Full disclosure – I have a personal interest in this case, which involves abuse going back many decades.  But I think the hearing tomorrow will be quite important.  Also worth reading: this Globe story, from this morning.

Canadian Press:

Lawsuit alleges people abused, held in toilet at Ontario institution (Institution-Abuse)
By Ciara Byrne
THE CANADIAN PRESS

TORONTO _ As a little girl in an Ontario institution for the developmentally disabled, Pat Seth was turned upside down in the toilet as staff poured cold water on her face after she refused to eat her porridge, the now 52-year-old said Tuesday.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Maurice Cullity is expected to give the formal go-ahead to a class-action lawsuit Wednesday involving Seth and thousands of others who are suing the provincial government.

The former residents of Huronia Regional Centre and family members are alleging systemic neglect and abuse at the facility for more than 100 years.

The allegations have not been proven in court and the Ontario government has not filed a statement of defence.

“We got sentenced. We are the disappeared,” Seth said during a phone interview Tuesday, comparing her childhood years at the Orillia, Ont., facility to a prison term.

“(We were) isolated from the outside world. We were sentenced for being mentally handicapped and it wasn’t fair,” said Seth.

The institution opened in 1876 under the name Orillia Asylum for Idiots, and became “a prison for individuals with disabilities,” said David Rosenfeld, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs.

When the facility closed its doors in March 2009, Huronia was the oldest institution for people with a developmental disability. In 1971 the facility housed 1,875 residents.

Over the years, there were allegations of neglect and abuse made against the institution. There were also several deaths.

In the 1960s, an article described the facility as overcrowded, with beds so close people were lying head to head.

By 1971, a report by Walter B. Williston sponsored by the Ministry of Health, condemned the institution, describing situations where adults were left rocking or aimlessly walking the halls, while others were organized into work gangs. The findings eventually led to another scathing government-sponsored report in 1976, which led to the replacement of the administrator of the facility at the time.

“These class members were put into this institution, almost like a prison, and forgotten about by the rest of society,” said Rosenfeld.

Marilyn Dolmage, who worked at the centre between 1968 and 1973 as a social worker, is acting with her husband Jim as a litigation guardian for the lead plaintiffs Marie Slark and Pat Seth.

Both Slark and Seth were admitted to the institution in the 1960s at the age of six and seven, as wards of the state. At 16, Seth was placed in a group home on the premises of Huronia until she was 21.

“It was an awful place to live. It was like living in jail. It was restricted there was no freedom,” said Seth.

Seth alleges residents were hit with brushes and fly swatters.

“We weren’t allowed to retaliate, because if we did we would be dragged across the floor by the hair of our head,” Seth said.

Dolmage said she remembers the institution operating like an “army camp,” children and adults lined up and followed orders.

“There was a constant fear, especially little children like Pat, I recall her as a very cute little girl _ tiny,” said Dolmage.

“They told me about their fear and suffering and the kind of punishment they had.

Ontario was once home to 16 institutions. Beginning in 1987, the province moved to close them and place residents in community settings.

The Huronia of the past few decades was a very different place than it used to be, advocates have said. They were vibrant communities where the residents had dances and parties, they say.

But Community Living Ontario has said while the institutions became cleaner and better maintained, residents were still subject to isolation and separation from society, therefore necessitating the institution closures.

INDEX: NATIONAL SOCIAL JUSTICE POLITICS

Comments (3)

I refused to fill out the long-form census thing, as I have written below, because (a) the questions were pretty intrusive and (b) I don’t believe governments are sufficiently careful about sensitive, private and/or personal information.  They’re sloppy as Hell, in fact.

On the latter point, various commentators have taken me to task, huffing and puffing that reputable government agencies –  like StatsCan, I guess –  never, ever let sensitive info leak out.

Ever, ever!

Don’t worry, leaks like the WikiLeaks leaks never, ever happen. Well, okay, maybe 92,000 times.

But it won’t ever happened to you, or to any government from this point onwards!  Stamp out, TTT, black magic, no erasing!

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In case you have noticed, which you almost certainly didn’t, Ontario Regressive Reformatory leader Little Timmy Hudak has been traveling the province this Summer.

And, just last week, he and his caveman caucus held a news conference every single day. 
Most days, they got no coverage at all.  Some days, however, they have been rewarded with some boffo reviews.  A sampling:

• Belleville Intelligencer, May 13, 2010: “Conservative Leader Tim Hudak is in town today. You may see him with a portable podium with his name and a party slogan on it, standing out front of the Local Health Integration Network offices on Dundas Street today. 

You might think there’s an election on. But, you’ll know Hudak. 

He’ll be the angry man telling you all that LHINs are a waste of money and he’s even had his staff do Freedom of Information requests to determine who spent what on a Montana’s meal while on the taxpayer’s dime…. We’ll let the politicians debate the merits or waste of the LHINs in the Legislature. A dog and pony show with e-mailed notices to draw attendance by local media outlets to score fast headlines in a hit-and-run fashion, though, smacks of cheap electioneering. 

The LHINs may very well prove to be an ineffective use of health care dollars. But, what Hudak won’t elaborate on is the fact that a mandatory review of LHINs provincewide will be undertaken in 18 months. The requirement was built into the legislation that created the LHINs and there will be ample opportunity there and in the Legislature before then to put the LHINs under the microscope. Our political process has become a series of orchestrated, headline-grabbing bits of street theatre and today’s event is a perfect example. 

Let Hudak expound on solid policy alternatives before he rolls into town with an election-style, made for photo-ops vaudeville routine. 

Show us some solid alternatives, not dog-and- pony, please.”
• Barrie Examiner, May 19, 2010: “Ontario voters have long memories. The last time a Tory government was in power, it was the Mike Harris/Ernie Eves Conservatives — which cut welfare and all sorts of other services. 

Fairly or unfairly, Walkerton is their legacy. 

Hudak, of course, has the provincial election during the fall of 2011 in mind. He’s trying to give Ontario voters a viable alternative to the Liberals. 

But it hasn’t taken long for things to get sticky for Hudak. He needs to have more detailed answers.”
• Guelph Mercury, June 18, 2010: “Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak was once again all talk and no promised action during a visit to Guelph. 

As he did in previous stops – Hudak has been in Guelph four times during the last 14 months – he lashed out at Premier Dalton McGuinty and the looming harmonized sales tax, which takes effect July 1. 

But the leader again failed to offer a concrete solution to the tax.”
• Globe and Mail, July 7, 2010: “I wouldn’t have expected Tim Hudak to put forward a really nuanced post-G20 treatise on the balance between security and civil liberties. That’s not the way opposition politics tends to work. 

Still, I would have expected something a little more sophisticated than this… 

The Conservative Leader’s op-ed in Tuesday’s Toronto Sun came off like something on that paper’s letters page, or like a transcript of a kneejerk call to a talk-radio station… If Hudak and his strategists didn’t see any political advantage in trying to convince their supporters to come around to that line of thinking, fair enough. But it’s disappointing that the leader of the Official Opposition actively discouraged Ontarians from looking at relevant issues in a more serious way. 

I’m not sure if he took his position because he genuinely believed it, or because he thought it would be the easiest way to score points. And I’m honestly not sure which would be worse.”

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…and wherein Messrs. Harper and Ford don’t do so well.

Premier Dad, however, does barkingly well, 19 times out of 20!

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Me and Roxy heard in it on the way in. She liked it, so I figured I’d post it.

Catchier than a drawer of fish hooks.  Good Monday morning sunshine-ness.

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Here:

I received the long form questionnaire many years ago. I thought the questions were pretty personal – stuff about race, sexual orientation, income and so on. I wouldn’t have minded answering some of it,  I guess, were it not for the fact that governments generally stink at safeguarding peoples’ privacy. I mean, there’s only so many times that you can hear about health records being found in a dumpster, you know?

I received the form when John Manley was Minister of Industry, whenever that was. I recall letting him know about my census conscientious objector status. He said he thought a stint in jail would improve my character. I didn’t disagree.

Now, if the long-form census becomes a voluntary process, I suppose it’ll address the concerns of some people. But for me, I objected to, one, the nature of the questions and, two, all governments’ seeming inability to keep secret the answers we give. The fact that they threaten to take you to court for failing to go along with such a process obviously makes it worse.

Some Liberals have said I shouldn’t offer my opinion about this issue – a few have even said I should be kicked out of the party over it!  When they calm down, or get medicated (or both), I suggest they do a Google search. The sad tale is there for all to see: over the years, there have ministerial resignations, investigations by privacy commissioners, and many, many media stories about governments – of all stripes, at all levels – losing people’s private information.

For me, this isn’t some libertarian thing. When governments get serious about protecting our information, I’ll get serious about their demands that I provide very personal information. But in the digital age, their sloppiness has only gotten worse, not better.

But does this mean I think Tim’s team has handled it well?  Um, no. I think Clement et al. were throwing a bone to their neo-con and so-con base, but they didn’t expect the big blowback they’ve gotten from everyone else. They’ve politically mismanaged the file from start to finish.

But that doesn’t mean it’s an unhelpful debate. I think it’s good that we’re talking about this.

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Dear Internet:

Do puppies ever sleep? Ever?

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Warren

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Live from Kingston! Meet Roxy Roller Kinsella, my new gal. I shot this on the iPhone, sort-of sideways. You still get the full Roxy Effect, however.

Get ready for more Roxy At Arm’s Length, world!

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“In November, 1990, LIFE magazine published a photograph of a young man, David Kirby — his body wasted by AIDS, his gaze locked on something beyond this world — surrounded by anguished family members as he took his last breaths. The haunting image of Kirby’s passing (above), taken by a journalism grad student named Therese Frare, became the one photograph most identified with the HIV/AIDS epidemic that, by then, had seen as many as 12 million people infected.”

My Dad was an immunologist before he became a bio-ethicist. When I was a kid, I remember him coming home to tell us about a frightening virus that didn’t really have a name yet. Some of the doctors at the hospital, he said, were perplexed by the profound toll it was taking on three “H” communities – Haitians, homosexuals and heroin users. I remember him saying it was the most formidable virus any of them had ever seen. “If it does what we think it is going to do,” he said, “it will kill millions of people.”

It did. Every year, now, it kills about two million people. Many more live with it.

When that photo appeared, I – like everyone else – thought it was extraordinary. I was appalled by Benetton’s use of it to sell sweaters – but, as the above link to Life makes clear, David Kirby’s parents felt it was the right thing to do. They’d know better than me.

Anyway. I don’t post this photo to mark some sad anniversary or anything else like that. I just put it here to remind myself that it is a terrible, terrible disease, and that it is still with us.

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Paradis stays in, Guergis stays out: Sound fair to you? Me neither. Link somewhere in here.

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