The 20th-century ideas and practices aimed at “improving human stock” known as eugenics were influential across the world, including in Canada. In 1928, the province of Alberta introduced the Sexual Sterilization Act, which promoted the practice of surgical sterilization for those deemed “mental defectives”, a practice in effect until 1972. British Columbia was the only other Canadian province to enact comparable eugenic sterilization legislation, which was in place until 1973. This History has special significance for people with disabilities and others marginalized by eugenic ideas today.
Undertaken with the generous support of the Community-University Research Alliance (CURA) program of the federal funding agency SSHRCC, Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada has developed accessible resources to explore the history of eugenics in Canada’s west and the contemporary significance of that history. (more...)
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