While Canada may pride itself on its multicultural identity as well as its reputation of being a country of polite and friendly people, the country has also slowly been coming to terms with the darker parts of its history. Canada’s history with the immoral belief in eugenics is one of these so-called ‘darker parts’ of this nation’s past. However, when the science of eugenics came to prominence in the early 20th century, it affected the world and left a lasting impact that can still be seen today.
What is Eugenics
Eugenics is the scientifically erroneous set of beliefs and practices aimed at improving the human population through controlled breeding. During its height of popularity, eugenicists worldwide believed that they could ‘perfect’ human beings and eliminate so-called social problems through genetics and heredity. Methods such as involuntary sterilization, segregation, and social exclusion were believed to be able to rid society of individuals deemed by them to be unfit.
Eugenics as a whole included “negative” eugenics (which focused on discouraging or limiting the procreation of people considered to have undesirable characteristics and genes) and “positive” eugenics (focusing on encouraging the procreation of people considered to have desirable characteristics and genes).
How did Eugenics begin
The word “eugenics” is actually derived from the Greek word meaning “well-born.” The term was first coined by Francis Galton, an English statistician and ethnologist (and cousin of Charles Darwin) in 1883. Galton defined eugenics as “the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally.” He claimed that issues such as health and disease, as well as intellectual and social characteristics, were based on the concept of race and hereditary. During the late 19th century, discussions on “human improvement” became increasingly common. Many so-called experts used eugenics as a way to scientifically back racist ideologies.
The movement mainly focused on ‘“negative” eugenics, pursuing this through several different methods aimed at limiting the opportunity for procreation, including sexual sterilization, marriage prohibition, and segregation. This, once again, was all based on certain social and scientific assumptions. One such assumption was that certain characteristics were hereditary. Another assumption was that some of these characteristics were believed to be socially undesirable, so eugenicists thought it would be best to reduce the spread of these traits for society’s best interest. Some of these “undesirable” traits were anything from intellectual disabilities, mental illness, and alcoholism, to even poverty and criminality.
Eugenics across the globe
By the 1920s, eugenics had peaked in popularity becoming a global social movement. There was popular, elite, and government support across the world for the movement in places such as Germany, the United States, Canada, Italy, and many other countries. One of the most well-known applications of eugenics took place in Nazi Germany during the lead up to WWII and the Holocaust, where Nazi German racial state used its resources to “cleanse” the German people and the Nazi state of those they deemed “unworthy of life.” In Germany, Austria, and other occupied territories, Nazis euthanized at least 70,000 adults and 5,200 children. Their campaign of forced sterilization claimed at least 400,000 victims. Not only did this culminate to the near destruction of the Jewish people, but it was done in an effort to eliminate other marginalized ethnic groups, as well as individuals with disabilities. Their justification for the latter was that any individuals that had severe psychiatric, neurological, or physical disabilities were believed to have represented both a genetic and a financial burden on German society and the state and thus should be killed.
However, while the eugenics movement in Nazi Germany is one of the most well-known, the movement gathered a particularly large following in the United States much before World War II began. Led by Charles Davenport and Harry Laughlin, the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) was created “to improve the natural, physical, mental, and temperamental qualities of the human family.” The movement spread across America and even gave birth to “fitter family” and “better baby” competitions at fairs and exhibitions. Due to the types of legislation that eugenicists were pushing, Nazis even turned to California for advice in perfecting their own efforts. Hitler proudly admitted to following the laws of several American states that allowed for the prevention of reproduction of the “unfit.” Fortunately, the US eugenics movement began to lose power in the 1940s and was wholly discredited following the horrors of Nazi Germany.
Eugenics in Canada
Canada has it’s own dark history involving eugenics, particularly in the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia where, for a number of years, the government sterilized mentally ill men and women without their consent. For the most part, eugenic policies were considered progressive among many Canadians, including some socialists, feminists, farmers, and psychiatrists; they were under the assumption that Canadian society could be improved by encouraging reproduction among certain groups — particularly Anglo-Saxon Protestants — and discouraging or limiting reproduction among other groups, including Eastern European immigrants and, increasingly, Indigenous people.
Alberta’s 1928 Sexual Sterilization Act created a Eugenics Board that was empowered to recommend sterilization as a condition for release from a mental health institution. An amendment in 1937 even permitted the sterilization of “mental defectives” without their consent. It was only until decades after that this act was eliminated, however, this still remains a dark stain on Canada’s history.
Modern Eugenics?
While many Canadians may assume eugenics is a thing of the past, this ignores the fact that sexual sterilizations continued in Canada, even after sterilization legislation was repealed in the 1970s. Some experts even warn that the world is sliding into a new form of eugenics in the 21st century. A professor from the University of Victoria, Tanis Doe, argued that prenatal testing of fetuses is akin to Nazi-style eugenics, a purging of the disabled from society. According to the professor, there has been a widespread acceptance among western societies that disabled fetuses should not be brought to term. Many parents nowadays may choose to abort fetuses diagnosed with genetic disorders such as Down Syndrome and spina bifida. With new advances such as the Human Genome Project (HGP) and, more recently, advances in genomic screening technologies, there is some concern about whether generating an increasing amount of genomic information in the prenatal time would lead to new societal pressures to terminate pregnancies where the fetus is at heightened risk for genetic disorders. Of course, whether genetic screening and genetic engineering actually should be labeled as “new eugenics” is a matter of debate, it is a topic that raises pressing questions about human rights, scientific ethics, and (dis)ability.
“If any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power.”
– C. S. Lewis
