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And Neither Have I Wings to Fly:: Labelled and Locked Up in Canada's Oldest Institution
Contributor(s): Wheatley, Thelma (Author)

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 ISBN: 192670858X     ISBN-13: 9781926708584
Publisher: Inanna Publications & Education
OUR PRICE: $23.70  

Binding Type: Paperback - See All Available Formats & Editions
Published: April 2013
* Out of Print *
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Women's Studies
- Literary Criticism
- Political Science | Public Policy - Social Services & Welfare
Dewey: 362.3
Physical Information: 1.1" H x 6" W x 8.9" L (1.50 lbs) 320 pages
Themes:
- Sex & Gender - Feminine
Features: Bibliography
Awards: Independent Publisher Book Awards, Bronze Medal Winner, Psychology/Mental Health, 2014
Review Citations: Quill & Quire 07/01/2013 pg. 38
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
Literary Nonfiction. The shocking true story of the institutionalization and abuse of children and adults with intellectual and physical handicaps in Canada's oldest provincial institution in Orillia, Ontario. Daisy Lumsden and her family were such victims, along with over ten thousand children, including infants, and adults with intellectual disabilities committed over the last century to the institution now known as Huronia Regional Centre, formerly the Asylum for Idiots and Feeble-Minded.

The time frame of the book, 1900-1966, covers the most controversial decades in its history, a time of over-crowding and abuses that reached a crux in the 1950s and 1960s when the inmate population was nearly 3000. Victims of the rising eugenic ideology of the early 1900s that infiltrated Canada from United States and Britain, advocating segregation and involuntary sterilization of the feeble-minded, Daisy's family--uneducated, ignorant, unemployed, incestuous, poor--were easily identifiable as feeble-minded and unfit, unwittingly caught up in a genetic survival of the fittest. But who are the unfit in our society? And who decides?

Powerful expos of a part of Canadian history kept secret--the book exposes the role of psychiatrists and leading eugenicists in Canada in the abuse of intellectual and physically handicapped children's civil rights in Canada. A true story, it is highly readable and includes full historical data, endnotes, historical sources, photographs, and a bibliography. Readers will experience what it is like being locked up in an institution through the first-hand experiences of heroine Daisy Lumsden and members of her family. Original patient records and psychiatrists reports are incorporated throughout the story providing integrity. The book brings to light a shameful part of Canada's history too long swept under the table.

Of note: A current $1-billion class-action lawsuit is underway against the government of Ontario and the institution for failure to provide proper care and protection for those living within its walls. This book is at the heart of it.

Contributor Bio(s): Wheatley, Thelma: - Thelma Wheatley is the author of My Sad Is All Gone: A Family's Triumph Over Violent Autism (Lucky Press, Ohio, 2004), a book about raising her autistic child. Her award-winning short fiction has been published in a number of literary journals across Canada. Past president of Autism Society Ontario, Peel Region, Wheatley continues to be in demand as a speaker on violence and autism. She is on the Board of the Friends of the Archives, Museum of Mental Health, CAMH, and is currently editor of the Friends of the Archives Newsletter.
 
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