1919 -
Act Respecting Mentally Defective Persons (A law for Alberta)
[Act  Res-pect-ing   Men-tall-lee   De-fek-tiv Per-sons]

An Act is a sort of law.

This Act says that the Government can make us live in an institution
[in-stih-too-shun].
Our parents may want us to live at home.
But we have to go to an institution to live there.
There is no institution in Alberta at that time.
Some of us are sent to Manitoba to live in an institution.
We do not see our family very much.

1923
The Provincial Training School [Pro-vin-shall Train-ing School] opens.

(It is now Michener Centre)
Here we will learn all kinds of skills.

Some of us go there when we are very young.

1928 - Sexual Sterilization Act.

A law for Alberta [Seks-u-al  Ster-ill-i-zay-shun Act]

The eugenics idea is now a law.
Now doctors give many men and women an operation [op-er-ay-shun].
This operation is called sterilization.
The men and women can no longer have children after they have this operation.

When the act comes in use, the Alberta Eugenics Board is formed.
On this Board are 4 people.
The Board decides which men and women will be sterilized [ster-ill-i-zed].

In the next 43 years, 2,832 men and women with a disability have this operation.

The Board has named 5000 of us who could have the operation.

1945 – Our parents are not happy.
They begin to speak up.
They want us to live at home.
They want us to go to school close to home.

1953

We have our first school in the community.

It is in the home of Mrs. Christine Meikle [Meek-el].

1958 - The Christine Meikle School is built.
It is the first school building in the community for children with DD in Alberta.

1959 –
People begin to use the word [nor-ma-li-zay-shun] "normalization" for people with DD.
It means that we have the right to live like all other people in Alberta.
We can live where we want.
We can work to make money.
We can do things for fun like go to the movies or talk with friends.

1960 – Many of us work in sheltered workshops.
A sheltered workshop is a place where only workers with DD work.
We do tasks and there is staff that help us.

 

1969
The Christine Meikle and Emily Follensbee
[Foll-un-s-bee] schools become part of the Calgary School Board
(the Calgary Board of Education).

1972 - The Government gets rid of the Act.
Now people know that the eugenics idea is wrong.

1972 – Mr. Wolfensberger writes a book named
“The principle [prin-seh-pel] of normalization”.
He writes about people with DD.
He says that people with DD should live like other people in the community.

He says that we can live where we want.
We can have a job.
We can meet with friends and have fun.

1973 –1980

Our parents want us to live in the community. 
Many of us move out of the institution. 
We move to the community.
We now live in group homes or our own homes.      
The Provincial Training School gets a new name.

It is now Michener Centre.

1980

When we talk or write we use People First Language.
We used to say “developmentally disabled people”.
Now we say “people with developmental disabilities”.

We do this to show that the person is more important than the disability.

Self-Advocacy is when we speak up for our rights as a person in Alberta and Canada.
We also work to change things in the community.
We want access to a building or travel on the bus.

Disability Pride is when we show that we feel good about who we are and the disability that we have.

1995 - The court in Alberta found that the
Alberta Government [Gov-vern-ment] was wrong about the sterilization operation.

In Canada the law does not allow this operation to happen anymore.
An operation like this is now a form of abuse [ab-u-ze].

The Government of Alberta gives money to some of us to make up for this wrong. Ms. Leilani Muir got $230,000.

The government also paid Ms. Muir another $750,000.
In the institution people had said that she was a moron.
Ms. Muir did prove that she is not a moron.

She said that the name “moron’ made it very hard to live a normal life.

The word moron is a word that we do not use anymore.
This name was used in the time of the institutions.
You were called a moron when you had a hard time to read and write and learn things from a book.

Now the name moron is used by some people when a person makes a bad choice.

Sources:
Simmons, H. G. (1982). From asylum to welfare. Downsview, ON: National Institute on Mental Retardation.

Sanders, H., & Piotto L. (1997). Then and now: The history of the Developmental Disabilities Resource Centre of Calgary. AB: Developmental Disabilities Resource Centre.

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