Facing Eugenics: Reproduction, Sterilization, and the Politics of Choice by Erika Dyck (review)

On the hardscrabble prairies of western Canada, in the province of Alberta, a heterogeneous mix of scientific experts, agrarian reformers, social engineers, and maternal feminists developed an extensive sterilization program that affected thousands of people in the twentieth century. From 1928 to 1972, over 4,700 Albertans were recommended for surgery and ultimately 2,822 were sterilized. In British Columbia, the other Canadian province to pass such a law, only 200 people were sterilized.

Why was Alberta home to Canada’s most aggressive eugenics program? Who advocated and implemented Alberta’s sterilization policy? Who fell into the net of institutionalization and paternalistic reproductive regulation during the four decades the law was in force? What is the relevance of Alberta’s protracted history of eugenics and sterilization to contemporary reproductive and disability justice?

In engaging and lucid prose, Dyck answers these intertwined questions in satisfying detail and with analytical rigor. Facing Eugenics is built on a layered process of research that combines impressive archival digging with community engagement and memory work anchored in the University of Alberta’s Living Archives of Eugenics. This complementary method provides the scaffolding for seven chapters that explore salient facets of reproductive politics through the narration of life stories scarred by eugenics and sterilization.

There are many poignant and illustrative stories in Facing Eugenics. One pivots around George Pierre (a pseudonym), an aboriginal male classified as mentally defective and admitted to the Provincial Hospital at Ponoka in the 1930s. Although historical records do not indicate whether Pierre was sterilized, his case elucidates the tensions between provincial and aboriginal systems of governance. During the early decades of eugenics in Alberta, concerns about indigenous autonomy provided a modicum of protection for men such as Pierre. Starting in the midcentury, however, these safeguards evaporated, and sterilizations of Métis peoples increased, most significantly among aboriginal women. Through the complexity of Pierre’s case Dyck dispels conspiratorial interpretations of Albertan eugenics as always ethnocidal, discusses the destruction of reams of the Eugenics Board’s records, and explains how in 1937 provincial superintendents arrogated to themselves blanket protection to authorize operations, thereby foreclosing patients’ options for redress.

In another chapter, Dyck connects the trajectory of Ken Nelson, who was sterilized in 1960 at the Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives in Red Deer, to the experience of Keith Manning, the son of Alberta’s premier Ernest Manning who was institutionalized in the same facility although never sterilized. By interweaving these two cases, Dyck underscores crucial political dimensions of eugenics in Alberta. Building on descriptions of the sexual sterilization law’s passage in previous chapters, Dyck examines the invocation of the constitutional notwithstanding clause by premier Ralph Klein in 1998 to stop Alberta’s sterilization victims, like Nelson, from suing for compensation. According to Klein, it made no sense for the government, and its taxpayers, to be liable for a program that happened “many, many years ago” (quoted on p. 111). Addressing a gap in the literature, Dyck illuminates the dynamics around the experiences of men, who composed 42 percent of those sterilized, and were more likely to protest vasectomies or orchidectomies as assaults on masculinity.

Fittingly, Facing Eugenics culminates with the dramatic story of Leilani Muir, who, after several failed attempts, successfully sued the government for her wrongful sterilization. Dyck’s collaboration with the Living Archives of Eugenics shines in this chapter, as she conveys deep familiarity and cogent analysis of Muir’s lifelong struggle for dignity, recognition, and compensation. As a feminist scholar, Dyck analyzes sterilization stories of women and men in the context of broader struggles for reproductive justice that include elective sterilization, contraception, and abortion, and her final chapters connect this history to current debates about abortion, parenting, and disability in Alberta.

Facing Eugenics is a wonderful achievement of historical research, sophisticated analysis, and textured storytelling. Dyck situates the fascinating and important story of eugenics and sterilization...