Marshall, Dominique

The "Orillia Asylum for Idiots" (1861 - 2009), Canada's oldest and largest facility for the care and protection of children and adults with disabilities, was once praised as a beacon of humanitarian progress and described as a "community within a community." Yet, survivors who lived in the facility during the post Second World War period, a time described as the "golden age of children's rights," tell harrowing stories of abuse and neglect. Despite the nation's promise to "put children first" and protect the universal rights of "Canada's children," children incarcerated within the Orillia Asylum were subjected to systemic neglect and cultural discrimination, daily humiliation and dehumanization, and physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. Far from being a place for child protection and care, this dissertation finds that the Orillia Asylum was a site of a multi-faceted and all-encompassing violence, a reality that stands in complete contrast to the grand narrative through which the facility has historically been understood. This dissertation considers how such violence against children could occur for so long in a facility maintained by the state, a state invested in protecting children. It finds that children who were admitted to the Orillia Asylum were not considered to be "Canada's children" at all by virtue of being labelled as "mentally deficient," "feeble-minded," "not-quite-human," and "not-quite-children."

Author Keywords: childhood, disability, Huronia Regional Centre, institutional child abuse, institutional violence, institutionalization

Growing Up in Postwar Suburbia: Childhood, Children and Adolescents in Canada, 1950-1970

This dissertation explores the intersections between the suburban landscape both `real' and imagined, childhood, children and adolescents. I contend that there was a richness and diversity in the experiences of children and adolescents in postwar Canada that resists simplistic stereotypes that often depict suburbia as primarily middle-class, dull, homogeneous, conformist, and alienating for residents of all ages.

Suburban living has become the definitive housing choice for the majority of Canadians since the end of World War II. Suburban homes and communities were critical in shaping the everyday lives of young people in this period. These young lives were predominantly safe, comfortable, and enriched in their homescapes. Yet this was not a universal condition. While class and gender were important factors shaping childhood and adolescence, my research findings also show that children and adolescents exercised their agency in this period, and they were active participants in their lives on personal, educational, community, and municipal levels. Young people were monitored, regulated and disciplined, but they were not passive receptacles in a world dominated by adults.

This interdisciplinary study uses a wide range of archival, visual and documentary sources, and also integrates oral histories as a key methodology. These oral histories have added important reflections on childhood and adolescence in postwar suburbia, providing insight into how memory constructs multiple meanings associated with the dissertation's key themes.

Ultimately, I offer a pan-Canadian view of changing images and constructions of childhood by delving into more specific topics to children and adolescents using postwar Calgary suburbia as a focal point in order to understand the heterogeneity of suburban life. In studying the intersections of place, space, age, class, sexuality, `race,' and gender, I demonstrate that the lives of children and adolescents are woven into the fabric of postwar Canadian social and cultural history in a profound and meaningful way.

Author Keywords: adolescence, adolescents, childhood, children, history, suburbs