Nouvel Observateur Hebdo N° 1856 - 1/6/2000

De notre envoyé spécial à Montréal

Québec: les orphelins de Dieu

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Parce que l'Eglise de la Belle Province avait besoin d'argent,

près de 3000 orphelins parfaitement sains ont été déclarés
fous et traités comme tels, avec la complicité de l'Etat et des
médecins. Près de cinquante ans après, ils crient justice
Bientôt ils seront vieux. Et leur vie n'aura ressemblé à rien. Elle se
sera déroulée en marge du monde et des apaisements. Avec, pour tout
viatique, quelques revenus de misère et une réputation d'aliéné. Alors
parfois, lorsqu'ils n'en peuvent plus, ces hommes et ces femmes, tous
anciens orphelins et toujours seuls au monde, sortent dans les rues de
Montréal et marchent vêtus de camisoles de force. Ainsi contraints,
entravés, reproches vivants, ils se plantent devant l'Archevêché ou le
Parlement. Pour qu'évêque et ministres n'oublient jamais qu'un jour ils
les ont déclarés fous, par centaines, par milliers, simplement pour
agréer l'Eglise et combler ses finances.

C'était il y a cinquante ans. Mais l'épisode est toujours à vif, intact,

vrillé dans chacun de leurs os. Oui, bientôt ces orphelins seront de
l'histoire ancienne, et ils auront passé leur vie boiteuse à réclamer
justice pour cette jeunesse amputée, ces viols récurrents, et surtout ces
internements abusifs. Tout cela, depuis le 18 mars 1954, ils le portent
en eux comme un fardeau de pierres. De ce jour-là, Hervé Bertrand se
souvient parfaitement. Pour lui, ce fut une sorte de fin du monde. Elle
survint vers 9h30, lorsque soeur Colette François entra dans la salle de
classe de l'orphelinat de Mont Providence en disant: «Ecoutez-moi
bien. A partir d'aujourd'hui vous êtes tous fous.» Cette seule
affirmation gratuite venait de rapporter 3 millions de dollars à l'Eglise,
et par voie de conséquence condamnait à l'ignorance et à la souffrance
près de 3000 enfants.

A cette époque, le Québec était une vaste sacristie. On disait qu'il était
impossible de jeter une pierre dans cette province sans y casser un
vitrail. L'Eglise était en tout et partout, dirigeant science, consciences,
gérant les écoles aussi bien que les hôpitaux, imposant sa loi tout
autant que sa foi. Elle administrait notamment les innombrables
orphelinats de la région de Montréal. Dans ces établissements on
trouvait des enfants abandonnés, quelques autres placés là par leurs
propres parents n'ayant pas les moyens de les élever, et surtout
l'immense cohorte des «illégitimes», ces bébés nés hors des liens du
mariage.

Dans les années 50, il était hors de question qu'une mère célibataire
élevât seule son enfant. L'Eglise, par le canal de ses confréries
religieuses, se chargeait de la besogne, mais excluait quand même ces
«fils du péché» de la filière éducative classique. Elle les plaçait dans
des instituts médico-pédagogiques, où un enseignement leur était
cependant dispensé. Mais ces établissements, déficitaires de façon
chronique, grevaient le budget des communautés, qui bien sûr se
tournaient vers l'Etat pour apurer les comptes.

Le Premier ministre de l'époque s'appelait Maurice Duplessis.

Autocrate, corrupteur, il fut, au Québec, l'homme de la «grande
noirceur». Habile à se ménager les faveurs du clergé, il aimait
confesser en privé: «Si je baise leur bague c'est pour qu'ils
m'embrassent le cul.» Sollicité financièrement une nouvelle fois par
les ecclésiastiques, Duplessis fit alors cette proposition diabolique au
cardinal Paul Emile Léger. Pourquoi ne pas transformer les instituts
médico-pédagogiques de vos soeurs en hôpitaux psychiatriques?

Le bénéfice était évident, le calcul simple à faire. L'Etat payait 70

cents par jour pour un orphelin, alors que la subvention grimpait à
2,50 dollars pour un fou. L'Eglise baissa les yeux, dressa, dans le
retrait, l'état de ses finances et, succombant à la tentation - quelque 3
millions de dollars canadiens d'argent frais -, se résolut à envoyer au
matin du 18 mars 1954 les plus courageuses de ses novices annoncer
la nouvelle aux orphelins innocents: en une nuit, la folie s'était
emparée d'eux.
Bruno Roy, porte-parole des «orphelins de Duplessis», avait 11 ans à
l'époque: «Au Mont Providence nous étions tous éducables. Et voilà
600 enfants devenus fous du jour au lendemain. On mit des barreaux
à nos fenêtres, des clôtures dans le jardin et les sorties furent
interdites. Aussitôt notre démence déclarée, les soeurs portèrent des
tenues d'infirmières, l'enseignement cessa, et on nous envoya nous
occuper de personnes âgées dans l'autre aile du bâtiment. Nous
lavions les vieux et nettoyions leur lit. Ceux d'entre nous qui se
rebellaient avaient droit à la camisole de force, au cachot, aux
tranquillisants et aux électrochocs. Les médecins, complices de cette
horreur, établirent pour chacun de nous un certificat d'"arriéré
mental". Nous étions victimes de tout un système. C'est ainsi que pour
renflouer les caisses de l'Eglise nous basculâmes dans la folie. Par
miracle, une soeur nommée Olive des Anges me sortit de cet enfer
vers l'âge de 17 ans, et m'envoya dans un établissement normal. A 20
ans j'avais fini mes études. Aujourd'hui docteur en littérature, chargé
de cours à l'université, j'écris des livres. Pourtant mon dossier
médical porte encore la mention d'arriéré mental.»

En 1960, une équipe psychiatrique évalua 500 enfants répertoriés

comme fous au Mont Providence. Leur rapport fut édifiant: tous
étaient parfaitement intelligents, mais totalement ignorants faute
d'enseignement. Près de 3000 orphelins furent ainsi détruits par la
rouerie de Duplessis, la cupidité du clergé et la lâcheté du corps
médical. Ne sachant ni lire ni écrire, ils furent ensuite renvoyés dans le
monde avec en poche un certificat de demeuré. Beaucoup, aujourd'hui,
à plus de 60 ans, sont assistés ou vivent encore dans des institutions
qu'ils n'ont jamais vraiment quittées. D'autres, en plus de ces
souffrances collectives, ont eu à endurer des sévices particuliers. Deux
cent quarante et un «orphelins de Duplessis» ont ainsi déposé plainte
en justice pour des agressions sexuelles subies dans ces instituts
psychiatrisés. Aucune n'a, à ce jour, abouti.

Hervé Bertrand est l'une de ces victimes: «A 57 ans, je me souviens

des moindres détails. Là-bas nous n'avions rien, nous n'étions rien.
Les moniteurs m'ont violé plus de trente fois. Ils me passaient la
camisole de force et me prenaient dans l'ascenseur. Quand j'allais me
plaindre à la soeur, elle me giflait. Jusqu'à ce jour de 1957 - j'avais
13 ans - où à la suite d'un nouvelle sodomie on a dû m'opérer du
rectum. Ils ont volé ma jeunesse. Plus tard je suis devenu plombier.
Pour prendre les mesures sur les chantiers, je faisais semblant de
calculer. Je ne savais pas compter. Vous savez, en sortant de là,
seulement 5% d'entre nous ont trouvé un travail et fondé une famille.
Souvent je pense aux autres. A ceux qui ont été anéantis par les
tranquillisants et les électrochocs, à ceux qui sont devenus vraiment
fous.»

Depuis bien des années, dans des séries d'articles d'une belle
humanité, le très sérieux journal «le Devoir» rend compte de ces
calvaires individuels, de ce drame collectif que le docteur Lazure,
psychiatre et ancien ministre, qualifie de «désastre psychosocial». Les
faits ne sont pas contestés - sauf par l'Eglise, et l'on verra pourquoi -,
pourtant à ce jour aucun des «orphelins de Duplessis» n'a obtenu
condamnation de l'Eglise ou de l'Etat, même si la commission du
Droit du Canada a clairementdemandé au gouvernement et aux
institutions responsables d'offrirréparation.

A la demande du gouvernement, Me Daniel Jacoby, protecteur du

citoyen, sorte de médiateur traitant quelque 24000 dossiers par an
avec un taux de conciliation de 93%, a pour sa part publié un rapport
de 64 pages accablant pour l'Etat, les médecins et les institutions
religieuses de l'époque. Ce document entériné par l'opposition et la
majorité préconisait un dédommagement global d'au moins 60
millions de dollars canadiens pour les orphelins. Le gouvernement
Bouchard en proposa 3 malheureux et présenta des excuses en demi-
teinte. «J'ai du mal à comprendre la position de l'Etat, qui reconnaît
la faute mais refuse l'indemnisation individuelle, explique le
protecteur du citoyen. La somme qu'il alloue aux orphelins est
indécente: 3 millions! Imaginez que je viens d'en obtenir 44 pour des
contribuables dont on avait seulement violé les droits!»

L'Eglise, pour sa part, refusa sèchement toute contrition et la moindre

contribution. «La philosophie du clergé est simple, explique le docteur
Lazure. S'embarquer dans des excuses, c'est prendre le risque d'être
condamné en justice. Et l'Eglise est solvable. Elle possède, ici, un
patrimoine immobilier colossal.» Alors dans cette affaire se dessine
peu à peu une diaphane collusion entre l'Eglise et l'Etat, un lien
ancestral, un cordon sacerdotal ancré dans la tradition, l'histoire, les
familles, unissant le ministre du culte et celui des Finances, faisant
d'eux des complices, dans tous les sens du terme, comme jadis,
comme il y a cinquante ans.
Pour juger de cette «proximité», peut-être faut-il relire la page 108 de
l'autobiographie du Premier ministre Lucien Bouchard, lorsque, étant
avocat, il dressait fièrement la liste de ses liens professionnels et
familiaux avec le clergé: «Il se trouvait que je comptais parmi mes
clients les Chanoinesses hospitalières, les soeurs du Bon Conseil, du
Bon Pasteur, les petites franciscaines de Marie, les soeurs du Saint
Sacrement, les Ursulines, sans oublier les autorités du diocèse. [µ] Un
organisateur zélé voulut en ajouter une autre sur la liste, celle des
antoniennes de Marie. Je n'y vis pas d'objection; elles étaient aussi
mes clientes et j'y comptais une tante ainsi que de nombreuses
parentes et amies.»

On imagine aujourd'hui l'embarras d'un Premier ministre sommé

d'apurer un passé à la fois si lourd et aussi proche de lui, et de
condamner, au moins moralement, clientes et parentes impliquées
dans le dossier. «C'est une erreur de voir les choses ainsi, commente
Robert Perreault, ministre en charge du problème des orphelins. Au
Québec nous avons tous des religieux dans nos familles. Il y a dans
cette affaire un problème avec l'argent. Nous avons reconnu les faits,
nous avons présenté des excuses mais nous ne pensons pas que des
indemnités individuelles puissent racheter les erreurs du passé.»

Jusque-là, l'Eglise campait sur une position encore plus dure. Niant la
plupart des faits depuis cinquante ans, ignorant les orphelins, refusant
l'accès à ses archives, elle se contentait de publier des communiqués
glaciaires: «L'Eglise n'entend pas présenter d'excuses à ceux et celles
qui s'identifient comme les "orphelins de Duplessis" [...] ni verser
aucune contribution financière à des individus ou à un fonds destiné à
leur venir en aide.»

De plus, sur ce dossier, l'Archevêché refusait tout contact avec la

presse. Après avoir, dans un premier temps, rejeté notre proposition de
rencontre, le clergé nous fit ensuite savoir que Mgr Robert Beaupré
était finalement désireux de nous présenter la nouvelle politique de
l'Eglise: «Je vais être franc. Nous avons jusque-là adapté notre
discours au contexte juridique. Présenter des excuses, c'était
reconnaître notre culpabilité. L'évêque était partagé entre son
sentiment de compassion et la nécessité de préserver les avoirs de
l'Eglise, qui servent à payer les retraites de nos prêtres. Aujourd'hui,
si nous refusons toujours de mettre en cause un système à une époque
précise, et ne voulons en aucun cas d'un débat historique, nous
accepterions en revanche une commission, qui en dehors du circuit
judiciaire réunirait des représentants de l'Etat, de la médecine et de
l'Eglise pour étudier individuellement le cas de chaque orphelin, et lui
proposer des indemnités proportionnelles aux torts qu'il a subis.»

Cernée par les faits, sévèrement condamnée par des mouvements

catholiques qui n'acceptaient plus son arrogance, l'Eglise a donc fait
un pas et l'esquisse d'un chèque vers les «orphelins de Duplessis» pour
peu que ceux-ci oublient l'Histoire, le lien qui les unit et le système
qui les a détruits. Cela tient davantage de la proposition commerciale
que de l'acte de contrition.

Pourtant l'Eglise catholique du Québec ferait bien de s'inspirer de

l'attitude de ses homologues presbytériennes anglicanes et unies.
Confrontées, elles aussi, à 7000 poursuites d'Amérindiens attaquant en
justice leurs pasteurs pour abus physiques, agressions sexuelles et
génocide culturel, les porte-parole de ces congrégations ont publié ce
texte: «A tous ces pensionnaires qui ont été victimes d'abus physiques,
sexuels ou mentaux dans nos écoles, j'offre mes plus sincères excuses.
Vous avez été d'innocentes victimes de gestes inadmissibles. Puissiez-
vous entendre notre sincérité, et nos actions prochaines, vous
convaincre.» On est loin des atermoiements négociés de l'Archevêché.
Le 10 mai, le diocèse de Montréal annonçait qu'il allait vendre 27 de
ses églises. Les paroissiens ne les fréquentaient plus. On peut aisément
les comprendre.

A lire: «Mémoires d'asile», par Bruno Roy,Editions Boréal. «Les

Calepins de Julien», par Bruno Roy, Editions XYZ. «Duplessis, non
merci», par Jacques Hebert, Editions Boréal. «L'Univers des enfants
en difficulté au Québec», par Marie-Paule Maloin.

Site des orphelins:http://users2.50megs.com/orphelin

Jean-Paul Dubois
 http://www.freedommag.org/english/vol37i1/index.htm

Published by the Church of Scientology International

FREEDOM SPECIAL REPORT:

North America’s Crime of the Century?

Up to 50,000 innocent children
may have died or disappeared
in Quebec’s psychiatric institutions
Survivors demand justice
North America’s Crime of the Century?
By Christine Hahn and Thomas G. Whittle
Freedom probe reveals that tens of thousands of “Duplessis Orphans”* may have died or
disappeared in Quebec’s psychiatric institutions.

The “Chemical Lobotomy”:

Survivors of Quebec’s foster care system say they experienced Thorazine horrors years
before the drug’s “official” discovery, buttressing claims that children were
experimental subjects.

An “Ongoing Conspiracy of Silence”:

“Society has a duty to officially recognize the harm done,” said a Quebec ombudsman
who investigated abuses against foster children — a statement that has yet to become
reality.

“He Had No Brain!”:

An eyewitness describes removing the bodies of possible victims of psychiatric
experiments — some allegedly only 5 years old — from operating and electric shock
rooms.

“Mind Control”:
No doubt, Ewen Cameron was a monster, but a useful one for psychiatry, which still
exploits him for damage control.
*
Duplessis Orphans: Naming themselves after former Quebec Premier Maurice
Duplessis, many of these individuals were not orphans at all, but had been born to poor
families which had difficulty caring for them, or to unwed mothers. Although no official
tallies were kept, over a span of several decades, it has been estimated they numbered in
the tens of thousands and perhaps as many as 100,000. Duplessis was Quebec’s premier
from 1936 to 1939 and from 1944 to 1959. Due to human rights violations, electoral
fraud, use of state powers against critics and other abuses, Duplessis’ tenure has been
called “the Great Darkness.”

North America’s Crime of the Century?

Up to 50,000 innocent children

may have died or disappeared
in Quebec’s psychiatric institutions

Survivors demand justice

By Christine Hahn and Thomas G. Whittle

Clarina Duguay remembers what life was like before her mother, Clara, moved away.
The eldest daughter among five children, she recalls the happy life of a family, cash-
poor but rich in love, in Cap d’Espoir, a fishing village on Canada’s Gaspe peninsula.

Every morning, with her dog, Coffee, she helped her mother gather up the eight or nine
cows the family owned so they could be milked. From her mother, she learned many
things, including how to bake delicious bread — a skill that today, more than 60 years
later, she still enjoys.

In a rural community where horses were the primary means of transportation, Clara
encouraged Clarina’s dream of one day becoming an airline stewardess. It was a close-
knit family, one where each member supported the others.

The idyllic life ended in 1945, when Clara, stricken by tuberculosis, moved to a
sanatorium.

Clarina’s father, Joseph Duguay, a lumberjack frequently away from home, was
persuaded by the family doctor and the parish priest to send Clarina and her younger
sister, Simonne, to an orphanage in Rimouski, on the St. Lawrence River. He was told
they would be well educated.

But in 1946, shortly after Clarina turned 11, she and perhaps 10 other children from the
facility were loaded onto a bus. Told they were being taken on a tour of Rimouski, they
were instead driven to the town of St. Ferdinand, hundreds of miles away, and through
the gates of the St. Julien psychiatric institution. There, Clarina’s horror story began.

Fraudulent Psychiatric Labels

Many years later, Clarina would learn of the false psychiatric label — “mentally
retarded” — that condemned her to St. Julien.
But at the time, she inexplicably entered a hell where she scrubbed floors endlessly on
orders from the institution’s staff.

“They would plunge our heads into ice-cold water if we did something wrong,” Clarina
said, adding that they would be kept immersed almost to the point of drowning. To this
day, she dreads water and fears she will drown.

For the tiniest infraction, she could be forced to kneel in an excruciating position for
hours, or put in a straitjacket, or locked to a bed with no mattress — her feet tied to the
cold steel frame and her head pinned down by a dog collar around her neck. She
reported being sexually assaulted.

Simonne later joined her at St. Julien, also unknowingly labeled retarded. With both
girls, their father was not informed of their fate. Letter writing was forbidden at
Rimouski and St. Julien; compounding that barrier, the girls’ father could neither read
nor write. Presuming no news was good news, he trusted his daughters were being
properly cared for.

And when Clarina cried for her mother, a staff member told her that Clara had died of
syphilis in another psychiatric institution. In truth, she succumbed to tuberculosis at the
sanitarium, unaware of her daughters’ plight.

But then it got worse. Clarina remembers the chlorpromazine she and others at St.
Julien were forced to take, an experimental drug at the time*, but one so powerful its
principal pioneer and promoter, German-born psychiatrist Heinz Lehmann, would later
dub it a “pharmacological substitute for lobotomy.”1

“It made me into a zombie,” Clarina said. The drug, known as Largactil in Canada and
Thorazine in the United States, was administered by injection and by pills, virtually
every day. She was told it was “cold medicine.”

*
Chlorpromazine was not approved for use in the United States by the Food and Drug
Administration until 1954.

Hidden Terrors

Robbed of their childhoods and their educations, Clarina and Simonne are two among
perhaps 3,000 surviving “Duplessis Orphans.”

Naming themselves after former Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis*, many of these
individuals, like Clarina and Simonne, were in fact not orphans at all, but had been born
to poor families that had difficulty caring for them, or to unwed mothers. Although no
official tallies were kept, over a span of several decades, it has been estimated they
numbered in the tens of thousands and perhaps as many as 100,000.

As bad as things were, Clarina and Simonne consider themselves luckier than most of
the Orphans — Simonne managed to escape after several years and, when her family
learned of the sisters’ ordeal, they freed Clarina on May 8, 1953.
Like many of those who suffered, Clarina chose not to talk about her experiences,
preferring to put the past behind her. She went to work as a seamstress in Montreal,
abandoning her plans of working for an airline and seeing the world, but grateful to
once again enjoy freedom.

In 1965, she met Rod Vienneau, a singer and songwriter who also worked as a
construction worker and miner. They married in May the next year. For decades, she
kept her terrors at St. Julien a secret from her children and her husband.

Only after the truth about the Duplessis Orphans began to emerge in the 1990s did
Clarina share her story with her husband and, ultimately, with Freedom.

Child Victims:
Their World Turned Upside Down

Today, Rod Vienneau, as founder of the Commission for Victims of Crimes Against
Humanity, represents survivors who seek to expose and bring to account the
psychiatrists and government officials responsible for alleged crimes and abuses against
the Orphans.

Since 1992, when he obtained Clarina’s medical files under Canada’s Access to
Information Act, he has investigated abuses against the Orphans, also leading protest
marches, letter-writing campaigns and other activities to draw attention to injustices at
many similar facilities — such as Mont Providence in Montreal, converted from an
orphanage and school to a psychiatric hospital in one day.

At that institution, since renamed Riviere des Prairies Psychiatric Hospital, Vienneau
said, “Overnight, they emptied the classrooms, got rid of the books, and put bars on the
windows. They turned the rooms into cells.”

The morning the children’s nightmare began at Mont Providence, the nuns, instead of
wearing their familiar black-and-white habits, dressed in white — a stark sign of
conversion to a psychiatric hospital.

“The children had a life before,” said Vienneau. “There was schooling. They could play.
All of that changed. It was hard labor. No more learning.”

At psychiatric facilities throughout Quebec, he said, “They used the Orphans for the
dirty work.”

Normal boys and girls in the child welfare system were degraded and dehumanized, he
said, coerced via pain and punishment into becoming a slave-labor force in the
province’s mental institutions. Instead of learning to read and write, they swabbed
floors and hallways, cleaned the clothes of adult inmates, washed adults incapacitated
by drugs, shocks and lobotomies, and served in other menial, often backbreaking
capacities — all for the profit of their psychiatric overlords.
 Stigmatized

As with Clarina and Simonne, relatives who placed children in Quebec orphanages
customarily had been promised they would receive a "good education” if turned over to
the institutions.

Instead, for decades, psychiatrists falsely declared thousands of them to be mentally ill
or retarded. The children were moved to psychiatric asylums or, as at Mont Providence,
facilities were converted to mental institutions. The psychiatric labels enabled
institutions to obtain “nearly twice the amount per child, and sometimes more,
depending on how children were classified and where they were placed.”2

Although their poor performance on I.Q. tests stemmed from a lack of schooling,
normal children were stigmatized with such psychiatric tags as “idiot” and “imbecile”
— false labels that destroyed their lives and haunt survivors to this day.

Evidence unearthed by Freedom in its ongoing investigation, which began in 1999,

points to the Duplessis Orphans as the largest instance of institutionalized child abuse in
North America.

The death or disappearance of many children and young adults — Vienneau charged
that 50,000 innocents were thus victimized — drives human rights advocates to demand
a thorough investigation, particularly of psychiatrists and others who benefited from the
mass tragedy.

False Label Brings

25 Years’ Incarceration

To date, no criminal court or human rights body has examined the alleged atrocities.
Because of the lack of a probe, no psychiatrist engaged in or connected to alleged
crimes against the Orphans — including experiments with brain-damaging drugs,
electric shocks and lobotomies — has been charged, despite evidence of duplicity,
misconduct and harm.

On June 22, 1967, for example, psychiatrist Louis Roy examined Duplessis Orphan
Joseph Sylvestre as an outpatient at St. Michel Archange, a psychiatric institution in
Quebec City since renamed Robert Giffard Hospital. After the examination, Roy failed
to change Sylvestre’s earlier, false childhood diagnosis.

Years later, in 1991, Sylvestre approached Roy for assistance in finding a job and
subsequently received a letter from Roy in which the psychiatrist admitted that
Sylvestre had never been mentally ill.

“You were never mentally ill and you are fit,” Roy reportedly said.

The scandal was reported by the Journal de Montreal in 1992. When contacted at his
office by the Journal, Roy confirmed the facts concerning Sylvestre — “my good friend
JS,” as Roy called him.3
As early as 1962, a Quebec government body known as the Bedard Commission
acknowledged that the Orphans had never been mentally ill or retarded and that they
had been fraudulently labeled.

Despite this, Roy was never charged with wrongful diagnosis or any other crime, even
after admitting in writing that Sylvestre had wrongfully spent 25 years confined to the
psychiatric institution where Roy was the director.

Roy, now 75 and retired, admitted to Freedom that he had misdiagnosed Sylvestre,
offering as excuses that Sylvestre had already been a patient when he took over his case
and that things were “different” back then.

Roy said that no disciplinary action had been taken against him because Sylvestre had
“only” received psychiatric drugs, not a lobotomy or electroshock. He refused to
comment on whether there should be a public inquiry into the case of the Duplessis
Orphans, but admitted he saw many abuses when working at St. Michel Archange. Due
to his advanced years, he said, he wants to forget the past.

“He may want to forget it, but Roy and other psychiatrists created evil and destruction,
and victims live the nightmare to this day,” said Denis Coté, a spokesperson for the
Citizens Commission on Human Rights** in Quebec. “Psychiatry sentenced these
Orphans to degradation, misery and, in many cases, death. After the lid started to come
off, psychiatrists engaged in damage control to protect their own incomes and
reputations. They played no part in helping the survivors.”

*
Duplessis was Quebec’s premier from 1936 to 1939 and from 1944 to 1959. Due to
human rights violations, electoral fraud, use of state powers against critics and other
abuses, Duplessis’ tenure has been called “the Great Darkness.”
**
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was established by the Church of
Scientology in 1969 as an independent organization to investigate and expose
psychiatric violations of human rights.

Human Guinea Pigs

Another psychiatrist in the saga is Denis Lazure, president of the Canadian Psychiatric
Association in 1966.

From 1999 to 2001, Lazure headed the “Support Committee for Justice for the
Duplessis Orphans” — an effort that, according to Rod Vienneau, betrayed those it
pretended to help. Vienneau compared Lazure’s position on the committee to “a fox in
the chicken coop.”

In his memoirs, Medecin et Citoyen, published in 2002, Lazure wrote that in 1952,
while interning at Hospice St. Jean de Dieu, a massive psychiatric facility in Montreal
since renamed Louis-Hyppolite Lafontaine Hospital, he and five other interns regularly
administered electroshock and routinely put patients into insulin comas.4

Lazure breezily described how he would “start the day pushing the button on the
electrical box that sends a current to provoke an epileptic-type convulsion in tens of
patients who hadn’t received any preparatory medication.”5

Then he was off to the insulin coma rooms, “half-lit, vile-smelling, with two dozen
patients that we’d inject with doses of insulin strong enough to induce a coma. After
several hours of excessive sedation, they’d receive a glucose injection, which usually
brought them back to consciousness. It sometimes happened that we got the shock of a
patient that failed to reawaken.”6

Lazure painted a disturbing picture of St. Jean de Dieu, one in which psychiatrists
played with and destroyed human life. Later in 1952, Lazure left the institution for
Verdun Protestant (now Douglas) Hospital, where he assisted chemical lobotomy
pioneer Lehmann in tests of chlorpromazine.7

Montreal journalist Kristian Gravenor quipped, “Lazure went on to head hospitals and
run the provincial health ministry, fried brains and accidental overdoses not slowing
him down one bit.”8

Lazure’s statement that he and Lehmann tested chlorpromazine in 1952 lends credence
to claims by Clarina Duguay and others of being forced to take the drug prior to 1953
— the year Lehmann supposedly “discovered” how to use it to straitjacket patients —
and raises questions regarding how many Orphans may have been exploited as human
guinea pigs.

One St. Jean de Dieu doctor who asked not to be identified estimated that
chlorpromazine was being administered to 500 people at St. Jean de Dieu in 1952 —
even though the drug received its first approval for human use in Canada in 1957,
according to Health Canada, the government agency over such matters.9

Psychiatry Destroys Life

Children’s advocate Carol Rutz, author of A Nation Betrayed, told Freedom that based
on her research, the Duplessis Orphans became prime subjects for psychiatric testing
and abuse.

These children, she said, were defenseless — easy prey for ruthless doctors who
inflicted pain and death under the guise of science.

Many boys and girls, she said, “had no parents to return home to, hence the extent of
their abuse needed no cover-up. Who would tell? They could be beaten or drugged into
submission.”

Orphans at St. Jean de Dieu were selected to receive electroshock, drugs and other
“treatments” primarily based on whether or not they had immediate family members
who might come to their defense or protection, said one source who worked at the
facility.
Rod Vienneau said Quebec psychiatrists viewed these children, who most often came
from the province’s poorest families, as “unwanted.” They emptied Quebec’s
orphanages, he said, “sending the ‘unwanted’ children to the psychiatric hospitals where
psychiatrists could do any experiment that they wanted to do on 100,000 children —
and no one would know.” (See “He Had No Brain!”.)

Evidence suggests that many boys and girls became victims of a psychiatric eugenics*
program with connections to prominent members of the U.S. and Canadian psychiatric
establishments.

“Defectives” was the sweeping label that Canadian psychiatrist Charles Kirk Clarke, a
founder of the Canadian Mental Health Association, applied to immigrants from eastern
and central Europe.10 Another Canadian eugenicist, Helen MacMurchy, a provincial
“inspector of the feeble-minded,” campaigned for sterilization to prevent certain
mothers from “filling the cradle with degenerate babies.”11

Freedom addressed this subject in a 1996 cover report in its Canadian edition entitled
“The Ethnic Cleansing of the ‘Mentally Unfit’ — Sterilization in Canada.” The authors
wrote, “The tools of the eugenicists thus became immigration controls, birth control,
sterilization and finally euthanasia as carried out by the Nazis,” noting that the first
three methods had been employed in Canada — resulting in, among other things, the
involuntary sterilization of thousands of women, many of them Canadian Indian or
other minorities.12

With fresh allegations now surfacing that many Duplessis Orphans died or disappeared,
the fourth item on the eugenicists’ agenda, euthanasia, certainly warrants official
investigation.

“They Were Allowed

to Kill Defenseless Children”

Indeed, the bodies of hundreds or even thousands of Duplessis Orphans, buried near
Quebec psychiatric hospitals, may today hold the key to documenting what survivors
have called "organized psychiatric genocide."

Montreal attorney Daniel Lighter suggested that Quebec officials permit exhumation of
bodies buried on hospital grounds to determine to what extent Orphans may have been
used for psychiatric experimentation, including lobotomies, electroshock and mass
drugging.

"One can certainly argue that a free society has a responsibility to unearth the good, the
bad and the indifferent of its past,” Lighter told Freedom. “There is certainly a
compelling amount of evidence, even outside of a courtroom, to justify looking again at
this case.”

At every step of the way, the Orphans’ treatment was guided by the hand of psychiatry.
Documents obtained by Freedom reveal connections between the American Psychiatric
Association (APA) and Quebec psychiatric facilities where Orphans were incarcerated.
As far back as 1922, photographs and other evidence show a relationship between these
facilities and the APA.
In 1954, for example, the APA recognized Montreal’s Verdun Protestant (now Douglas)
Hospital for “notable achievements” in research. Freedom asked APA spokesperson
Jason Young what this research entailed, but as of press time, had not received an
answer.

The APA imprimatur raises questions as to who benefited from the Orphans’ false
internment and why, said Lighter.

"It’s a very strange link to have the APA accrediting hospitals in Quebec. Why would
that be?” he asked. “It suggests that the APA was not only intimately involved but that
they were coordinating the experiments. It certainly begs questions and those questions
deserve answers."

A documentary that aired in September 2004 on Quebec television station TQS reported
there had been roughly 300,000 children in total; 200,000 of those were adopted, while
100,000 were held in orphanages, ready for adoption but never taken. These, reporter
Gary Arpin implied, were the Duplessis Orphans.

One Orphan, Jean-Guy Labrosse, 66, today a retired construction worker, authored a
1964 book about his years in Quebec institutions, My Dog’s Life, which helped to bring
abuses to light. "How many of my fellow [Orphans] have died, and have gone
missing?” he asked in an interview with Freedom. “And when I say missing, I mean
missing without a trace. In Quebec, they were allowed to kill defenseless children.”

Rod Vienneau estimates that at least half of the Orphans incarcerated in psychiatric
hospitals died or disappeared in those institutions. “If somebody disappeared, it’s
because somebody got rid of the person,” he said. “They were killed or murdered.”

*
British psychologist Francis Galton coined “eugenics” from the Greek eugenes,
meaning “good in stock” or “well-born.” Galton’s theories on eugenics were, in turn,
forwarded by psychologists and psychiatrists. In Germany, for example, Galton’s work
was used by psychiatrist Ernst Rudin and others to provide the impetus for racial
hygiene and genocide programs.

Burned with the Garbage

Joseph Martin was 5 1/2 years old in 1938 when his parents, promised he would receive
a good education, placed him in Montreal’s Buisonnet Institute. Shortly thereafter, he
was transferred to St. Jean de Dieu, where he remained until 1956.

Upon his arrival at St. Jean de Dieu, Martin said, he and other young people were
stripped of personal belongings, including jewelry, clothing, pictures of cherished
relatives, money and identification.

Martin, today a Montreal cabinetmaker, readily recounts stories of abuse. He said that in
1941, he witnessed a 10-year-old boy beaten to death by two guards. Incredibly, said
Martin, many of the guards hired to watch over the children were young criminals who
had been in reform schools. And many guards — some of whom he named — allegedly
sodomized the youths.

When Martin, after being assaulted repeatedly, complained to hospital authorities, he

received the ultimate “warning.” The culprits drove a knife into his left eye, blinding
him, and told him that if he complained again, he would also lose the right eye.

For years, according to Martin, three children each week were victims of operations
during which vital organs such as hearts, lungs, kidneys and livers were cut out and sold
in the U.S. A gray-and-black refrigerated vehicle transported the organs, he said.

Carol Rutz noted, “Their organs could be harvested and sold and no one would be the
wiser. They were the expendables simply because they were available."

What remained of the bodies, said Martin, would be buried in cardboard boxes, three
children per box, in what was known as the “pigsty” cemetery — so named because it
was where pigs were kept, and where the remains of dead swine and other animals were
also disposed of.

But not all children were buried. In the early 1950s at St. Jean de Dieu, Martin said, he
saw hospital staff carrying the dead bodies of children as young as 5 to a large
incinerator, where they were thrown in with the hospital’s garbage.

The youngest children, Martin charged, were kept out of sight in cells and cages at the
back of St. Jean de Dieu under barbaric conditions — in straitjackets, heavily drugged
and befouled by their own waste.

Powerlessness

Like other Orphans interviewed, Jean-Guy Labrosse has painful memories. One
includes the feeling of utter powerlessness. While incarcerated at St. Michel Archange,
for example, Labrosse said he was told by psychiatrist Jean-Yves Gosselin that he held
all the cards to the fate of the children.

"Once you come in here, we are the ones who decide when you may be liberated,"
Gosselin allegedly told Labrosse.

When contacted by Freedom, Gosselin, who served as president of the Canadian

Psychiatric Association in 1993, said he wouldn’t comment on Labrosse’s allegation.
Currently practicing in Ottawa, Gosselin said he couldn’t remember whether he had
treated Duplessis Orphans or not.

But he admitted that during his tenure as staff psychiatrist at St. Michel Archange from
1959 to 1963, he had placed a number of patients on farms. Of note, according to
former Quebec Ombudsman Daniel Jacoby and reports received by Freedom, Orphans
placed on farms were also victimized.
 Beatings, Torture, Sodomy

Freedom contacted psychiatrist Denis Lazure for response to allegations by Joseph

Martin and others regarding abuses at St. Jean de Dieu. In addition to interning at the
institution in 1952, Lazure served as its director from 1974 to 1976. In 2000, he
returned to the renamed facility, Louis-Hyppolite Lafontaine, as a practicing
psychiatrist.

According to a statement provided on Lazure’s behalf by Jean Lepage, public relations

director for Louis-Hyppolite Lafontaine, investigations into claims that Orphans had
been severely harmed “were never proven and therefore considered unfounded.”

Lepage referred to a 1997 report by the then Quebec ombudsman, Daniel Jacoby, in
which the Orphans’ complaints were documented.

Jacoby’s report, however, does not state that the Orphans’ statements of abuse were
unfounded. He did indeed find evidence of such abuses as psychosurgery, electroshock,
ice baths, beatings, straitjacketing, torture, sodomy and “unjustified confinement to a
cell — sometimes for months or even years.”13

In fact, after the Quebec attorney general announced in February 1995 that no charges
would be brought, Jacoby stated, “in almost all cases, the reasons invoked by the
attorney general did nothing to deny the existence of the facts. Neither the statute of
limitations nor the death of a suspect or complainant throw the alleged acts into
question.”14

Rejecting Lazure’s response to Freedom as “a pack of lies,” Rod Vienneau pointed to

the psychiatrist’s own memoirs for corroboration of abuses. “I believe Denis Lazure
should be the first one to be brought to court” for crimes against innocent children,
Vienneau said.

Specific allegations by Vienneau and others, most importantly, have never been
investigated by authorities empowered to bring perpetrators to justice. With no proper
investigation, Vienneau said, one cannot say claims are “unfounded,” particularly in the
presence of eyewitnesses and other evidence.

“They Became Vegetables”

Experiments were not limited to any one institution such as St. Jean de Dieu.
Neurosurgeon Guy LaMarche, for example, admitted that in the 1950s, each
Wednesday, two or three lobotomies were performed on patients at St. Michel
Archange, as prescribed by the institution’s head psychiatrist, even though “we had no
idea” how the operations would affect the institution’s patients. “More often than not,
they became vegetables,” LaMarche said.15

An official probe can determine how many of the victims may have been Orphans, said
CCHR’s Denis Coté. “This dark chapter in Canada’s history needs to be aired for all to
see in a series of hearings,” he said. “I believe it would be best for an independent
public inquiry to examine this.”
In its own investigation, Freedom found what appears to be an ongoing campaign of
deception and disinformation designed to derail any examination of criminal acts or
other misconduct against the Orphans by psychiatrists and others, and to keep those
crimes covered up.

Orphans seeking justice, for example, have reported threats and assaults. Joseph Martin
said he was visited at his home by four men who refused to identify themselves but
warned him to “shut up.” This occurred a few days after Freedom had contacted Louis-
Hyppolite Lafontaine Hospital for comment regarding allegations by Martin and others.

As part of any official investigation, witnesses and their families must be safeguarded.

“I Do Not Know the Doctors

Who Gave This False Diagnosis”

For years, Rod Vienneau has asked, "Who is being protected?"

Vienneau suspects that the Roman Catholic Church, vilified as being responsible
because it owned St. Jean de Dieu and certain other facilities, was itself exploited by
psychiatrists who fattened off money from pharmaceutical companies, intelligence
agencies and the Canadian national government. (See “The ‘Chemical Lobotomy.’”)

In the early 1950s, Canada’s national government withdrew funding from the education
field while remaining active in health matters. It considered Mont Providence, for
example, run by the Sisters of Charity of Providence, to be an educational facility and
therefore ineligible for funding.

The Quebec government under Duplessis, however, felt that as a re-education and
rehabilitation center, Mont Providence should be considered a health care facility.
Although Mont Providence was affiliated with St. Jean de Dieu, Ottawa held its ground.
The Quebec government subsequently advised the Sisters of Charity to change the
facility’s vocation to benefit from federal funding.

A $3 million agreement was signed in 1954 that converted the school to a psychiatric
hospital, jettisoning its main purpose of educating and helping children.16

In a written response to Freedom regarding charges of abuse at Mont Providence,

hospital spokesperson Johanne Gagnon readily admitted that the Orphans had been
falsely labeled.

“The Sisters of Providence were in charge of the educational development of these

Orphans,” Gagnon wrote. “They even continued their teachings after the Duplessis
government delegated funds to this establishment, and ordered that no education was
given to these children for they were ‘mentally crazy’ (that was the expression used at
the time, referring to those with intellectual deficiency). Mont Providence, just like
many centers, accepted that such labels be given to the young Orphans. I do not know
the doctors who gave this false diagnosis.”
 “Concentration Camps...
Right in Our Back Yard”

Vienneau believes many innocent boys and girls came to be used as human guinea pigs
after government officials in Canada and the U.S. were co-opted by psychiatric
interests.

As one index of the dominant psychiatric influence, more than $50 million was spent
constructing new psychiatric hospitals in Quebec between 1952 and 1962. “None of
these building investments went toward enhancing the quality of service and care,”
Quebec Ombudsman Jacoby noted.17 Meanwhile, the children they housed suffered
under barbaric conditions.

Falsification of records, lies to families and horrific experiments bear similarities to

Nazi psychiatric programs for ridding society of “undesirables,” Vienneau said. In this
case, the “unwanteds” were normal children born out of wedlock, or whose families
could not afford them, or who thought their children would be better taken care of when
turned over to the institutions.

Vienneau is not alone in drawing parallels between the Quebec institutions and those in
Nazi Germany. Concurrent with the abuses against the Orphans in the 1950s and 1960s,
Montreal’s McGill University was the site of Ewen Cameron’s ghastly work. (See
“‘Mind Control’ Experimentation Exposed.”)

Cameron, infamous for barbarity and a penchant for operating without patient consent,
maimed men and women with electroshock, lobotomies and drugs that included
chlorpromazine and LSD. An international leading light of psychiatry, Cameron served
as president of the Quebec Psychiatric Association, the Canadian Psychiatric
Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the World Psychiatric
Association.

In a 1986 review of the experiments Cameron conducted at McGill’s Allan Memorial

Institute, Canadian physician George Cooper drew the same conclusion as Vienneau.

“We talk about concentration camps. I don’t want to make this comparison, but God,
you know, talk about ’we didn’t know it was happening,’ and it was — right in our back
yard," wrote Cooper.18

Some of Cameron’s victims were compensated by the U.S. Justice Department in 1988
with an out-of-court settlement totaling $750,000; in November 1992, the Canadian
government announced it would give $100,000 apiece to victims of his experiments.

According to one source, some Duplessis Orphans may have been “treated” at
Cameron’s Allan Memorial Institute, a possibility Freedom is investigating.
 Dreading a Doctor Visit

“While many would prefer not to believe stories of horrific abuse, if they are not
believed, then injustice continues and similar abuses will be repeated,” said author
Carol Rutz.

Today, surviving Orphans carry false labels of mental illness in their medical records
despite decades of attempts to have them removed — a stigma that continues to haunt
them. Clarina Duguay and others, for example, dread a simple trip to the doctor for any
health problem. The threat of being locked up again looms over their lives — a living
nightmare as long as the labels exist.

“All of the Orphans who can no longer speak for themselves, who died a tragic death or
were lobotomized deserve to have the truth told,” said Rutz. “It takes a lot of courage to
look at the truth and not turn your head away because it is too painful.”

Lawyer Lighter echoed Rutz by calling for justice. "There needs to be a public inquiry
once and for all,” he said. “That is the only way there is to unearth the history of what
happened and the role everyone played."

A longtime member of the Quebec Parliament, Louise Harel, is among those who have
sought justice for the Orphans. On June 6, 2005, she became leader of the official
opposition in Quebec’s National Assembly.

Harel told Freedom that the false labels should be removed and also expressed concern
regarding the large number of lobotomies that had been performed in Quebec.

After the interview with Freedom, and following her receipt of detailed information
from Rod Vienneau, Harel wrote on the Orphans’ behalf to Michelle Courschesne,
Quebec’s minister of Employment and Social Programs. In her letter, she mentioned the
hardship endured by the Orphans and encouraged Courschesne to contact Vienneau.

For Vienneau and others, the injustices suffered by innocent children stand as a
powerful reminder and a mandate to keep fighting for those who perished and those
who can no longer fight for themselves.

"When will the Orphans truly be free?” Vienneau asked. “Hopefully, before they all die.
But as long as they carry this psychiatric label of mental illness on their shoulders, they
will never be free. Even today, the Orphans live in the era of Great Darkness. We want
justice and we want the truth, finally, to be told.”

Anne Hogarth and Sheila MacDonald contributed to this article.

 The “Chemical Lobotomy”
How many innocent children were victimized?

In a 1993 interview in the Quebec magazine, L’Actualite, Montreal psychiatrist Heinz

Lehmann was asked about the Duplessis Orphans. Significantly, he said that back in the
1950s, psychiatrists could distinguish between those who were truly mentally ill and
normal children like the Orphans.19

A Quebec government document20 obtained by Freedom reveals that Orphans were

housed at Verdun Protestant (now Douglas) Hospital, the psychiatric facility where
Lehmann worked for decades, making it virtually impossible that Lehmann did not
know about the Orphans incarcerated there, and unlikely that he was not involved in
their “treatment” as psychiatric patients.

Freedom also obtained declassified intelligence agency documents that reveal the drug
Lehmann championed, chlorpromazine, was one of the substances tested under a top
secret project in 1954.

Chlorpromazine brought a bonanza to Lehmann. After working in virtual obscurity, he

found the doors wide open to hundreds of thousands of dollars in research grants. While
three people died under ghastly circumstances in just one of his published drug tests,
involving eight individuals, Lehmann fattened off pharmaceutical funds and the
intelligence sources that also supported the infamous “mind-control” psychiatrist Ewen
Cameron. Lehmann’s fellow psychiatrists bestowed upon him virtually every major
North American psychiatric award.

In 1954, despite clear evidence of its destructiveness, Lehmann’s “chemical lobotomy”

was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. By 1964, some 50 million
people around the world had taken the drug. Chlorpromazine’s manufacturer saw its
revenue double three times in 15 years.21

A Site of Experiments?

Freedom discovered that the name of Lehmann’s close friend and colleague, Cameron,
appeared in the medical files of some Orphans, implying involvement in their
“treatment.” A medical doctor who worked at Hospice St. Jean de Dieu (now Louis-
Hyppolite Lafontaine Hospital) confirmed he had seen Cameron and Lehmann at that
institution on various occasions, buttressing the possibility that some of their
experimental work may have occurred there.

Professor Frederic Grunberg of the University of Montreal said that Cameron was
funded by Canada’s equivalent of what would be combined federal and state grants in
the United States, called Dominion-Provincial Mental Health grants, administered by
the Mental Health Division of the Department of National Health and Welfare.

Cameron also received money from Sidney Gottlieb of U.S. intelligence, architect of the
various “mind control” programs that utilized coercive psychiatric methods in efforts to
control human behavior. A dominant figure in the psychiatric world, Cameron,
following his 1952 American Psychiatric Association presidency, became a prime
beneficiary of Gottlieb’s covert funding.

1953 marked the supposed “discovery” of chlorpromazine for use in subjugating

patients, as promoted by psychiatrist Lehmann. A review of Lehmann’s experiments
revealed that in 1953, he conducted clinical trials of the drug at Verdun Protestant
Hospital.

In its investigation, however, Freedom learned that Duplessis Orphans were given
chlorpromazine, with horrible effects, as early as 1947, six years prior to Lehmann’s
“official” discovery. One doctor who worked at St. Jean de Dieu in 1952 estimated that
10 percent of its inmates — or 500 out of 5,000 — were on chlorpromazine at that time,
long before the drug’s 1957 approval by the Canadian government.

This doctor told Freedom that he was provided with samples of the drug, and started
taking them to see what the effects might be. He stopped after just a few days due to
adverse effects that included tremors and akinesia — a loss or reduction of normal
abilities to move the body.

An “Ongoing Conspiracy of Silence”

2001 settlement thwarted

probe of crimes, advocates charge

In 1999, Quebec Ombudsman Daniel Jacoby criticized the Quebec government’s

“ongoing conspiracy of silence” and labeled its settlement offer to the Duplessis
Orphans “unfair and humiliating.”22

After comparing settlements in similar cases in other Canadian jurisdictions, Jacoby

suggested a compensation package equal to $56 million in U.S. currency — roughly
$700 per patient for each year he or she spent in an institution as a result of a wrongful
diagnosis, with an additional indemnity for physical or sexual abuse.

“The social context of the time cannot justify their internment in asylums for reasons
more financial than medical, just as it cannot justify physical and sexual abuse,” wrote
Jacoby. “Today’s society has a duty to officially recognize the harm done. Official
apologies on the part of the government [and] the medical establishment...would
undoubtedly be a good place to start.”23

On September 26, 2001, the Quebec government approved a settlement of $10,000

(Canadian) person, plus $1,000 per year of wrongful incarceration in mental
institutions. No provisions were made for sexual or other abuse. If an Orphan refused to
sign the agreement, he or she forfeited the right to the compensation.

Many Orphans were arbitrarily considered ineligible and hence received nothing. In an
interview with Freedom, Rod Vienneau pointed to Paul St. Aubin as an example of
those unjustly barred from the settlement.
Deprived of an education, St. Aubin, now 53, worked between the ages of 11 and 17 as
a virtual slave on a Quebec farm. He then spent 18 years in the province’s mental
institutions, where he received chlorpromazine, electric shock and at least two
lobotomies.

Vienneau and others consider the 2001 settlement as nothing more than a means to
block any genuine probe into crimes and misconduct. The settlement itself remains a
subject of Freedom’s investigation.

In the late 1990s, a group of Orphans commissioned a study by Professor Leo-Paul

Lauzon of the University of Quebec in Montreal. Lauzon found that certain institutions
earned between $70 million and $100 million (Canadian) by fraudulently holding the
Orphans.

That figure is supported by a letter from Maurice Duplessis himself, dated April 12,
1954, in which the Quebec premier agreed to pay one psychiatric facility alone, Mont
Providence, $6 million over a three-year period. At least 13 institutions housed the
Duplessis Orphans for several decades.

$100 million, of course, would be worth far more in today’s currency values.

“He Had No Brain!”

How extensive might the experimentation in Quebec foster care facilities have been?
The case of a 63-year-old retired racehorse trainer, Sylvio Albert Day, provides insight.

Orphaned at birth, Day worked at hard labor outdoors as a teen, often under brutally
cold conditions, and then toiled for years inside psychiatric institutions — a normal
young man compelled to work in a savage world where, every day, the threat of
straitjackets, injections with brain-damaging drugs, and even lobotomies loomed.

Day described one three-month period when he transported the bodies of 67 dead
Orphans — boys and girls, young men and women — from operating and electric shock
rooms at a Montreal institution to the basement. There, he washed the bodies — some
as young as 5 — in preparation for sale to local universities.

St. Jean de Dieu was the site, but it could have been any of two dozen or more Quebec
institutions where such abuses are reported to have occurred.

Day told Freedom he witnessed the deadly effects of restraints, beatings, electroshock
and lobotomies. He observed children and youths exploited as slave labor, the routine,
massive use of mind-ravaging drugs and, quite possibly, the aftermath of experimental
brain operations.

One day, for example, he was asked to remove a dead youth from an operating room.
He transported the body to the morgue and took off the hospital robe, socks and cap.

"That’s when I jumped!” he said. “He was lying there on the sink and when I took off
his cap, he had no brain! I could see the hole.”
Day washed the body as instructed and, a short while later, was summoned again to the
operating room. Another Orphan lay dead.

This person had large holes drilled into his head.

Shaken, he was summoned yet again — this time to a cell where an Orphan had hung
himself.

Day said that cadavers were sent from St. Jean de Dieu to the University of Montreal
and McGill University, where body parts were removed. He was informed about the
disposition of the bodies by a local embalmer, who warned him not to speak about their
horrible condition.

The man made it clear, Day said, that “if I talked, I would have serious problems. And
that’s why I stayed quiet.”

No ceremonies marked the deaths, with many children reportedly interred on the St.
Jean de Dieu grounds in the pigsty cemetery described by Joseph Martin.

Day confirmed that the Orphans were placed in cardboard boxes and, in his words,
"buried like dogs” in unmarked graves, one atop another.

Punished with Drugs

Day recalled complaining to a St. Jean de Dieu psychiatrist about working in the
morgue, known among Orphans as "Dead People’s Hall." The psychiatrist threatened
Day with serious repercussions if he did not return to his grisly assignment.

Threatened with “pills strong enough to put down a horse” and confinement “in a secret
operating cell” where he would be subjected to “one week of treatments,” Day
complied.

All told, Day said, he saw eight Orphans “with their heads cut wide open.” Troubled
about what he perceived as experimental brain operations, Day approached St. Jean de
Dieu’s Camille Laurin, an influential psychiatrist who later became a Quebec cabinet
minister.

When Day complained to Laurin about the brain operations, the psychiatrist allegedly
punished him by administering a powerful drug that rendered him senseless. Day said
that he “fell unconscious and slept like a vegetable."

He believes the drug was chlorpromazine.

 “Mind control”
experimentation exposed
After psychiatrist Ewen Cameron’s destructive activities — vicious brain-damaging
experimentation on unsuspecting patients — were exposed and condemned in U.S.
Congressional hearings in the 1970s, the psychiatric industry promoted the notion that
he had acted alone. Investigation by Freedom, however, proved this to be false. Indeed,
other psychiatrists, including William Sargant of the United Kingdom, while publicly
decrying Cameron’s work, were secretly performing similar tests.24

Colin Ross, M.D., an authority on mind control experiments and author of such books
as Bluebird: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality Disorder by Psychiatrists,
pointed out that Cameron and Sargant were two of the four founders of the World
Psychiatric Association.

Ross told Freedom that psychiatrists carried out a deliberate campaign of deception in
Cameron’s wake to limit the damage to psychiatry’s reputation. The disinformation, he
said, conveyed that Ewen Cameron and his brutal work had been “just an isolated
incident, that it happened a long time ago back in the ’50s, and that there were different
ethical standards back then.”

But Ross noted that while Cameron’s research “completely violated the ethical
standards of the time,” his experiments were far from isolated from his fellow
psychiatrists.

And although books, documentaries and films such as “The Manchurian Candidate”
have exposed the exploitation of adults in mind control, and the victims of his well-
publicized intelligence agency-funded experimentation were compensated by the
Canadian federal government, little has been communicated about the use of such
coercive methods on children, as with the Duplessis Orphans.

References:

1. Christine Hahn, “A Legacy of Shattered Lives,” Freedom, Volume 34, Issue 1, pages
12-16.

2. Quebec Ombudsman Daniel Jacoby, The “Children of Duplessis”: A Time for

Solidarity, January 22, 1997, page 6.

3. Michele Coudé-Lord, “Un Psychiatre S’Excuse Auprès d’Un Orphelin de Duplessis”

(“A Psychiatrist Offers an Excuse to a Duplessis Orphan”), Journal de Montreal,
September 5, 1992, page 7.

4. Denis Lazure, Médecin et Citoyen, (Montréal: Boréal, 2002), pages 80-81.

5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., page 81.

7. Kristian Gravenor, “New Golden Era,” Montreal Mirror, January 13-19, 2005.

8. Lazure, Médecin et Citoyen, page 82.

9. E-mail from Sharon Kealey, information officer, Therapeutics Products Directorate,

Health Canada, to Freedom, April 7, 2005.

10. James H. Marsh, “Eugenics Driven by Pseudo-Science,” CanWest News Service,

November 19, 2004.

11. Ibid.

12. “The Ethnic Cleansing of the ‘Mentally Unfit’—Sterilization in Canada,” Freedom,

1996, pages 2-7.

13. Jacoby, The “Children of Duplessis,” page 15.

14. Ibid., page 21.

15. Guy LaMarche, M.D., “Les Lobotomises de Duplessis” (“The Duplessis

Lobotomies”), Le Devoir, March 2, 1993, page A-8.

16. Jacoby, The “Children of Duplessis,” page 14.

17. Ibid., pages 5-6.

18. Appendices to the opinion of George Cooper, Q.C., “Regarding Canadian

Government Funding of the Allan Memorial Institute in the 1950s and 1960s.”

19. Yanick Villedieu, “55 Ans de Revolution Psychiatrique” (“55 Years of Psychiatric
Revolution”), L’Actualité, May 15, 1993, page 13.

20. Decree 1153-2001, September 26, 2001, published in Gazette Officielle du Quebec,
October 24, 2001, pages 7,359-7,361.

21. “A Science Odyssey: People and Discoveries, Drug for Treating Schizophrenia
Identified,” PBS, 1998.

22. Associated Press, “Ombudsman Spurns Offer to Abused Orphans,” March 8, 1999.

23. Daniel Jacoby, The “Children of Duplessis”: A Time for Solidarity, January 22,
1997.

24. Gordon Thomas, “Inside the Sleep Room,” Freedom, Volume 36, Issue 2, pages 18-
25.