S10E1 - The Oak Ridge Experiment

Curious Canadian History

Welcome back to Season 10!! In the first episode of the newest season we take you to Penetanguishene, Ontario along the shores of Georgian Bay where once existed the Oak Ridge ‘Criminal Insane Building.’ Oak Ridge has been deemed the ‘Alcatraz of Canada’ and ‘the most terrible institution of all.’ For decades it housed some of Canada’s most violent criminals and in particular violent criminals with serious psychiatric illnesses. Yet in the 1960s an intensive and radical therapy program arrived, promoting the widespread of drugs and treatment methods that frankly bordered on torture. The Social Therapy Unit at Oak Ridge is still remembered by some as a successful venture in utopian experimentation though for others it embodies a state-authorized subjection of the individual without any checks or balances. A place where patients became test subjects in a radical and controversial program of rehabilitation.

This week’s book recommendation is Watching the Devil Dance by William Toffan, published in 2020 by Biblioasis.

Don’t forget! You can pre-purchase a copy of Punching Above Our Weight: The Canadian Military at War Since 1867 right now at the below links:

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