"We picked the wrong one to sterilise": the role of nursing in the eugenics movement in Alberta, 1920-1940.
The opening decades of the twentieth century were years in which the Canadian government actively recruited immigrants from the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States to assist in the settlement of western Canada. The immigration waves that followed contained large numbers of non-English speaking people of eastern European heritage. As these numbers increased, the white Anglo-Saxon minority feared a "multiplication of the inferior". Alberta's solution was the passage of the Sterilization Act in 1928 and the creation of the Eugenics Board. The Act remained law until 1972 and its repercussions are facing Alberta courts today. The Act was supported by many prominent first-wave feminists such as Nellie McClung and Emily Murphy. Nurses too supported the Act and the philosophical ideology on which the need for sterilization was based- "an available means for racial improvement."  The role nurses played in promoting eugenics in Alberta through referrals to the Eugenics Board and the promotion of birth control material will be explored in the presentation. Contributions made by public health nurses will be included since much of their work was devoted to the socialization of new immigrants to Canada. Class, gender and ethnicity are central themes to this discussion because the majority of individuals who were sterilized were unemployed, female immigrants from eastern Europe. These two decades represent a time in nursing history when the nurse's duty to care was complicated by the attitudes and values of the society in which she existed. Primary sources used include the personal collection of one of Alberta's early birth control nurses, Canadian Journal of Public Health, Canadian Nurse, and Alberta newspapers.
Mansell
D
D
University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Hibberd
J
J
D002170:Canada; D004641:Emigration and Immigration / Q000266:history*; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000266:history*; D005053:Eugenics / Q000266:history*; D005193:Family Planning Services / Q000266:history*; D006077:Government Agencies / Q000266:history*; D049673:History, 20th Century; D009726:Nurses; D012940:Social Problems / Q000266:history*; D013244:Sterilization, Involuntary / Q000266:history*