So I’m not going to spend a lot of time
 talking about the Jukes, other than
 there was this notion of pauperism. 
And pauperism involved being poor, and
 clearly you can see this as an assault
 on the poor, and it’s another
story, but a lot of these people were
 cement miners and about that time, 
what they mined was natural cement.
 There was a discovery of Portland 
cement, which was not nearly as good
 as natural limestone cement but the 
problem with cement that was used 
prior to that time, which is still the 
best cement in the world, it’s called
 Rosendale cement, I’ll advertise for 
it, help my Juke brothers out (laughter),
 is that it takes about two weeks 
to harden. Portland cement or artificial
 cement that was developed about 
that time, you could pour it and you
 could work with it as a solid product 
the next day, and so very shortly 
Portland cement put the cement mines 
where these people worked out of 
business. And so at the time when the 
Jukes were studied, they were dealing
 with people who were in economic 
collapse because of the failure of 
the cement mines. Interestingly, those 
cement mines, there are entire mountains
 that were hollowed out by these 
Juke miners, today house all of the
 underground records for the New York 
Banks, for Standard Oil, there’s an
 entire city—atomic-bomb-proof city—
underneath the ground in this hollowed
 out area that was actually built by 
the Jukes. So if we have a nuclear 
war, know that your bank records will be 
safe, there will still be a record if
 you owe the bank any money, and you 
can thank the Jukes for that.
 (laughter)
 They were principally being 
criticized for intermarriage and of 
course for having defective handicapped
 children. As a Juke a hundred years
 or so later I can tell you proudly 
that I’ve got a handicapped kid and 
an interracial marriage and we’re still 
the same people we always were.
 (laughter) 
So I won’t go all through Dougdale’s
 findings. The one thing I will point 
out is that I think it is quite famous
 that Supreme Court Justice Oliver 
Wendell Holmes made this decision 
about sterilization and whether it is 
constitutional and that decision 
was influential in the development of the 
Alberta act and other acts as well.
 But 52 years older, earlier, Oliver 
Wendell Holmes Sr., his father, actually
 was writing about eugenics in the 
Atlantic, and picking on those Jukes.
 So we’re still at war with the Holmes 
clan. In 20th century eugenics we 
start to get further emphasis on race, 
more refined views of intelligence,
 belief in deterioration of the 
intellect. One of the things that was
 really interesting is that as soon as 
we got the idea of intelligence being
 something we could test and measure, 
we got the idea that somehow everybody
 was getting dumber. And so this was 
partly driven by the fear that all 
of a sudden we were producing large 
numbers of people with less intelligence.
 Now it’s interesting because we 
could never measure it before, and some
 people will say that we can’t 
measure it now, but as soon as we 
started to measure it we assumed that it
 was getting worse. Is anybody here 
familiar with the Flynn effect? Basically what the Flynn effect says is:
 we’re getting smarter, nobody 
knows why we’re getting smarter. 
If you actually look at intelligence 
testing and a standardization of 
intelligence testing, they have to keep 
re-standardizing tests because people’s
 scores are going up and it’s 
irrefutable. Sort of the initial 
reaction, it’s happening all over the 
world, and it seems to be happening 
in spite of all these reasons that 
people say that we need to wipe out 
people in order to counteract the
effect that our intelligence as a group
 is going down. It’s a huge effect, 
it’s not a small effect. It’s basically
 about one standard deviation every
 50 years. This basically means that 
100 years ago that the average person
 would test what would now be as mentally
 handicapped. Some people have 
tried to say that it’s because of 
education, maybe it’s Sesame Street. 
Interestingly, the strongest place you
 can demonstrate it are on Raven’s 
progressive matrices that are entirely
 non-verbal, non-cultural, etc. so 
that this effect is that this effect is
 actually strongest in measures of intelligence that are not affected
 by culture and learning, etc. And, why
 is it happening? I think we need to
 ask ourselves… when I started work 
here, I was tall. I have probably 
actually shrunk about half an inch, but
 when I get on the elevator with university
 kids now, they’re all taller 
than me. And it’s not just that I’m 
getting smaller. They’re getting a lot
 bigger. And if you look over a hundred
 years, the average height has 
increased drastically, and why is that
 happening? We can sort of say, well
 maybe there’s nutritional reasons, 
maybe there’s all these reasons. We 
don’t entirely know the reasons. But in
 the same way that we’re getting 
taller, we’re getting smarter. Here 
this is only sort of relevant because 
part of what was driving the eugenics
 movement was the belief that just the
 opposite was happening. So in the
 20th century we had mass 
institutionalization, sterilization,
 and in some cases we had actual 
euthanasia. So we had, for example,
 the T4 program in Germany where people
 were actually put in the gas chambers
 and the first gas chambers were 
actually developed in the euthanasia
 program. And it was both the equipment 
and the personnel from the euthanasia
 program that then went on to create 
the death camps like Treblinka and 
Sobibor, etc. So when they got the 
process down, they though “well maybe
 there’s all sorts of undesirable 
people that we could get rid of.” 
So, sterilization is the most obvious 
form that was practiced here in 
Alberta, however it’s not the most 
prevalent form. Institutionalization in
 fact was the major tool of eugenics 
and stopping people from having children
 by locking them up in sexually 
segregated institutions throughout 
their reproductive years was practiced
 not just in Alberta, but across Canada.
 And the only difference is that it 
was easier to justify that in some other
 way. However, if you look at the 
discussions about the creation of 
institutions in Canada and the United 
States, the intent is entirely clear
 that the purpose is primarily eugenic. 
We also had, and this was a shock to 
me, you know I grew up thinking about 
Clarence Darrow and the Scopes Monkey
 trial etc. If you actually look at 
Hunter’s Civic Biology, it’s a eugenic
 tome that I think we would find kind 
of disgraceful. But it’s interesting that
 that aspect of it is not carried 
forward when we look at our liberal 
traditions and how that battle
 was carried out. 
