An Evil Hitherto Unchecked: Eugenics and the 1917 Ontario Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Mentally Defective and Feeble-Minded

Abstract

In 1917, the Ontario government appointed the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Mentally Defective and Feeble-Minded, headed by Justice Frank Hodgins. Its final report made wide-ranging recommendations regarding the segregation of feeble-minded individuals, restrictions on marriage, the improvement of psychiatric facilities, and the reform of the court system, all matters of great concern to the eugenics movement. At the same time, however, it refrained from using explicitly eugenic vocabulary and ignored the question of sterilization. This article explores the role the commission played in the trajectory of eugenics in Ontario (including the province's failure to pass sterilization legislation) and considers why its recommendations were disregarded.