless marriage & I wonder at times how a Doctor could ever think of such a thing as sterilization? For life certainly is no good without children that is, as far as I am concerned.

McCullough finally answered these letters, providing a chatty rendition of life at the school. In the middle of the letter, in the fourth paragraph, he wrote, “So far as I know, your operation cannot be undone. Remember always . . . that it was done for your own good. You would not want children who might have to come here and spend many years or perhaps their whole life in an Institution.”

The board’s discussion resulted in the following notes in the minutes:

This letter had already been answered satisfactorily by Dr. D. L. McCullough of the Provincial Training School, Red Deer, so it was not felt that the Board need take any further action in the matter. . . . During the discussion regarding the above letter, a question was raised as to whether or not it would be illegal to undo an operation which had been ordered according to law. It was felt that this question be discussed with a legal advisor such as Mr. W. S. Gray, at a later date.

Thus, while efficient, the AEB took time to address some concerns raised by former patients, even if it was only to keep liability at bay.⁶⁵ However, it is clear that many cases must have been accepted and moved through in a matter of a few minutes if time was also taken for this kind of discussion.

MACEACHRAN’S PHILOSOPHY AND EUGENICS

Except for clearly being an ardent supporter of the work of the AEB, MacEachran made little public mention of his thinking on the matter of eugenics save for a brief period in the early 1930s. Several items remain in the record, including an article in the journal Mental Hygiene in 1932 and a talk given to the United Farm Women’s Association the same year, later published in full in what was then called the Press Bulletin, a University of Alberta publication. The talk broadly addressed the “cure and prevention of crime,” and MacEachran argued in favour of the eugenics program:

We should endeavour to get away from a very costly form of sentiment and give more attention to raising and safeguarding the purity of the race. We allow men and women of defective intelligence or of these criminal tendencies to have children. There is one remedy for such eventualities and we fortunately have begun to make use of it in Alberta—although not yet nearly extensively enough. This is the Alberta Sterilization Act. Since the state must assume most of the load of responsibility in connection with its defective children, it surely is justified in adopting reasonable measures to protect itself against their multiplication.⁶⁶

Although the rhetoric of “safeguarding the purity of the race” was in fact widely adopted by those in favour of the eugenics program,⁶⁷ especially among the United Farm Women’s Association, MacEachran argues in favour of sterilizing those with “criminal tendencies” as well.⁶⁸ This was echoed in several other talks and papers in 1931 and 1932. Critical of the justice and prison system for its inability to reform inmates, MacEachran also argued that offenders were usually those with low intelligence. Ultimately, it was people like him, the philosophers and psychologists, who should take their “rightful” position as administrators of punishment.⁶⁹

Remarkably, he was silent after the mid-1930s, at least as far as any public pronouncements were concerned—no more articles, presentations, or public comments on eugenics. MacEachran was by then in his mid-fifties and had reached the zenith of his career. He was a successful academic and a government official with an important function. He would no longer draw attention to the latter, whether by design, through a personal commitment to privacy, or through a realization that the work was in some ways controversial.

This was also true for any further publications on philosophy. His unpublished lecture notes with textbook character, on philosophy, were framed around an eclectic collection of traditional philosophers, heavily favouring idealist philosophers from Plato (428/27–348/47 BC) forward. His thesis, as noted above—written in 1908 and defended in 1909—was on pragmatism. In 1933, he published an article in a local, edited work composed of lectures commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the University of Alberta. MacEachran’s contribution was a lengthy disputation on the nature of what he termed “speculative philosophy” in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His emphasis in this publication was a defence of idealist philosophy. He contrasted the great age of German idealism (Kant, Hegel) with British idealism of the late nineteenth century. Francis Herbert Bradley (1846–1924) appears to be the key philosopher for MacEachran and was treated to special mention: “Bradley’s Appearance and Reality has sometimes appeared to me like a magnificent sonata in which a minor and a major chord are woven into a melody that is repeated in a multitude of variations, representing the transforming power of philosophic contemplation which persists in viewing all aspects of life in the totality of their significance.”⁷⁰ French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941) also received special praise for his philosophy of time and his élan vital: “Bergson was a genuine prophet of the spiritual life in the most elevated and less conventional sense of that term, as indicating a delicate sensitivity to the refinement and beauty of the inner life of imaginative spontaneity and contemplative creativeness in which man rises to his highest.”⁷¹ Having critiqued William James in 1909, MacEachran now found in James’s notion of “pure experience”—originally published in 1904 but apparently not known to MacEachran until 1912—something that resonated with idealism. Thus he concluded his essay with a paean to the unity of knowledge, an all-encompassing metaphysical vision of the universe, “only that deeper understanding which is born of knowledge and of love will enable us to penetrate the inner secrets of life, to illuminate its true spiritual values and to give direction in the world of practical affairs.”⁷²

The only time MacEachran’s philosophy and his work in mental health came together in a published form was in his 1932 article in Mental Hygiene. The editor’s note accompanying this paper states, “This article by Professor MacEachran indicates something of the debt that mental hygiene owes to Greek culture. This is the first of a series of articles to be contributed to MENTAL HYGIENE by various men of distinction.”⁷³ The article is a meditation on the relevance of ancient Greek philosophy for mental hygiene, in particular the philosophy of Plato and the use of katharsis in Greek thought. It is a fairly standard account relying largely on the Charmides and Republic as sources. Katharsis was for Plato a cleansing of the body that in the Charmides is expanded to include a cleansing of the soul. The physician must treat the whole, not merely one part or the other, Socrates is made to say.⁷⁴

MacEachran then appealed to Plato’s dialogues the Laws and the Republic for their focus on restricted marriage and childbearing as a form of ensuring that only the mentally and physically fit reproduce, reading into Plato a standard nineteenth-century version of eugenics. MacEachran argued, “We may not, perhaps, be prepared to go as far as Plato recommends in the way of restricting marriage and the procreation of children; but it is well to recognize that about twenty-five hundred years ago the greatest thinker in the western world was giving the most careful consideration to problems that we, in spite of our much vaunted progress and efficiency, have scarcely attacked or even seriously ventured to discuss in public.”⁷⁵ His concluding comments reiterate the importance of the Greek ideal of katharsis and how it “grew into a great purifying philosophy of life.”⁷⁶ Although MacEachran addresses neither the problem of eugenics directly nor the genuine problems of mental hygiene as these were present in the early years of the Great Depression, he does make a case for human perfection through philosophy. Yet his article is a contribution neither to philosophy nor to mental hygiene but instead rehearses a theme present elsewhere in MacEachran’s philosophical writings: namely, the perfectibility of humankind and the regulation of the social realm.

THE PHILOSOPHER KING?

What to contemporary sensibilities will seem like a great chasm, or at the very least a contradiction, between the fine language of philosophy and the dark work of sterilizing the “mentally unfit” was not so for MacEachran. His work on the AEB was of a piece with his philosophical outlook: it was left to those who were capable and willing to move society forward to make the necessary decisions for those who were not.

That MacEachran was able to continue to work on the AEB until 1965 was all the more remarkable for the deeply disturbing accounts of the Nazi regime that would have been widely disseminated after World War II. The Nazis sterilized somewhere between three hundred and four hundred thousand people following the introduction of a sterilization law in 1934.⁷⁷ More than two hundred “hereditary health courts” were established to facilitate this work, not unlike the eugenics board. Not only the presence of the death camps but also the sterilization and murder of those deemed inferior prior to the war were already well known following the Nuremberg trials.⁷⁸ We have no idea how this news may or may not have affected MacEachran or other members of the board. Yet perhaps his public silence after the early 1930s is not so difficult to interpret. Regardless, his continued and enthusiastic work for the board can only be seen as an endorsement of the principles of eugenics and the rightness of sterilizing those deemed unfit to reproduce.⁷⁹

In this respect, MacEachran’s philosophical preferences suited his work on the AEB. His ability to carry on was facilitated by the board’s lack of accountability, the remoteness of Edmonton and Alberta in the contemporary Canadian context, and the province’s conservative orientation to family and society. The confluence of progressivism and eugenics, forged in the early twentieth century, had long before begun to unravel, while the board continued its work.⁸⁰ Yet that work was protected by statute. We surmise that MacEachran’s personal ethics were protected by an idiosyncratic and highly idealized philosophical world view that supported his understanding of himself as a good public servant, furthering the work of providing the “good life” for a majority of citizens. He was, in effect, doing the work of creating a new society. However, his wilful ignorance of the consequences of Nazi eugenics as well as his insistence on remaining chair of the eugenics board long past retirement age suggest that he had little concern for the people he was charged to protect. Instead, his status as a government and medical insider appear to have governed his actions. His isolation from changing academic norms and developments in science and philosophy, in addition to his inability to read the signs of the times, made him an anachronism on the Prairies in the second half of the twentieth century. This would have been harmless were it not for his indifferent adherence to a practice of sterilization that was based on what a later generation would clearly see as a violation of human rights.