In the USA, but I came across some more information that is new to me. What do you think, in what country and at what time is this possible - a law according to which only those born in a married marriage are recognized as legitimate children. What happens to the rest?
An illegitimate child under this law is one who was born in an ordinary family, but the parents are not married in the Catholic Church. Protestants, Orthodox, atheists - it doesn't matter. Their child is removed from the family and sent to an orphanage.
The state pays the orphanage organization a certain amount - which doubles if the child is found to be mentally ill. Is the corruption scheme clear? Orphanages are turning into asylums for the mentally ill. Children in these orphanages are exploited in all respects - labor, sexual, experimental. It is still not clear how many passed through this system of children's concentration camps. Numbers from 20 to 50 thousand are called.
So where and when was it?
2
No that's not Nazi Germany. And not Spain of the era of the Inquisition. Not Zimbabwe or Kampuchea. This is one of the most peaceful and prosperous countries in the world - Canada. Time of action - 1944-1959. The main character is Maurice Le Noble Duplessis.
In 1944, when Duplessis came to power in Quebec, he began to build a quasi-state under the slogan: "Heaven is blue, hell is red!" The Communist Party was banned, the rights of trade unions were limited, and left-wing media were closed. But this leader spoke a lot about the national pride of the French Canadians and the duty of good Catholics.
Here is what blogger lady_tiana writes based on materials prepared by Evgeny Lakinsky:
Duplessis pursued a policy of so-called traditional nationalism. Citizens were required to be 100% obedient to the requirements of the Catholic Church, devotion to traditional values, renunciation of any struggle for their rights.
Expressing the interests of the most conservative part of society, Duplessis opposed any social and cultural reforms. He tried to conserve the order of things that had existed for centuries: French Canadians had to remain illiterate, and therefore poor, be proud of their national identity and the exploits of their ancestors, be good Catholics (under Duplessis this meant unconditionally obeying any command of the priest, whatever it was) and not to love "strangers". The old French Canadian elite and the higher clergy still had to govern the province. Duplessis persecuted the communists actively and selflessly, which, however, was then very fashionable in North America.
Behind the scenes, it wasn't all that fun. Of course, Duplessis did not suit mass executions, but he nevertheless carried out some “events”. If you ever happen to hold a Quebec welfare request form in your hands, pay attention to the item: “Are you an orphan of Duplessis? ". No, do not suspect the "father of the Quebec people" of having too many children. Everything is more interesting here. As you know, a good Catholic can only have children in marriage. If a woman gives birth to a child without being married, it is a sin. In many countries where the influence of the Catholic Church was most significant, illegitimate children were taken from their mothers and forcibly placed in monastic shelters. This practice, in particular, existed in France in the forties of the last century. But Quebec went further... Children were seized from both poor families and unemployed parents. In the future, these children turned out to be de facto culled from society for a number of reasons.
First, the monasteries viewed orphans as free labor, and from an early age forced children to work on an equal footing with adults at the expense of education. At the same time, beatings were the most common thing, and the children were completely deprived of any contact with the outside world. Secondly, children were legally deprived of the right to inherit after the death of biological parents. The result of such “education” was absolutely desocialized citizens, incapable of independent existence, and, moreover, deeply stigmatized by the status of “children of sin”. But that was not all. At some point, many children were simply replaced with documents, presenting absolutely healthy babies as mentally ill, and transferred to hospitals to work out a program of psychiatric experiments. Or rather, they didn't deliver. Sold. The fact is that the financing of this kind of medical programs at that time was at its best, and shelters always lacked money. So they exchanged illegitimate babies for hard currency. And in some cases, they completely changed the status of the institution from a monastic shelter to a psychiatric clinic.
3
It is these children who received over time common name orphans of Duplessis. According to various sources, their number varied from 20 to 50 thousand people born between 1949 and 1959 and turned into literally laboratory animals. By the beginning of the nineties, no more than 3 thousand people remained alive. Various strong psychotropic drugs were tested on children, they were fixed for a long time in straitjackets, exposed to currents of different frequencies, attaching clamps to the nipples, while the child was crucified and fixed on an upholstered metal sheets table. And many of them were lobotomized.
The Government of Canada allocated $1.25 per day per orphan. If he was recognized as mentally ill - $ 2.75. Duplessis did not even require examinations. One paper, a couple of signatures, and with a flick of the wrist, the orphanage turned into a psychiatric hospital. And the psychiatry of those years is darkness and horror. A very mild description of what was there is Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
How many times have electric shocks been shown there? One? Now imagine that a child, for example, from ten to eighteen years old, does this weekly. Just because he was born in the wrong family.
It was very convenient to test psychotropic drugs on orphans. Nobody will complain. And here's another one - binding for several days in a straitjacket. The most "violent" - lobotomy. In those days, it was done like this: first, anesthesia with electric shock. Then, with an ice pick (I'm not kidding, it was only by the end of the fifties that special tools were invented) the bone of the eye socket made its way, the fibers of the frontal lobes of the brain were dissected. Let me remind you that the whole disease of these children is only that they are not from Catholic families.
The result of a lobotomy is very unpredictable - epileptic seizures, loss of muscle control, incontinence, and, of course, death.
4
For reference: lobotomy as a method was discovered in 1936 in Portugal. From 1936 to 1949, Edgar Moniz conducted experiments on lobotomy. It cannot be called scientific research - it was an unsystematic development of practice. Operations were not analyzed either by diagnosis or by consequences. Nevertheless, in 1949 Monesh received the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Since 1949, lobotomy has marched victoriously across... I wanted to say, across the planet; but no - only by country Western world. In the United States alone, about 50,000 Americans have been lobotomized.
Moreover, the indications for her were not only psychoses, but also neuroses, and even depressive states. The promoter of lobotomy in the United States, Walter Jackson Freeman, rode the Lobomobile and performed 3,500 operations on his own, without having surgical skills. A free man, a free country… Not like the totalitarian USSR, where only 176 such operations were carried out, after which the lobotomy was banned. And not because it is bourgeois, but because it is pseudoscience. Out of 176 cases, only 8 cases showed a positive trend.
But back to Quebec. In addition to psychiatry, forced child labor was also practiced in those shelters. Children deprived of parental care and recognized as mentally unhealthy were used, along with adults, in public works. Duplessis orphans were deprived of elementary legal rights. I'm not talking about voting and other ephemeral freedoms. These children could not inherit the property of their biological parents.
And sexual exploitation. Boys and girls, it doesn't matter.
Upon reaching the age of 18, those who survived in these concentration camps were simply thrown out into the street. Absolutely not adapted to normal life. They didn't even know how to ride a bus, not to mention more complex things like getting a job.
Another quote from blogger lady_tiana: A good friend of mine, who survived all these tortures, told how every evening the children huddled in their beds, listening in horror to the footsteps in the corridor and wondering which of them would be taken away to be molested. As an adult, he himself survived 32 operations to restore the rectum, so everything was destroyed from five to nine years old ...
According to psychologists who examined the surviving children, a significant part of them lagged behind their peers in development, but this was primarily the result of extreme pedagogical neglect and early deprivation. The number of children who died during the experiments cannot be accurately calculated. Relatively recently, a large burial of children's remains was discovered in Montreal, located not far from one of these torture institutions.
5
Duplessis dies in 1959. His National Union party is losing the election to the Liberals. When they come to power in Quebec, they are horrified. And... And silence. The case is not disclosed, does not reach the society. Evidence is being destroyed, shelters are disbanding. Timid sprouts of information appear only in 1989.
The whole story got publicity in 1989, when Radio Canada journalist Jeannette Bertrand invited several surviving orphans to take part in her program. Since then, the surviving orphans, united in a mutual aid committee, seek justice. At first, the provincial government of Quebec refused in principle to recognize the very existence of such experiments. However, over time, the provincial and federal governments apologized to the orphans and even paid some of them material compensation, although they set it up with so many conditions that not everyone was able to receive the money. So far there has been no apology from the Catholic Church.
The victims of the concentration camps united in the organization "Orphans of Duplessis". Has the truth prevailed? No matter how! The government of Quebec admitted with a creak that the surviving 3,000 people were right. They even offered compensation. But the payments were arranged in such a way that it was almost impossible to break through the wall of bureaucratic procedures.
It was not for nothing that there was a mention of the welfer. Answer "yes" to the question: "were you an orphan of Duplessis?" You will be denied entry to Canada permanently.
The Vatican still does not admit its guilt for the Canadian fanatical Catholics.
This is Canada. This is right after Nazi Germany was defeated. Western countries that proudly call themselves “first world countries” are the usual slave-owning, caste system in which there is an elite, there are barbarians and there are helots.
We already had a topic about Prohibited experiments on people in the USA, but I came across some more information that was new to me. What do you think, in what country and at what time is this possible - a law according to which only those born in a married marriage are recognized as legitimate children. What happens to the rest?
An illegitimate under this law is one who was born in an ordinary family, but the parents are not married in the Catholic Church. Protestants, Orthodox, atheists - it doesn't matter. Their child is removed from the family and sent to an orphanage.
The state pays the organization running the shelters a certain amount - which doubles if the child is found to be mentally ill. Is the corruption scheme clear? Orphanages are turning into asylums for the mentally ill. Children in these orphanages are exploited in every way - labor, sexual, experimental. It is still not clear how many passed through this system of children's concentration camps. Numbers from 20 to 50 thousand are called.
So where and when was it?
No, this is not Nazi Germany. And not Spain of the era of the Inquisition. Not Zimbabwe or Kampuchea. This is one of the most peaceful and prosperous countries in the world - Canada. Time of action - 1944-1959. The main character is Maurice Le Noble Duplessis.
In 1944, when Duplessis came to power in Quebec, he began to build a quasi-state under the slogan: "Heaven is blue, hell is red!" The Communist Party was banned, the rights of trade unions were limited, and left-wing media were closed. But this leader spoke a lot about the national pride of the French Canadians and the duty of good Catholics.
Duplessis dies in 1959. His National Union party is losing the election to the Liberals. When they come to power in Quebec, they are horrified. And... And silence. The case is not disclosed, does not reach the society. Evidence is being destroyed, shelters are disbanding. Timid sprouts of information appear only in 1989.
The whole story got publicity in 1989, when Radio Canada journalist Jeannette Bertrand invited several surviving orphans to take part in her program. Since then, the surviving orphans, united in a mutual aid committee, seek justice. At first, the provincial government of Quebec refused in principle to recognize the very existence of such experiments. However, over time, the provincial and federal governments apologized to the orphans and even paid some of them material compensation, although they set it up with so many conditions that not everyone was able to receive the money. So far there has been no apology from the Catholic Church.
Maurice Duplessis, a nationalist proponent of Quebec autonomy, was first elected to the premiership of the province in 1936 and again in 1944, remaining in that position until 1959. He was known for his anti-communist and clerical views, as well as authoritarian methods of government, for which he received the nickname "Chief", and the years of Duplessis' reign are also known as "Great Darkness".
One of the most important points of Maurice Duplessis' activities in office was the so-called "care" for orphans and those children who were born and raised in "inappropriate" families. The Prime Minister, who in his activities actively relied on the power of the Catholic Church, delegated to her the authority to resolve this issue. Schools, hospitals and orphanages were taken over by the church.
Duplessis is a fanatic, anti-communist and hardliner
victims new program not only children who have lost their parents, but also those born to low-income families, to single mothers and unmarried couples, have become orphans. The latter were considered, among other things, the "fruit of sin" and real garbage, who were treated worse than everyone else. Children could be taken away at the insistence of local priests and doctors, in some cases actually forcibly, in others - parents were convinced that in the shelter at the church they were waiting for good life, education and decent living conditions.
Maurice Duplessis
Duplessis soon signed a decree reclassifying asylums as psychiatric hospitals in order to get federal funding for this business. The amount of subsidies allocated to the government of Quebec varied greatly depending on the purpose of the institution: for example, one orphan was relied on 1 dollar 25 cents per day, while a patient in a mental hospital was 2 dollars 75 cents.
Literally in a matter of days, the inmates of the shelters turned into patients in psychiatric hospitals, each was given an appropriate diagnosis. The nuns who worked in these institutions filled out the medical cards of the "sick" themselves. Some children were sent to real hospitals, where they were forced to be among the patients.
In one day, ordinary orphans became patients in mental hospitals
According to the recollections of a few survivors, orphans were subjected to physical and moral humiliation: beaten, flogged, tied to beds, put on straitjackets, forced to take ice baths, raped, involved in hard physical labor, using it as free labor, performed surgery, in particular, they did a lobotomy, but probably the worst thing was turned into real guinea pigs, material for medical experiments with drugs and testing new drugs.
One of the girls who went through the Duplessis "re-education camps" system, Clarina Dugway, later spoke about the conditions in one of the hospitals. She was sent to the hospital of St. Julien, 1000 kilometers from home. According to Dugway, the nuns dipped their heads in an ice bath for the slightest offense, chained their arms and necks to a cot, forced them to sleep on box-spring beds without a mattress, and endlessly scraped floors. Two weeks after arriving at the hospital, the girl was given drugs that "turned her into a zombie." Documents obtained by her many years later indicate that the drug was chlorpromazine, an antipsychotic, a strong sedative with serious side effects banned in many countries.
Orphans of Duplessis
There are many dark spots in the story of the Duplessis orphans, and one of the main questions is exactly how many children suffered as a result of this horrific policy. The numbers range from 5 to 300 thousand. However, not only orphans who ended up in psychiatric hospitals, where they were actually kept as prisoners of concentration camps, are considered victims, but also those who were literally sold on the “black market”. Children were given for adoption to families of foreigners, in particular, to US citizens. The price for one child ranged from $40 to $25,000. They traded not only living orphans, but even their corpses - the bodies were sold to anatomical theaters at a price of 10 dollars.
According to a 1999 report by two Canadian researchers, Leo-Paul Lazon and Martin Poirier, the Catholic Church and the government of Quebec earned about $70 million from the orphan business over two decades (40s and 50s).
Over 20 years, the church and the government have earned $ 70 million from orphans
After reaching the age of majority, the children who managed to survive went out into the "free swimming", but did not have any skills, in particular, they did not receive an education. In addition, it was almost impossible to get a job because of the mental illness in the medical record. Some of the victims of Duplessis' policies later tried to join forces to help each other adjust to normal life, find relatives, and tell their story to the general public. Nevertheless, until the beginning of the 90s of the last century, the topic of “Duplessis orphans” remained among the closed pages Canadian history, and was given publicity in the press almost 50 years later.
In the late 90s, the government of Quebec, under public pressure, promised to pay 15 thousand dollars in compensation to each of the victims, but the offer was rejected by them, as the "orphans" considered it offensive. Later, in 2001, a new offer came in: $10,000 per person, plus $1,000 for each year of stay in the hospital, thus the compensation did not extend to the remaining victims who were not registered in psychiatric clinics, but were subjected to physical and moral abuse.
Meeting of the society "orphans Duplessis"
In addition, the government of Quebec did not initiate a criminal investigation into the abuse. Representatives of the Catholic Church publicly stated that they do not bear any responsibility for what happened, and refused to apologize to the victims. One of the nuns who commented to reporters, Sister Giselle Fautier, said the accusations were "overblown" and the whole situation should be seen "in context".
In 1999, on a pig farm, which was located near one of the hospitals, boxes with the buried remains of about 2,000 people, presumably children, who died during forced detention in a shelter hospital, were found in a mass grave. In 2004, members of the Duplessis Orphans asked the government of Quebec to excavate an abandoned cemetery in east Montreal where they believe the remains of other children who were victims of medical experiments may be located.
In the 1940s and 1950s, quiet Canada became the scene of a terrible tragedy. Under the guise of fighting for "traditional values" and religious morality, Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis turned the orphanage chain into a money-making corrupt system. Children endured terrible abuse and humiliation there.
From the mid-1940s to the late 1950s, there was a network of "clinics for the mentally handicapped" in Canada. People were placed there against their will and not at all in order to be treated. Patients were driven to forced labor, tested for medicines, and subjected to physical and sexual abuse. But the worst thing is that the patients of these "clinics" were less than 18 years old. The man responsible for the broken lives of tens of thousands of young Canadians was named Maurice Le Noble Duplessis.
Dangerous Conservative
Maurice Duplessis was an ordinary Quebec lawyer. He adhered to conservative views, emphasized his religiosity and adherence to strict morality. Having completed his career as a lawyer, he became an equally ordinary provincial politician who did not think about the federal level. Fortunately, according to Canadian laws, the regions have a very large independence.
The political biography of Duplessis began in the local Conservative Party. And in 1935, the 45-year-old ex-lawyer became the leader and creator of the National Union.
In 1936, the new party won the regional elections, and Duplessis became prime minister of the province of Quebec. True, in the next elections, the National Union lost to the Liberal Party. But in 1944 he took revenge. Then Duplessis returned to the premiership to remain in it until his death in 1959.
His coming to power did not promise any shocks at first. But it soon became clear that conservatism, in the understanding of Maurice Duplessis, is the maximum restriction of civil rights and the empowerment of the Catholic Church with gigantic powers. In fact, the prime minister began to build a mini-state of religious fanatics in Quebec, for whom every word of any Catholic priest was the ultimate truth and a direct guide to action.
It is not surprising that Duplessis considered the communists to be the main enemies. Under him, the activities of the Communist Party were banned in Quebec, the rights of trade unions were limited, and the persecution of any “leftists” began. "Heaven blue color and hell is red!" - read one of the official slogans of the National Union.
The newspaper Komba, which tried to criticize his methods, was closed by Duplessis, and any free-thinking was resolutely suppressed. Surprisingly, in this case, the case did without mass repressions or executions of the discontented. The fact is that Duplessis enjoyed the support of the illiterate segments of the population. They liked what he said about "traditional society", about the "national pride of the French Canadians" and the "duty of good Catholics". And soon it bore its ominous fruit.
Money for the boss
The more power Maurice Duplessis concentrated in his hands, the more intolerant he became of other people's views. In the National Union for the Authoritarian Style of Management, he was nicknamed the Chief. As long as the case concerned purely political issues, his categorical and inflexible nature could not yet cause outright harm. But soon the Chief decided to "put in order" public morality.
In Quebec, the laws regarding family relations. From now on, any child born out of wedlock was subject to placement in an orphanage. Of course, only a marriage consecrated by the Catholic Church was recognized as legal (recall, this happened in the middle of the 20th century!). And the orphanages, which received "orphans", were completely transferred to the management of Catholic monastic orders. It is worth noting that this situation was not unique - the same practice existed in the 1940s in France, the "heir" of which was considered Quebec.
Children of very poor or unemployed parents were also sent to orphanages. Outwardly, everything looked like taking care of little Canadians. But in reality, the families of trade union activists, communists or people who lost their jobs due to political reasons. The Catholic Church, which strongly supported Maurice Duplessis, promptly provided the ideological justification for such measures, hypocritically expressing its readiness to take care of the unfortunate "orphans".
At the same time, Duplessis was not at all a fanatic or unmercenary. Soon he realized that with the help of the army of "orphans" you can make good money. The fact is that the government of Canada regularly allocated subsidies to Quebec for the maintenance of social security institutions. The amount for orphanages was calculated from the norm of 1.25 US dollars per day per person. But for psychiatric clinics, the norm was higher - $ 2.75 per day per patient. Therefore, unfortunate children taken away from their parents began to be massively recognized as mentally handicapped. And sometimes, with just one stroke of the pen, they changed the status of the entire orphanage to the status of a psychiatric clinic.
Needless to say, miserable crumbs came directly from the budget money directly to the children? Decent sums settled on the accounts of the National Union and church structures, the rest was embezzled directly on the ground.
Concentration camp in Quebec
Children who ended up in shelters and were declared mentally handicapped were deprived of any rights. They were mercilessly used for work on a par with adults. On them, without any precautions, "new methods of treatment" were tested - such as potent psychotropic drugs, passing electrical discharges through the body, or fixing in a straitjacket for many hours. And some of those who tried to show disobedience or start a riot were waiting for a lobotomy.
But even all this was not the most terrible. The staff of the shelters treated the children as if they were their own property. And he used them to satisfy the basest passions. Both girls and boys were constantly subjected to sexual violence, not to mention daily beatings, humiliation and bullying. Those who died unable to bear the torture were buried in group unmarked graves. In fact, these were real concentration camps, in no way inferior in the cruelty of what happened in them to the Nazi dungeons.
Only now it was all happening in quiet Canada and after the Third Reich had already been defeated. And Maurice Duplessis, meanwhile, continued to broadcast about "traditional values", religion and "national pride" - in between counting money.
How many people went through this hell on earth is still not exactly counted. Numbers from 20 to 50 thousand children are called. After they reached the age of 18, they were simply thrown out into the street - completely unadapted to life, not knowing and not able to do anything, accustomed to considering themselves second-class people, "children of sin", and ready to dutifully endure any humiliation. It is clear that none of them even thought to fight for their rights or make public the terrible truth. Unable to cope with terrible memories and constant stress, many committed suicide.
Maurice Duplessis died in 1959, and the National Union immediately lost its influence. Representatives of the Liberal Party of Quebec that came to power were horrified by the legacy that they got. However, they decided not to wash dirty linen in public. The cannibalistic system of “hospital clinics” built by Duplessis was liquidated, and Catholic orders were removed from the budget feeder. Everything was limited to this, and Canada lived quietly for another 30 years.
In 1989, Radio Canada aired a program in which several people who had been kept in "clinics" as children took part. It was then that law-abiding Canadians learned about the nightmare that had been going on in their country for more than a decade. The victims of violence united in an organization called the "Orphans of Duplessis", and since then they have been seeking justice, at least after the fact. By the early 1990s, there were about 3,000 of them.
Although very reluctant, the government of Quebec still recognized the truth of the "Orphans of Duplessis". As victims of arbitrariness, they were awarded monetary compensation, but even here there were problems. The authorities surrounded the payments with so many bureaucratic procedures that not everyone was able to receive the money. The Catholic Church still denies any involvement in the story of the "Orphans of Duplessis" and refuses to make a formal apology.
September 26, 2016, 10:28 
In the 1940s and 1950s, quiet Canada became the scene of a terrible tragedy. Under the guise of fighting for "traditional values" and religious morality, Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis turned the orphanage chain into a money-making corrupt system. Children endured terrible abuse and humiliation there.
From the mid-1940s to the late 1950s, there was a network of "clinics for the mentally handicapped" in Canada. People were placed there against their will and not at all in order to be treated. Patients were driven to forced labor, tested for medicines, and subjected to physical and sexual abuse. But the worst thing is that the patients of these "clinics" were less than 18 years old. The man responsible for the broken lives of tens of thousands of young Canadians was named Maurice Le Noble Duplessis.
Maurice Duplessis was an ordinary Quebec lawyer. He adhered to conservative views, emphasized his religiosity and adherence to strict morality. Having completed his career as a lawyer, he became an equally ordinary provincial politician who did not think about the federal level. Fortunately, according to Canadian laws, the regions have a very large independence.
The political biography of Duplessis began in the local Conservative Party. And in 1935, the 45-year-old ex-lawyer became the leader and creator of the National Union.
In 1936, the new party won the regional elections, and Duplessis became prime minister of the province of Quebec. True, in the next elections, the National Union lost to the Liberal Party. But in 1944 he took revenge. Then Duplessis returned to the premiership to remain in it until his death in 1959.
His coming to power did not promise any shocks at first. But it soon became clear that conservatism, in the understanding of Maurice Duplessis, is the maximum restriction of civil rights and the empowerment of the Catholic Church with gigantic powers. In fact, the prime minister began to build a mini-state of religious fanatics in Quebec, for whom every word of any Catholic priest was the ultimate truth and a direct guide to action.
It is not surprising that Duplessis considered the communists to be the main enemies. Under him, the activities of the Communist Party were banned in Quebec, the rights of trade unions were limited, and the persecution of any “leftists” began. "Heaven is blue and hell is red!" - read one of the official slogans of the National Union.
The newspaper Komba, which tried to criticize his methods, was closed by Duplessis, and any free-thinking was resolutely suppressed. Surprisingly, in this case, the case did without mass repressions or executions of the discontented. The fact is that Duplessis enjoyed the support of the illiterate segments of the population. They liked what he said about "traditional society", about the "national pride of the French Canadians" and the "duty of good Catholics". And soon it bore its ominous fruit.
The more power Maurice Duplessis concentrated in his hands, the more intolerant he became of other people's views. In the National Union for the Authoritarian Style of Management, he was nicknamed the Chief. As long as the case concerned purely political issues, his categorical and inflexible nature could not yet cause outright harm. But soon the Chief decided to "put in order" public morality.
In Quebec, laws regarding family relations were tightened as much as possible. From now on, any child born out of wedlock was subject to placement in an orphanage. Of course, only a marriage consecrated by the Catholic Church was recognized as legal (recall, this happened in the middle of the 20th century!). And the orphanages, which received "orphans", were completely transferred to the management of Catholic monastic orders. It is worth noting that this situation was not unique - the same practice existed in the 1940s in France, the "heir" of which was considered Quebec.
Children of very poor or unemployed parents were also sent to orphanages. Outwardly, everything looked like taking care of little Canadians. But in reality, the families of trade union activists, communists or people who lost their jobs for political reasons were the first to be blacklisted. The Catholic Church, which strongly supported Maurice Duplessis, promptly provided the ideological justification for such measures, hypocritically expressing its readiness to take care of the unfortunate "orphans".
At the same time, Duplessis was not at all a fanatic or unmercenary. Soon he realized that with the help of the army of "orphans" you can make good money. The fact is that the government of Canada regularly allocated subsidies to Quebec for the maintenance of social security institutions. The amount for orphanages was calculated from the norm of 1.25 US dollars per day per person. But for psychiatric clinics, the norm was higher - $ 2.75 per day per patient. Therefore, unfortunate children taken away from their parents began to be massively recognized as mentally handicapped. And sometimes, with just one stroke of the pen, they changed the status of the entire orphanage to the status of a psychiatric clinic.
Needless to say, miserable crumbs came directly from the budget money directly to the children? Decent sums settled on the accounts of the National Union and church structures, the rest was embezzled directly on the ground.
Concentration camp in Quebec
Children who ended up in shelters and were declared mentally handicapped were deprived of any rights. They were mercilessly used for work on a par with adults. On them, without any precautions, "new methods of treatment" were tested - such as potent psychotropic drugs, passing electrical discharges through the body, or fixing in a straitjacket for many hours. And some of those who tried to show disobedience or start a riot were waiting for a lobotomy.
But even all this was not the most terrible. The staff of the shelters treated the children as if they were their own property. And he used them to satisfy the basest passions. Both girls and boys were constantly subjected to sexual violence, not to mention daily beatings, humiliation and bullying. Those who died unable to bear the torture were buried in group unmarked graves. In fact, these were real concentration camps, in no way inferior in the cruelty of what happened in them to the Nazi dungeons. The number of children who died during the experiments cannot be accurately calculated. Relatively recently, a large burial of children's remains was discovered in Montreal, located not far from one of these torture institutions.
And all this happened in quiet Canada even after the Third Reich had already been defeated. And Maurice Duplessis, meanwhile, continued to broadcast about "traditional values", religion and "national pride" - in between counting money.
How many people went through this hell on earth is still not exactly counted. Numbers from 20 to 50 thousand children are called. After they reached the age of 18, they were simply thrown out into the street - completely unadapted to life, not knowing and not able to do anything, accustomed to considering themselves second-class people, "children of sin", and ready to dutifully endure any humiliation. It is clear that none of them even thought to fight for their rights or make public the terrible truth. Unable to cope with terrible memories and constant stress, many committed suicide.
Maurice Duplessis died in 1959, and the National Union immediately lost its influence. Representatives of the Liberal Party of Quebec that came to power were horrified by the legacy that they got. However, they decided not to wash dirty linen in public. The cannibalistic system of “hospital clinics” built by Duplessis was liquidated, and Catholic orders were removed from the budget feeder. Everything was limited to this, and Canada lived quietly for another 30 years.
In 1989, Radio Canada aired a program in which several people who had been kept in "clinics" as children took part. It was then that law-abiding Canadians learned about the nightmare that had been going on in their country for more than a decade. The victims of violence united in an organization called the "Orphans of Duplessis", and since then they have been seeking justice, at least after the fact. By the early 1990s, there were about 3,000 of them.
Although very reluctant, the government of Quebec still recognized the truth of the "Orphans of Duplessis". As victims of arbitrariness, they were awarded monetary compensation, but even here there were problems. The authorities surrounded the payments with so many bureaucratic procedures that not everyone was able to receive the money. The Catholic Church still denies any involvement in the story of the "Orphans of Duplessis" and refuses to make a formal apology.
Taken from zagadki-istorii.ru