Leonard Jan Le Vann (1 August 1915 – 29 September 1987)[2] was the medical superintendent at the Alberta Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives (also known as the Michener Center)[3] from 1949 to 1974.

[4][5] In 1974 Le Vann resigned from the training center after the Government of Alberta repealed the Sexual Sterilization Act.

[6] Le Vann was originally an American citizen, and completed his undergraduate degree at the Ethical Culture School in New York.

Upon graduating, Le Vann performed one year of general practice in England during WWII at which time he was awarded a medal for bravery.

Le Vann held a position at Sevealls Mental hospital in Colchester, Essex, UK for four years before moving on to a new endeavor.

In 1948, Le Vann moved to Canada and began to practice psychiatry at the Brandon Mental Hospital in Manitoba.

[5]" Le Vann also believed that for children required a balance between work, education, and play to develop to their highest potential; this became known as the workhouse model.

[3] It was standard practice to have teenage girls "spend their days scrubbing floors, making meals and dressing and changing the diapers of the severely disabled students ".

[3] As of 2009 the Michener centre supports 274 adults by "providing an impressive range of recreational, social, residential, spiritual and health services.

"[8] As superintendent of the Provincial Training School, Le Vann was a key player in many sterilizations and antipsychotic drug experiments that took place during the 1950s and 1960s.

[3] In addition, Le Vann also utilized his power at the school to carry out his own experiments using the children as his "personal guinea pigs".

On the one hand, the graceful, intelligently curious, active young Homo sapiens, and on the other the gross, retarded, animalistic, early primate type individual.

There have been claims that state if a trainee did not adhere to his workhouse model or misbehaved they would be punished by being registered in an experimental drug trial.

[3]" Le Vann also ran the school with favouritism; in 1960 when premier of Alberta, Ernest Manning admitted his son Keith into the facility, he was "showered with privileges ".

[1] Le Vann published another article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 1953 entitled "A Clinical Survey of Alcoholics".

In his 1959 article Trifluoperazine Dihyrochloride: an effective tranquillizing agent for behavioural abnormalities in defective children, Le Vann treated 33 patients.

He suggested in his article that there is an increase in the amount of defective births and that pregnant women should take "drugs" as a way to lower the incident rate.