1. Falsifying Orphans’ Psychiatric Diagnoses for Profit
Duplessis signed an order that instantly transformed Quebec’s orphanages into hospitals. That entitled their religious order administrators – and ultimately the Catholic Church of Quebec – to receive the higher subsidy rates for hospitals. By the time the scandalous state of affairs was finally uncovered decades later, over 20,000 otherwise mentally sound Quebecoise orphans had been misdiagnosed with psychiatric ailments. Once they were misdiagnosed, the orphans were declared “mentally deficient”. It was not just a paperwork technicality. Once misdiagnosed as “mentally deficient”, the orphans’ schooling stopped, and they became inmates in poorly supervised mental institutions. There, the children were often subjected by nuns and lay monitors to mental and all kinds of physical abuse. Decades later, Quebec’s government offered survivors a paltry compensation of about C$25,000 each. It was still more redress than that offered by the Catholic Church, which still disputes the claims of those seeking compensation for harm done.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading
Canada’s Human Rights History – Duplessis Orphans
Canadian Encyclopedia – Doukhobors
Clement, Dominique – Canada’s Rights Revolution: Social Movement and Social Change, 1937-82 (2008)
Indian Country Today, June 30th, 2021 – 182 Unmarked Graves Found at Third Former Residential School
Indigenous Foundations – The Residential School System
New York Times, May 21st, 1993 – Orphans of the 1950s, Telling of Abuse, Sue Quebec
Russian Review, Vol. 21, No. 3 (July, 1962) – The Sons of Freedom and the Promised Land
