Now partly abandoned, the Rideau Regional Centre was one of the largest provincially run institutions of its kind in Ontario. At its peak, there were 2,600 residents.<\/p>\n
Mr. McKillop was often afraid.<\/p>\n
At the age of four, in 1955, doctors advised his family to send him to the Smiths Falls facility, 80 kilometres outside Ottawa, due to his disability. The centre, which opened in 1951 as the Ontario Hospital School, was one of the largest provincially run institutions for developmentally disabled individuals. <\/p>\n
By the 1970s, the government ran 16 such institutions in rural areas of the province. Children and adults were admitted by parents, guardians or the Children\u2019s Aid Society, often because they were told by medical professionals that it was for the best. <\/p>\n
After a class-action lawsuit, a government apology and the demolition of other institutions, the buildings of the former Rideau Regional Centre still stand. <\/p>\n
The Globe and Mail spoke to several former residents and family members of people who were institutionalized in an effort to understand the legacy of the system. <\/p>\n
When the centres were opened, the thinking was that they could provide safety, health care, education and training for people who needed help. Parents had few alternatives and society\u2019s view of disability was influenced by stereotypes, prejudice and misconceptions.<\/p>\n
But the institutions quickly became overpopulated and understaffed. At its most overcrowded, Rideau housed 2,600 residents. <\/p>\n
Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Mr. McKillop has scars on his arms from a cyst that was removed during his time at Rideau. The operation was so poorly done that he had to have it fixed at a hospital.<\/p>\n Mr. McKillop says it wasn\u2019t all bad. He learned to play euchre, participated in sports and enjoyed socializing with other kids. He liked his music teacher, who would take him home to her place for the holidays.<\/p>\n But far from his family, at times Rideau felt cruel. Mr. McKillop says he was beaten and sexually assaulted at the institution by staff and fellow residents. <\/p>\n He was the lead plaintiff in a 2010 class-action lawsuit against the province on behalf of former Rideau residents, alleging physical and mental abuse as well as unnecessary administration of medication. In 2013, the lawsuit reached a settlement of $20.6 million, and the provincial government delivered a public apology. <\/p>\n Joe Clayton was sent to Rideau in 1966 at age 12. Before that, he was in several foster homes, according to his medical records. Mr. Clayton says he was sexually abused by fellow residents at Rideau.<\/p>\n Joe Clayton was also part of the lawsuit and received a settlement for the harms done to him. <\/p>\n Mr. Clayton, born in Pembroke in 1953, was put into foster care in 1958, moving between homes until his Children\u2019s Aid worker took him to Rideau in 1966, at age 12.<\/p>\n He enjoyed art classes at Rideau and remembers staff members there who encouraged him. But he also recalls the humiliation of mopping the floors of the institution\u2019s long hallways in his nightgown. He says he was sexually abused by fellow residents.<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Victoria Freeman’s sister, Martha, once lived at Rideau. Victoria says she used to feel embarrassed by this photo of Martha and thought her sister looked unintelligent. Now, Victoria sees the photo\u2019s beauty.<\/p>\n Children with Down syndrome were institutionalized particularly young. <\/p>\n One of them, Martha Freeman, was sent to Rideau at 20 months old, in 1960. Her family rarely visited or brought her home. Her sister, Victoria Freeman, was four years old at the time and says she was traumatized by her sister disappearing from their day-to-day life. <\/p>\n Martha lived at Rideau until 1973, before being sent to an approved boarding home, and then moving in with the family of the woman who ran the home. <\/p>\n After previously being diagnosed with \u201csevere mental retardation\u201d and an IQ of 27 when she lived at Rideau, Martha thrived in her new environment. <\/p>\n In 1975, a worker from the social work department of the Rideau Regional Centre wrote a letter to a speech therapist, who had been asked to assess Martha and provide speech therapy. <\/p>\n The social worker\u2019s letter gave a summary of all Martha\u2019s previous IQ tests and language training, noting: \u201cIn view of Martha\u2019s progress since her community placement, it is the worker\u2019s opinion that the above results were perhaps an under-estimation of her potential.\u201d Martha died in 2002 at 44.<\/p>\n Bill McKercher, born in 1956, was sent to Rideau when he was just two-and-a-half years old. He had Down syndrome, and his parents were pressured by doctors and their community to send him away so that he could receive specialized care and his siblings wouldn\u2019t resent him or feel held back. <\/p>\n As his sister Catherine McKercher wrote in a book about her brother\u2019s experience, \u201cShut Away: When Down syndrome Was a Life Sentence,\u201d their parents would say that sending their child away was the best thing they could have done for him. <\/p>\n She says that \u201cthere was remarkably little outrage and remarkably little questioning\u201d about the institutions.<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Bill McKercher is the child in Santa\u2019s arms in this Christmas card from Rideau.Courtesy of Catherine McKercher<\/p>\n Bill’s sister, Catherine McKercher, remembers that their family visited him often. She says that was disturbing for all of them.<\/p>\n The family would go see Bill once a month, but they never brought him home for a visit. After each trip to Rideau, she recounts, their mother would hide away in her bedroom, upset and filled with guilt. <\/p>\n Around the age of nine or 10, Bill began pulling out his hair, eyebrows and eyelashes. He also had chronic hepatitis B, which he contracted at Rideau when he was a child. He died of liver failure at age 38, having lived at the institution for his entire life. A 1970s study found many cases of hepatitis B in the Down syndrome population at Rideau.<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n The people buried in the Huronia Regional Centre Cemetery in Orillia, Ont., were given numbers based on the order in which they died.<\/p>\n Journalist Pierre Berton visited one of the institutions, Huronia Regional Centre in Orillia, Ont., in December, 1959, and reported on severe overcrowding, understaffing and uncleanliness in the Toronto Star. <\/p>\n His article made the front page on Jan. 6, 1960. \u201cRemember this: After Hitler fell, and the horrors of the slave camps were exposed, many Germans excused themselves because they said they did not know what went on behind those walls: no one had told them,\u201d Berton wrote. \u201cWell, you have been told about Orillia.\u201d<\/p>\n Beginning in the 1960s, society began questioning the institutional system in earnest. In the 1970s, the deinstitutionalization movement began to gain more traction. In 1971, Ontario\u2019s Minister of Health asked lawyer Walter Williston to investigate the current care and supervision of individuals with developmental disabilities.<\/p>\n The request was prompted by two tragic incidents involving former residents of Rideau. In 1971, Frederick Elijah Sanderson, a Cree 18-year-old with a supposedly low IQ, died by suicide in a barn at the farm where he worked. Jean Marie Martel, who had been discharged from Rideau in 1968 at age 21, was found running away from his foster home on Feb. 18, 1971. He survived, but suffered from frostbite on his nose, ears, fingers and toes. <\/p>\n Mr. Williston\u2019s report that year urged the province to gradually close the institutions, citing overcrowding, unsafe conditions, understaffing and inexperienced staff, among other factors. He recommended increased funding for support services for disabled individuals, so they could live within their own communities. A year later, a report by an Ontario cabinet minister, Robert Welch, similarly urged: \u201cWherever feasible, services should be provided in a community setting as an alternative to institutionalization.\u201d<\/p>\n Nonetheless, it would take decades to start closing them down. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/resizer\/v2\/PQQ5SQTHGNGD7OS67YSKU3SMFY.JPG?auth=9954af283186bb5bd6f79472a69b8847cb4547da7fe9929eaf01f8fa0e2da676&width=600&height=400&quality=80&smart=true\")
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