Canadians airbrush the truth about Tommy Douglas’s enthusiasm for eugenics
Tom Blackwell - Mar 14, 2012
Canadians suffer from a “collective national amnesia” regarding Tommy Douglas’s support for eugenics, likely because they are reluctant to taint the medicare pioneer’s glowing image with unsavoury ideas, suggests a prominent McGill University physician in a new analysis.
Biographies and other accounts of Mr. Douglas’s life have either ignored or down-played his striking embrace in the mid-1930s of forced sterilization and segregation for people of “sub-normal” intelligence and morality, says Dr. Michael Shevell in a newly published academic paper.
He argues that people should instead make a point of remembering the CCF/NDP leader’s early advocacy of eugenics as a cautionary tale about simplistic medical solutions to social problems — even as they admire his many other, positive accomplishments.
Tags: sterilization
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