4 The Alberta Eugenics Movement and the 1937 Amendment to the Sexual Sterilization Act

Mikkel Dack

The scholarly study of eugenics in Alberta has been seriously limited, as concentration has been restricted to the province’s original Sexual Sterilization Act, passed in March 1928, and to the political, social, and economic conditions of the 1920s. Although the 1928 act was of great significance, being the first sterilization law passed in Canada, it was its 1937 amendment and the permitting of involuntary sterilizations that made the Alberta eugenics movement truly distinct. During the mid- to late 1930s—a time when the majority of regional governments in the United States and Canada were either decommissioning or disregarding their sterilization laws due to a lack of funding, the discrediting of hereditary science, and an increase in public protest—Alberta expanded its own legislation. Although similar laws were met with fierce opposition in other jurisdictions, the 1937 amendment remained largely unopposed in Alberta. As such, while this chapter explores the legislative and cultural history of one Canadian province, it also considers how eugenics laws in Alberta compared to similar legislation in other provinces and in the United States and Europe.

Explanations of why the act was amended and why resistance to non-consensual sterilization remained minimal during the 1930s and 1940s have been based almost entirely on political and social assumptions and not on sound evidence. In the existing scholarship, the 1937 amendment is either characterized as legislation that accurately reflected the political and social climate of the 1920s or included in the narrative of the “quiet longevity” of sterilization practices after the Second World War. By elevating the 1937 amendment into an arena of scholarly discussion and dismissing the preconceived notions and arguments of the past we are left with a new grounding from which to build future propositions and with a new set of sharpened questions to help determine why the Alberta government, and presumably its citizens, were willing to condone such regressive legislation when it was being ignored and rejected elsewhere on the continent. By doing so, new theories arise, such as the influential role of individual personalities within the provincial government and medical community, the definition and diagnosis of “mental deficiency” in Canada, and the means by which political opposition and public protest could be expressed in the 1930s.

THE INTERNATIONAL EUGENICS MOVEMENT

The modern eugenics movement, which developed at the turn of the nineteenth century under the English anthropologist and natural philosopher Sir Francis Galton (1822–1911), promoted “healthy living” and “social purity” and focused on both positive and negative eugenics practices as a means to eliminate hereditary disease and “feeble-mindedness.”¹ The British upper and middle classes of the late nineteenth century feared social degeneration and a “racial suicide.” However, it was not in Britain where such socio-scientific concepts were first introduced into the political sphere, or even in Europe; instead, it was the United States that pioneered eugenics legislation. By 1917, sterilization laws had been enacted in fifteen states and by 1937, in thirty-one.² These acts were often accompanied by newly revised marriage and immigration laws, many of which possessed strong undertones of racial prejudice.³ In 1910, the Eugenics Record Office (ERO), headed by Dr. Charles B. Davenport (1866–1944), was established in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, and it soon became the institutional nerve centre for human hereditary research in North America.⁴ Backed by a belief in the legitimacy of hereditary science, inspired by an age of modernization and progressivism and accompanied by a fear of unregulated immigration and “race defilement,” the United States became the international leader of eugenics in the 1920s, and by 1935 over twenty-one thousand sterilizations had been performed.⁵

Although eugenics as a social and scientific movement had officially existed in Germany since 1905, and the liberal-democratic government of the Weimar Republic often applied eugenics-based theory to various health and social programs, it was during the National Socialist period that Germany would surpass the United States in its total number of eugenic laws.⁶ On July 14, 1933, the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases was passed, permitting the sterilization of German citizens affiliated with “feeblemindedness,” schizophrenia, epilepsy, and other “incurable diseases.”⁷ In November 1935, the so-called Nuremberg (Race) Laws were enacted, detailing strict racial classifications and forbidding sexual and marital relations between Jews and “citizens of German or kindred blood.”⁸ Although the German eugenics programs during the 1930s were far more radical than those in any other country, sterilizing nearly 375,000 people between 1933 and 1945, its collaboration with eugenicists in the United States cannot be overlooked.⁹ Not only did Germany attempt to emulate the United States in its sterilization practices; the ERO and the American Eugenics Society (AES) eventually became the strongest foreign supporters of Nazi eugenics, regardless of its extreme nature and racial tone.¹⁰ After a visit to Germany in 1934, the head of the AES, Leon Fradley Whitney (1894–1973), remarked that he was determined to work toward “something very like what [Adolf] Hitler has now made compulsory” and that Nazi eugenics measures corresponded with the “goals of eugenicists all over the world.”¹¹

THE EUGENICS MOVEMENT IN ALBERTA AND THE 1928 SEXUAL STERILIZATION ACT

The Canadian eugenics movement was informed by both the American pioneers of the 1920s and the German radicals of the 1930s.¹² The mass influx of immigrants into the young country, beginning in the 1890s, and concern about the mentally ill and “feeblemindedness” in Canadian society had dominated debates on eugenics well into the 1920s. The Canadian National Committee on Mental Hygiene (CNCMH), which was established in 1918 with the goal to “fight crime, prostitution and unemployment,” conducted province-wide surveys on the health and wellness of the nation’s residents, all of which reported “negative results.”¹³ Although eugenics organizations were formed in all Canadian provinces during the 1920s, the warnings of the CNCMH found their greatest resonance in Alberta. Western Canada in the 1920s provided an ideal climate for the acceptance of eugenics science, not only because of the fear produced by a large and ever-growing immigrant population (see also chapter 3), but also because it was a reforming society rife with social gospellers, radical politicians, and women’s suffragists, many of whom advocated a philosophy of progress based upon the application of science. In 1921 the United Farmers of Alberta (UFA) formed a majority in the provincial legislature, immediately advocating for the establishment of sterilization laws.

The United Farm Women of Alberta (UFWA), an auxiliary of the UFA, spearheaded efforts to enact compulsory sterilization, seeking “racial betterment through the weeding out of undesirable strains.”¹⁴ In 1922, the province’s minister of health, Richard G. Reid (1879–1980), announced that the government was in favour of sterilization. However, it would be six years before his position would materialize into provincial legislation.¹⁵ On March 21, 1928, the UFA government enacted Canada’s first legislation concerning the sterilization of mentally disabled persons.¹⁶ Passed by the legislative assembly after three separate readings, the Sexual Sterilization Act established a four-person eugenics board, composed mostly of senior physicians, who could authorize the sterilization of individuals discharged from mental institutions. During its forty-four years of existence, the Alberta Eugenics Board (AEB) reviewed 4,785 cases for potential sterilization, of which 2,835 were performed.¹⁷ Candidates were selected from four “feeder-hospitals” throughout the province, which included Alberta Hospital (Ponoka), Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives (Red Deer), Alberta Hospital (Oliver), and Deer Home (Red Deer).¹⁸ Physicians or psychiatrists at these institutions would recommend patients for sterilization and present their cases to the AEB, along with information on the patient’s family and a detailed history of their sexual activities, education, criminal behaviour, and finances. The board would then interview the patient and ask for personal consent from them or their legal guardian. On average, the AEB reviewed thirteen cases during each of its hour-long sessions, with sometimes not even five minutes of discussion for each recommendation (see also chapter 1).¹⁹

Although legal equivalents to the Alberta sterilization law could be found throughout the United States, by the mid-1930s important scientific and political groups in both countries had grown more skeptical about the practice of eugenic science. The rising status of Nazi Germany in world affairs had led to a closer examination of the Reich’s health programs and racial laws, resulting in a decline in negative eugenic practices in North America.²⁰ The Nazi regime’s tendency to use racial hygiene to justify sterilization and euthanasia began to severely discredit the eugenics movement.²¹ In the United States politicians debated over the “absurd premises of Nordicism” claimed by the National Socialist government and the scientific basis of discrimination against Jews.²² One anti-sterilization pamphlet, published in Canada in 1936, announced that “eugenics rests entirely on a few unproved and even dubious theories. Consider for example the myth of ‘racial superiority.’ ”²³ This decline was perpetuated by a loss of financial support from wealthy sponsors, a general questioning of simplistic genetic claims by the scientific community, and the retirement or death of many prominent figures who had supported programs of racial eugenics.²⁴ Furthermore, in the late 1930s a new generation of progressive social eugenicists began to promote positive eugenics. By the late 1930s sterilization operations in the United States had dropped to 1.68 per 100,000 population, while Alberta’s sterilization rate had reached 6.21 per 100,000, or nearly four times the American average.²⁵

During this period of international decline in the practice of negative eugenics, the majority of sterilization laws in the United States were simply ignored, though they remained in the statute books; however, Alberta continued to apply its legislation fairly widely.²⁶ In fact, in 1937 the Social Credit minister of health, Dr. Wallace Cross (1887–1973), complained to the legislature that in the nine years since the passing of the province’s sterilization law only four hundred “abnormal persons” had been sterilized and not the two thousand that he believed were qualified.²⁷ His government considered the Sexual Sterilization Act too restrictive and therefore proposed an amendment to the law that would grant the AEB authority to compel the sterilization of patients without consent. The director of the mental health services for the province, Dr. Charles Baragar (1885–1936), also advocated for the removal of the consent requirement for “mental defectives,” writing that “the Sexual Sterilization Act is a very mild one. On account of the necessity for securing consent in all cases there are a number of cases in which sexual sterilization would be strongly advisable . . . to whom consent cannot be obtained.”²⁸ An editorial in the Edmonton Bulletin voiced similar concerns, explaining that “only ten years ago there were three hundred hopeless mental defectives in Alberta and now there are three thousand.”²⁹ Amid such popular sentiments, the sterilization act was amended in March 1937 and the AEB given consensual rights to perform sterilization on those patients whom they believed posed a “risk of mental injury, either to the individual or to his or her progeny.”³⁰

A second amendment of similar features was passed in 1942, before the law was abolished by the government of Peter Lougheed (1928–2012) in 1972.³¹ While most provincial and state governments were either decommissioning or disregarding their sterilization laws due to a lack of funding, an increase in public scrutiny, and the discrediting of hereditary science, Alberta’s expanding legislation appeared to remain virtually unopposed by government officials, health administrators, and the general public. The 1928 Sexual Sterilization Act and its public discourse have since been thoroughly investigated by scholars searching for a rationale as to why no significant form of protest accompanied the law’s enactment.³² However, the study of eugenics in Alberta has been importantly restrained, as scholars have concentrated largely on the original sterilization act and on the political, social, and economic conditions that existed in Alberta during the 1920s. More recent studies have looked to the longevity of sterilization legislation in Alberta to account for the passing of the amendment of 1937, arguing that by the time negative eugenics science had been discredited internationally, the sterilization legislation in Alberta had moved beyond the purview of the general public, allowing for the quiet continuation of such practices.³³ Although the 1928 act was of great significance, as it was the first sterilization law passed in Canada, within a larger context of North America, its enactment was quite ordinary.³⁴ The 1937 amendment and the relatively late onset of legislation that permitted involuntary sterilizations, on the other hand, was not; this is where the Alberta eugenics movement was truly distinct and where further study must be conducted.

Due to a heavy concentration on the original sterilization law and to the overall longevity of involuntary sterilizations in Alberta, scholarly explanations for why the act was amended in 1937 and why resistance to sexual sterilization remained minimal during the 1930s and 1940s have been unsatisfactory. The four most common explanations given by historians and scholars for why resistance did not emerge in Alberta during the 1920s and 1930s are (1) that the province experienced a mass influx of immigrants, resulting in fears that an “inferior stock” was polluting the local community, (2) that the general public was unaware of the sterilization laws themselves, as such legislation was confined to the conversations and debates of politicians and health administrators, (3) that the public was unaware of the racial eugenic programs in Nazi Germany, the discrediting of hereditary science, and the decline of eugenics movements throughout North America, and (4) that there was a popular belief that eugenics legislation would improve the economic conditions of the province and that sexual sterilization would help reduce frivolous government spending. Although all these explanations for the public acceptance of government-sanctioned sterilization are plausible within the political, social, and cultural context of the 1920s, they quickly lose their relevance when applied to the 1930s. To obtain a greater understanding as to why Alberta seemingly embraced eugenics legislation with such enthusiasm and why involuntary sterilization appeared to be socially uncontested, the 1930s must be studied in isolation and not merely as an extension of the 1920s eugenics movement or the thirty years of unpublicized and discreet sterilization practices that followed the Second World War. Only then can a new scholarly investigation be conducted and the question of why Alberta remained one of the strongest advocates for sexual sterilization in North America during the twentieth century answered.

IMMIGRATION

In his doctoral dissertation, Terrence Chapman argues that mass immigration to Alberta during the 1920s was the single largest motivator for the passing of the Sexual Sterilization Act in 1928.³⁵ At the turn of the century, Canadian immigration was still governed by the terms of the 1869 Immigration Act, a more or less open-door policy for European immigrants that required no medical inspection upon disembarking at Canadian ports.³⁶ From 1901 to 1911, the population of Canada increased by 43 percent, and in 1913 alone more than four hundred thousand immigrants were permitted residency in the country, a large proportion of whom migrated west to the Prairie provinces.³⁷ In combination with the effects of the First World War and Great Depression, the increasing immigrant population caused many middle-class Canadians to fear national degeneration. Historian Timothy Christian supports such claims, drawing considerable attention to the Mental Hygiene Survey published in 1921 that reported that only 49 percent of people living in Alberta were born in Canada and that the high level of “unfit elements” was largely due to immigration, specifically from eastern Europe.³⁸ In 1922, the former minister of the interior, Clifford Sifton (1861–1929), renounced Canada’s immigration policy, arguing that Alberta had been overrun by undesirable immigrants and that the Canadian federal government had “not been admitting those individuals of the most rugged fibre.”³⁹ The Farm and Ranch Review expressed similar grievances, explaining to its readers that “the immigrants [in Alberta] are beaten men from beaten races.”⁴⁰ As early as 1924 the UFWA began to organize a campaign against the immigration of the “insane and feeble-minded” into the province, calling for either physical segregation or social assimilation; they chose assimilation and sexual sterilization as means to achieve eugenics results.⁴¹

However, a review of government statistics and of popular media of the time suggests that such trends in western immigration, and the fears that accompanied them, changed substantially in 1930s. When Richard Bedford Bennett (1870–1947), the first leader of the Alberta Conservative Party, won the federal election in 1930, he promised not only an end to unemployment, but also a drastic reduction in immigration.⁴² Within three months of taking office, Bennett’s Conservative government imposed a series of legal restrictions resulting in the most rigid immigration admissions policy in Canadian history.⁴³ While as many as 165,000 immigrants had entered Canada in 1929, in 1936 that number was only 12,000—more than a 90 percent drop in only seven years.⁴⁴ The early 1930s also saw the deportation of more than 25,000 immigrants who had been recipients of public assistance and considered to be a “drain on Canadian society.”⁴⁵ In the 1920s Alberta itself had admitted upwards of 20,000 immigrants per year; by the mid-1930s, however, due to government’s response to a popular fear of rising unemployment, that number had fallen to under a thousand.⁴⁶ In 1935 only 735 immigrants arrived in Alberta.⁴⁷ Furthermore, of the small number of immigrants received by the province during these years, few were from eastern Europe and other regions that the CNCMH and the UFWA had targeted during their original sterilization campaign in the 1920s.⁴⁸

Christian has argued that despite any decrease in Alberta’s immigration rates in the 1930s, the fear of immigration among the resident population had remained unchanged, owing to such a large influx of foreigners during the four previous decades.⁴⁹ However, a close examination of popular newspapers of the time challenges this argument. News of Bennett’s restrictive admission policy and Alberta’s dramatic drop in immigration was widely published in local newspapers; in fact, from 1930 to 1935 such stories were often found on the front pages. On March 7, 1929, the Edmonton Journal reassured its readers with the headline “Immigration Activities Will Be Curbed” and noted that, in the future, “the proper restrictions shall be exercised over the character of immigration in the country’s interests.”⁵⁰ The Calgary Daily Herald ran similar headlines, informing the public that an immigration advisory body had been formed and that “immigration . . . to Canada has fallen off greatly.”⁵¹ Not only had immigration to Alberta been nearly eliminated by the mid-1930s, but the population knew that it had been. The fear of mentally deficient immigrants who were already living in the province may have lingered, but it can be assumed that during the 1930s Albertans saw the problem of immigration in a much different light; it was no longer seen as a growing threat, one that required extreme and immediate action to prevent its expansion.

LACK OF PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE OF THE STERILIZATION LAWS

A common explanation given by scholars for why Albertans did not oppose the sexual sterilization program is that there was a general lack of public knowledge of the laws themselves and that such information was confined to conversations and debates among politicians and health administrators. This argument at first glance is believable, as all AEB sessions were closed to the public and the majority of debates surrounding eugenics legislation were carried out either in the provincial legislature and the office of the minister of health or within medical journals that few Albertans read. However, the examination of newspapers and other publications of the time casts doubts on the applicability of this argument to the 1930s. The original Sexual Sterilization Act of 1928 was loudly announced in the media the very day of its enactment. On March 7, 1928, the front page of the Edmonton Bulletin declared, “Sterilization Bill Passes Third Reading.”⁵² During the period of political debate that preceded the act, newspapers spoke of the “sterilization of defectives,” arguing that such proposed legislation was necessary due to the “appalling growth of the mental defectives in the various provincial institutions.”⁵³

On December 9, 1935, the Edmonton Bulletin published a special report on the eugenics debate in Canada, highlighting the various sterilization laws that had been passed in the United States and Europe and their influence on provincial legislation.⁵⁴ The Calgary Daily Herald, in its coverage of the 1937 amendment, questioned the authority of the AEB, explaining to its readers how “this medical body is able to order operations on under age mental cases.”⁵⁵ Furthermore, a number of pamphlets and books were published in Canada in the mid-1930s, mostly by religious organizations, which were widely distributed across the country and spoke out specifically against Alberta’s sterilization law. In 1934, Canadian lawyer Lettilia Fairfield’s (1885–1978) The Case against Sterilization was published, as was Canadian physician Helen MacMurchy’s (1862–1953) Sterilization? Birth Control? A Book for Family Welfare and Safety; two years later, Québec-based theologian Antoine d’Eschambault (1896–1960), wrote Eugenical Sterilization.⁵⁶ All of these works condemned Alberta’s sterilization practices on moral, scientific, and economic grounds.

Due to the wide exposure of Alberta’s sterilization laws in the popular press, and the availability of anti-eugenic literature, it is difficult to believe that the province’s population, or at least the proportion that actively read, remained ignorant of sterilization activities during the 1930s. Media sources not only printed the details of the 1937 amendment but also reiterated the discussions and debate that surrounded the new and existing sterilization legislation (on the comparative role of the media in the US see chapter 6). Albertans may not have been informed of the day-to-day administration and operation of sterilization activities, as such information was reserved for politicians and the medical community, but they were well informed of eugenics legislation that had been passed in the Legislature, the political and social ramifications that it entailed, and the amendment to the law in 1937.

NAZI RACIALISM AND THE DECLINE OF NEGATIVE EUGENICS PROGRAMS

Another common explanation for the lack of opposition to Alberta’s sexual sterilization program, including the 1937 amendment, is twofold: that the province’s media did not provide sufficient coverage of racial eugenic practices in Nazi Germany, and that, as historian Angus McLaren has argued, “the general public was not made aware of the declining scientific respectability of eugenics.”⁵⁷ This argument is of relevance because many other jurisdictions in North America witnessed a loss of popular support for eugenics reputedly due to Nazi activities in the same field. In examining the available evidence, it becomes clear that the general public in Alberta was exposed to a considerable amount of information regarding Nazi racial ideology and eugenics legislation, as well as to the international decline of negative eugenics, mainly through the popular press. On July 16, 1933, the Edmonton Journal published a full-page editorial entitled “Whither Germany?” in which a review of the current conditions of the new regime was conducted. What inspired this special inquiry was the passing two days prior of a new eugenics law in Germany, the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring. In this editorial, the paper not only detailed the specific terms of the new law, but also reviewed other controversial legislation and government programs that had been implemented in Nazi Germany. It criticized Germany’s racial health programs, its determination to “decry everything foreign,” and its attempts to “reintegrate the whole of the German race.”⁵⁸ Close coverage of Nazi health legislation again appeared with the passing of the first two measures of the Nuremburg Laws in September 1935. The Calgary Daily Herald ran front-page headlines announcing “Nazis Bar Jews from Citizenship” and “New Laws Persecute German Jews.”⁵⁹ These articles recounted the details of the new racial laws, explaining to their readers how “race now determines German status” and how “marriage laws are governed by race.”⁶⁰

Newspapers were not the only sources that delivered news to Albertans about German anti-Semitic legislation and racial health practices. The international boycott movement that had preceded the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin had found strong support among sporting organizations in Alberta and had sparked a considerable amount of protest against German acts of racial persecution and violence.⁶¹ Furthermore, during a trip to Germany in 1936, future premier of Saskatchewan Tommy Douglas (1904–86) admitted to the press that he had been “turned away from eugenics” after learning more of the Nazis’ sterilization laws, calling them “frightening.”⁶² Whether informed by the local press, by sports organizations and returning athletes, or by politicians, Albertans had knowledge of Nazi social and health programs—all of which were grounded in racial ideology and enforced through oppression and violence.

There is substantial evidence to suggest that Albertans were also aware of the general decline of the eugenics movements throughout North America beginning in the mid-1930s. The Edmonton Journal, the Edmonton Bulletin, and the Calgary Daily Herald all printed articles on the debates and discussions that were occurring in various state legislatures in the United States regarding existing sterilization laws. On January 16, 1936, the Edmonton Bulletin reprinted a New York Times editorial entitled “Against Sterilization,” in which the scientific qualifications of eugenics was challenged.⁶³ Similar articles from the Associated Press and the Washington Post also appeared in Alberta newspapers, with headlines reading “Sterilization Forced upon Her by Mother, Heiress Charged” and “Woman Is Saved from Sterilization.”⁶⁴ This popular questioning of sterilization as a means to solve social, economic, and health problems renders it unlikely that Albertans were unaware of the decline of eugenics movements and the discrediting of heredity science.

ECONOMIC CONSIDERATIONS

The final, and possibly strongest, argument made by scholars to account for the lack of opposition to the province’s sexual sterilization program proposes that there was a popular belief among Albertans during the 1930s that sexual sterilization would improve the province’s economic situation. McLaren argues that mentally deficient patients who were institutionalized in hospitals and psychiatric wards were often seen as an economic burden to the province and its taxpayers.⁶⁵ It can be assumed that such sentiments would only have been amplified during the 1930s as the nation sunk deep into economic depression. Sociologist Jana Grekul explains how the CNCMH announced in 1932 that its long-term goal was to fight “crime, prostitution, and unemployment,” all of which it claimed were related to the economic burden of “feeble-minded” individuals.⁶⁶ A contributor to The Canadian Doctor expressed a similar opinion in the journal’s January 1936 issue, arguing that Alberta’s Sterilization Act should be expanded due to the fact that it would save “immense amounts of money.”⁶⁷ However, newspaper articles, popular literature, political interviews, and debates in the legislature from this period challenge this argument as well.

Dr. Clarence M. Hincks (1889–1964), University of Toronto professor and co-founder of the Canadian Mental Health Association, in his federally commissioned survey of Alberta’s “mental hygiene” argued that sexual sterilization operations should be expanded within the province in order to eliminate the “unfit.”⁶⁸ In his assessment he warned that if the province did not amend its Sexual Sterilization Act then the “moral sense of Alberta” would be jeopardized. Nowhere in his comprehensive report did Hincks mention the economic considerations of sterilization.⁶⁹ Dr. Charles Baragar (1885–1936) presented a similar case to the minister of health in June 1936, arguing that “on account of the necessity for securing consent in all cases . . . the quality of citizens of this province has been lessened.”⁷⁰ During the second reading of the proposed bill, George Hoadley (1867–1955), Alberta’s minister of agriculture and health, referred to the need for the province to be “protected from the menace which the propagation by the mentally diseased brings about” and that the “mentally unfit” were a “menace to the community.”⁷¹ Hoadley was referring to not an economic menace, but instead a menace to the “civilized world,” closely resembling the Nazi racial interpretation of Volk and the burden of the Untermensch (subhuman). Hoadley concluded his speech by stating that “if it is quantity of production of the human race that is required, then we don’t need this Bill, but if we want quality then it is a different matter.”⁷² It becomes abundantly clear through these recorded statements that the most important figures in the sterilization movement in Alberta during the 1930s viewed the amendment as, above all things, a remedy for social and cultural ailments, and not as an answer to economic depression and frivolous government spending.

This tendency to concentrate on the quality of the human race rather than on economic factors was not confined to the opinions of politicians. Newspapers and popular literature of the 1930s produced a similar message. In an editorial discussing the possibility of amending the sterilization act, the Medicine Hat News stated that it is the “quality of humanity that is in question.”⁷³ An article published in the medical journal Mental Health spoke similar rhetoric, with one member of the medical community suggesting that Albertans should “get away from the concerns of sterilization as a cost form of sentiment and give more attention to raising and safeguarding the purity of the race.”⁷⁴ An editorial in the Lethbridge Herald continued this line of reasoning, arguing that “the remedy is obvious. It is a question of humanity. Insane people are not entitled to progeny.”⁷⁵ The words of UFWA president Margaret Gunn were also published; she stated that “the government should pursue a policy of racial betterment” so that the “vitality of our civilization” would not be lowered.⁷⁶ The economic argument for the amendment of the Sexual Sterilization Act was seen by most politicians and eugenicists as second to the primary concern of preventing social negligence and crime. Economic factors were surely considered, both in private circles and within the public arena; however, they were not the strongest motivator for the expansion of eugenics legislation in the 1930s. If they were, they were not publicly promoted as much as other factors were, whether by those who wrote the amendment, by those who passed it in the Legislature, or by those who conveyed its details to the public. The politicians, medical administrators, and media sources were concerned with the intellectual and racial quality of Alberta’s citizens rather than the economic burdens that might be placed upon them.

CONCLUSION

After reviewing and re-evaluating the various arguments employed by scholars to account for Alberta’s support for or indifference to sterilization legislation in the 1930s, it becomes clear that such claims may be exaggerated, or their relevance misinterpreted. Immigration to Alberta was drastically reduced in the 1930s and the public was aware of this; the province’s sterilization law and the moral debate that surrounded it were widely published in the media, as were the details of eugenic practices in Nazi Germany. Furthermore, the economic motivations for sterilization were constantly superseded by racial and cultural motivations. These realizations are not sufficient in answering the question of why Alberta politicians and members of the medical community—and presumably the greater public—continued to embrace negative eugenics during its international decline. However, they do bring us closer to an answer to these challenging historical questions.

This explorative chapter has made two arguments, or perhaps suggestions, regarding the future study of the history of negative eugenics in Alberta. First, scholarly attention on the subject should shift from the 1928 Sexual Sterilization Act to its 1937 amendment and, more generally, to the eugenics movement and eugenic practices in Alberta during the 1930s. The much studied 1928 act, while significant, was not unique in its content, scope, or popularity; many state governments in the United States, as well as other countries, passed similar legislation around the same time. The 1937 amendment and the legalization of non-consensual sterilization, however, was a dramatic and unusual deviation from the national and international eugenics movement. The Alberta doctors, social reformers, and legislators who endorsed this amendment were going against the grain. The second suggestion is that when examining the unorthodox decision to expand sterilization in Alberta, researchers should discard familiar lenses of interpretation. Much had changed in Alberta, and in Canada, between the passing of the original sterilization act in 1928 and its amendment in 1937: politics, the economy, immigration, the media, even cultural norms had shifted. To understand the uniqueness of the 1937 amendment, an original scope of analysis should be applied and new variables considered.

This author suggests that future inquiries into the radicalization of eugenics legislation in Alberta should begin with the study of individual personalities: the eugenicists, politicians, and social advocates who played an instrumental role in the implementation of sterilization laws and practices. Figures such as Hoadley, the minister of health; Gunn, the UFWA president; and Dr. John MacEachran (1877–1971), long-time chair of the AEB, should be examined, their personal opinions further investigated, and the extent of their political influence considered.⁷⁷ This avenue of research is already being pursued, with studies being conducted on Hincks and Hoadley (and in chapter 1, Henderikus J. Stam and Ashley Barlow scrutinize MacEachran’s contribution to eugenics in Alberta). Still, other individuals should be researched, such as University of Alberta president and outspoken advocate of eugenic sterilization Robert Charles Wallace (1881–1955); Alberta’s minister of health, Richard G. Reid (1879–1980); and geneticist and former AEB member Dr. Margaret Thompson (1920–2014).⁷⁸ Furthermore, a clear distinction needs to be made between the opinions of such influential figures and the popular public opinion in the 1930s, as it is often assumed that one simply mirrored the other.⁷⁹

Next, a closer study of the immigrant population of Alberta should be conducted, with regard not only to their “mental state” but also to their social and economic origins.⁸⁰ Were immigrants who entered Alberta more prone to mental deficiencies, resulting from either the emotional endeavour of their displacement or their economic background? Also, is it possible that the diagnosis of “mental deficiency” in immigrants did not account for certain emotional factors and cultural differences? A close study should also be made of the various means by which political resistance could be expressed in Alberta during the 1930s. What organizations and means of correspondence were available through which to voice protest? Perhaps opposition to sterilization laws was present but unable to be heard outside of the political and medical realms. Particular attention should be given to the influence (or lack thereof) of the Roman Catholic Church in Alberta, the liberal politicians of the provincial opposition, and the nature of editorial columns in major newspapers.⁸¹ In chapter 5, Erna Kurbegović shows that the Catholic Church voiced significant opposition to sterilization legislation in Manitoba; was similar protest expressed by the church in Alberta?

Finally, the international exchanges of the Canadian eugenics landscape should be explored in detail. Alberta eugenicists not only worked to emulate their American and European forebears, they corresponded directly with them, including physicians working under the Nazi regime (see, for example, Frank W. Stahnisch’s chapter 7 on holist neurologist Kurt Goldstein). This international collaboration has only begun to emerge in the scholarship and is the reason why this current edited volume is so valuable. These questions and others can and should be asked with much more precision and confidence now that the arguments and explanations of the past, having long misled and hindered the study of this important historical topic, have been dismissed.⁸²