Leilani Muir
Then, in 1953, her mother sent an application for Muir to be institutionalized at the Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives (also known as the Michener Centre) in Red Deer, Alberta.
Two years later on July 12, 1955, shortly before her 11th birthday, Muir was admitted into the institution solely on the basis of information provided by her mother, without any diagnostic testing.
[3] Under superintendent Leonard Jan Le Vann, a precondition for admission into the Provincial Training School was a signature from Muir's mother permitting the legal enforcement of compulsory sterilization.
[15] Scientists discredited the eugenics movement after witnessing the events of World War II and the acts committed by the Nazis in the name of genetic cleansing.
[17] While sterilization programs began to die down in the United States[18] and Great Britain, they continued in Canada's western provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.
[20] One of the main advocates of eugenics who helped pass Alberta's sterilization law was the first female magistrate of the British Empire, Emily Murphy,[21] who was also one of The Famous Five who campaigned for women's rights in the 1920s.
Under her influence, many Albertans, especially farmers who saw first-hand what selective breeding can do to enhance livestock quality, agreed that eugenics could be used to improve human stock as well.
[26] Muir had lived at the Provincial Training School for two years and four months before she underwent an intelligence quotient (IQ) test.
She was brought to the Calgary Guidance Clinic to take an IQ test a week before meeting with the Eugenics Board and scored an overall mark of 64.
Other factors that increased the likelihood of sterilization were Muir's Irish-Polish background and Catholic religion,[28] her presumed incapability of intelligent parenting, and that she had "shown definite interest in the opposite sex" while living in a public institution.
Considering her past institutionalization, this score surprised Dr. George Kurbatoff who administered the test, and suggested that she did not have a mental defect now that she lived in a better environment.
She was an active board member of the Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada Community University Research Alliance, and enjoyed spending her free time with family, friends, pets, and other animals.
She continued to speak about her life story at international conferences and wrote an autobiography called A Whisper Past: Childless after Eugenic Sterilization in Alberta.
[40] The play Invisible Child: Leilani Muir and the Alberta Eugenics Board was performed by MAA & PAA Theatre at the 2012 Edmonton International Fringe Festival.
