Training Schools, Part Two: The Graveyard of Good Intentions

In my last post on this subject I talked about the Grandview Training School for Girls, the $16.4 million settlement for abuse and mistreatment that was paid out by the provincial government and the fact that it was just one of a whole series of institutions across the province. I also started talking about where training schools came from, specifically with reference to George Brown's parliamentary investigation of the Kingston penitentiary and its sadistic first governor, Henry Smith. Now I'd like to go beyond the Kingston pen and talk about the development of juvenile law in Ontario. (What follows is mostly drawn from  The Development of Canadian Juvenile Justice: A Background for Reform by Jeffrey S. Leon, from the Osgoode Hall Law Journal, vol 15, # 1, June 1977, article #3.)

In 1857 the Province of Canada passed the Act for Establishing Prisons for Young Offenders that established "reformatories". People under the age of 21 who'd committed crimes punishable with prison terms and children under 16 who'd been committed for minor offenses and would otherwise spend times of 14 days or more in a gaol would do their time there. The idea was that they would be less harsh than a penitentiary like Kingston.

This wasn't good enough for the reformers, though, who thought it might not be a good idea to put really young children into a prison with 21 year olds. The results of their activities, unfortunately, wasn't what they wanted. To understand exactly what happened we need to understand some theoretical subtleties.

The first thing to understand is that when politicians create justice regimes they have to ask themselves what it is that they are doing. In this case, the people righting the legislation never really thought through several issues.

• Were they trying to protect the children, or, were they trying to protect society from the children?
• Are the courts trying children to see if they are really guilty, or, do they assume guilt and focus on sentencing to punish/rehabilitate? 
• Are children who commit crimes young adults who freely choose to be criminals and who can forced to understand that "crime doesn't pay"? Or, are they children who are acting out because they are horribly stressed by an awful home life? 
• Who exactly are we going to get to administer any program that this new legislation brings into existence?

Because the elected officials never thought through these problems, the system that they came up with created a lot of misery in the lives of too many children.

Just who exactly was the legislation trying to protect?

There appears to have been a great deal of concern in 19th century Ontario vis-a-vis the decline of the traditional family. The idea was that as more people moved off the farm to the city for jobs in factories, children were increasingly left to their own devices---which people thought would invariably lead to a life of crime. 

For Victorian-age reformers, "the distinction in status between neglected and criminal in effect translated as potentially versus actually criminal." This attitude towards the prevention of criminality was reasserted by those who later drafted Canada's delinquency legislation in terms of the idea "that there should be no hard and fast distinction between neglected and delinquent children, but that all should be recognized as of the same class, and should be dealt with with a view to serving the best interests of the child." ' This perceived similarity facilitated protective and rehabilitative responses to children which ultimately worked to the detriment of the procedural rights recognized for children in the court process. (Leon, P-76)

This attitude also fostered the creation of mandatory public education, which seems to have been created just as much to get children away from "bad influences" as it was to educate them in "ready, writing, and, arithmetic". 

The promotion of schooling, under the leadership of Egerton Ryerson, who was popularly regarded as the 'father' of Ontario's school system, was also associated with crime prevention and the effective preparation of children for productive roles in later life. The attitudes expressed by this movement continued to be voiced by later reformers. It was believed that deviation from an idealized view of family life, and the failure of children to attend school, would result in children "rapidly acquiring an education of the wrong kind." (Leon, P-77)

When a society becomes afraid of a specific problem we get a phenomenon known as a "moral panic". As we've seen in my past articles about things like eugenics and euthenics, there were a lot of middle-class people who were concerned about the working class. Some folks like Dr. Helen cMurchy and Alvin Kaufman  felt that they were out-breeding more intelligent people and "destroying the race". In the case of the training schools, it appears that the motivation was that without some sort of replacement for the parents who were off working in factories, children would become out-of-control and eventually grow up into being career criminals.

To this end, Ontario passed An Act Respecting Industrial Schools in 1874 that allowed for the creation of residential schools for children under 14 who could be committed for as long as a court deemed necessary---but which couldn't hold them past their 16th birthday. (No facilities actually existed until 1887 for boys, and 1891 for girls.)  Take a look at the following list of "offenses" that could put you into one.

(1) Who is found begging or receiving alms, or being in any street or public place for the purpose of begging or receiving alms;
(2) Who is found wandering, and not having any home or settled place of abode or proper guardianship, or not having any lawful occupation or business, or visible means of subsistence;
(3) Who is found destitute, either being an orphan or having a surviving parent who is undergoing penal servitude or imprisonment;
(4) Whose parent, step-parent or guardian represents to the police magistrate that he is unable to control the child, and that he desires the child to be sent to an industrial school under this Act;
(5) Who, by reason of the neglect, drunkenness or other vices of parents, is suffered to be growing up without salutary parental control and education, or in circumstances exposing him to lead an idle and dissolute life.  

Added to this array of what were essentially incidents of neglect was a
further category included in an 1884 consolidation: 

(6) Who has been found guilty of petty crime, and who, in the opinion of the Judge or Magistrate before whom he has been convicted, should be sent to an Industrial School instead of to a gaol or reformatory. (Leon, P-80)

As you can see from the above list, it appears that to a very large extent a key way to get sent to an Industrial School was to break the law against being poor. Of course, being virtuous Social Darwinists, the middle-class people running Ontario wouldn't see parents as being exploited by an unfair economic system---instead it was obvious that these children were the victims of either "feeble-minded parents" or parents who made "bad life choices".

Here are some poor, urban children from the Victorian era.
Common parlance of the time was to call them "street Arabs", because
of their nomadic lifestyle. Not much different from our present day
homeless----except for their age. Photo of unknown provenance, but
obviously public domain because of it's age.

Lest someone think that this is an exaggeration, consider the case of "Anna" from the documentary Until Someone Listens. According to the study guide accompanying the film, she was 13 when she was sent to the Grandview Training School for Girls because she was deemed "out of control" (she kept skipping school because she had to babysit her siblings.) Of course, it didn't help that she was from a First Nation and lived on a reserve---. (See pps 50-51 of the Study Guide for Until Someone Listens.)

It was probably a good thing that Ontario got a universal public education system. On the other hand, it was probably a bad thing that the underlying assumption was that this had to be done to stop children from descending into savagery. It was almost certainly a bad thing that many children got sent to institutions just because their parents were poor and this kept them from being able to keep up middle-class appearances.

&&&&

Conflicting visions and muddled execution

Another part of the problem comes from the fact that there were two very different visions about what would be best for the children. One faction appeared to favour a "tough love" approach and didn't want to see "street Arabs" "molley-coddled". (It occurs to me that I should mention that the term "street Arab" is racist. This isn't news to me, but that's the term people used back then. I wouldn't generally use it today, and I wouldn't recommend anyone using it outside of a historical context---which I've never heard anyone do anyway.) Another group wanted to keep as many children as possible out of Industrial Schools as possible. Their suggestion was to create a probation system. Short of providing financial help, I can only assume that the idea was that this would ensure that children got the proper moral guidance they needed to bootstrap themselves out of poverty.

To this end a federal law was created

Complicating this was the fact that Toronto had already set up an informal "children's court" that was presided over by Magistrates. This meant that children were already being processed into Industrial Schools through an existing system. The reformers---in effect---were "horning in on their turf". But in the event, the reformers "won the day".

In 1903, legislative recognition of probation was extended by An Act to amend the Children's Protection Act of Ontario. The Act provided for the appointment of volunteer "children's committees," whose agents were to assist the Superintendent of Neglected and Dependent Children and the children's aid societies in child placement, visitation, and fund raising. These "children's agents," along with consenting officers of children's aid societies, could also serve as probation officers in whose care a judge could place, without registering a conviction, a child under sixteen years of age accused of a provincial offence. The probation officers, charged with the duty to take a "personal interest in the child.. so as to secure its reformation," might be required to report periodically to the judge "concerning the progress and welfare of the child."' The trend against institutionalization was further emphasized by a provision that such children be granted bail as often as possible, or be put in the temporary care of an association or individual, rather than be committed to gaol or the police station pending trial. (Leon, pp. 91-92)

Having said that, it is important to understand the depth of opposition among some Magistrates and police officers.

The police officials associated with the Toronto children's court, including Inspectors Stark and Archibald and Police Magistrates Denison and Kingsford, were most vehement in their attacks. They argued that not only were the existing methods both sufficient and less expensive, but also that the "harsh" attitude of the police had a deterrent effect by making an impression on children without resulting in the police being viewed as enemies. The debate was often bitter. In a report circulated to gain support for the police position, Archibald characterized the new proposals as "child saving propaganda" and the advocates of these measures as "superficial and sentimental faddists" who, in the interests of their own "selfish ends":

"work upon the sympathies of philanthropic men and women for the purpose of introducing a jelly-fish and abortive system of law enforcement, whereby the judge or magistrate is expected to come down to the level of the incorrigible street arab and assume an attitude absolutely repulsive to British Subjects. The idea seems to be that by profuse use of slang phraseology he should place himself in a position to kiss and coddle a class of perverts and delinquents who require the most rigid disciplinary and corrective methods to ensure the possibility of their reformation. I would go further to affirm from extensive and practical experience that this kissing and coddling, if indiscriminately applied, even to the best class of children, would have a disastrous effect, both physically, mentally, morally and spiritually"  (Leon, p-166)

Eventually, the reformers won the day, however and in 1908 a federal Juvenile Delinquents Act was passed. It "created" a system of special "juvenile courts" and "probation officers" who's duty it was to dispense and administer some sort of support for delinquent/abused children according to this new system.

I have emphasized the importance of understanding the opposition to the spirit of the law among magistrates and the police because of the way the legislation was implemented. In 1908 1910 Ontario passed An Act Respecting Juvenile Courts that pretty much kept the status quo. I say that, because what the province did was to hand over the new law to the people who were responsible for the old state of affairs.

The establishment of juvenile courts in Ontario was haphazard. An Act respecting Juvenile Courts, passed in 1910, provided that every County or District Court Judge's Criminal Court and every Police Magistrate would constitute a juvenile court. Agents of children's aid societies were to be probation officers. (Leon p-101)

The government didn't create an army of probation officers and new courts for children. Instead, it "deputized" a charity---the Children's Aid Society---and declared that that charity's social workers were "probation officers". It also declared all existing Magistrate Courts were now "juvenile courts". In effect, the federal government passed a law dreamed-up by "bleeding heart liberals" and the province gave the "tough on crime" crowd the task of administering it. 

&&&&

Since I've raised the importance of who ended up administering the institutions, I thought I'd bring up an article I found in the Maclean's Magazine archives. It's titled The Most Heartbreaking Job in Canada and it was written in 1953 by the famous writer and activist, June Callwood.

June Callwood, photo from the Casey House website.
Image used under the "Fair Dealing" provision of the Copy Right Act. 

It's an interesting read because it gives a very positive description of the Grandview Training School for Girls---the one that recently awarded millions to previous inmates for abuse and mistreatment.

In the Second World War the Grandview buildings were taken over by the Navy and the inmates were sent to a temporary facility in Cobourg where

a Canadian writer, Gwenyth Barrington, visited the school at its wartime location in Cobourg and reported that the children were flogged, locked in basement cupboards for such offenses as laughing or scraping their chairs, and were fed on bread and water for days at a time. The Ontario Department of Reform Institutions denied all the charges but there were some ugly stories the newspapers began to recall: a mass breakout had once been controlled only after a night supervisor had been slugged; a seventeen-year old escapee had drunk iodine in a suicide attempt to avoid being returned. The superintendent resigned (Callwood in Macleans)

At the end of the war the girls were moved back to Galt and a new superintendent was selected: Isabel Macneill. She had no background in criminology, prisons, or, law enforcement. What she had been was the commander of HMCS Conestoga, which was what the Navy had called the school for Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS) that was established in the Grandview Buildings for the duration of the war. (Incidentally, this meant that Macneill was the only woman in the entire Commonwealth who was considered a commanding officer of a ship, and as a result was piped on board of any Navy ship when she came aboard.) 

Isabel Macneill in uniform. I assume that this is a Public Domain
image, c/o the Canadian Encyclopedia. Cropped by Bill Hulet.

According to Callwood, Macneill brought a totally open mind to her job, did extensive reading on the latest understanding of juvenile delinquency, and based her approach on it. 

She found that the common denominator in all juvenile delinquency, without a single exception, was an unsatisfactory home—a home where there was divorce, separation, illegitimacy, prostitution, alcoholism, drug addiction, incest, unwanted children or, occasionally, overprotection so that the child never felt the consequence of her misdeeds. Delinquency, she discovered, is a word for the natural rebellion of a child against an unpleasant situation. Forcing table manners and good deportment on such children in an institution would only make them more efficient delinquents, better able to fool authorities; the child would have to recognize her problem and learn to live with it if she could ever expect to be a well-adjusted adult.

Under her command the school rapidly lost the heavy screens that had been placed over the windows. Corporal punishment was banished entirely—no one on the staff is permitted to touch a girl—and psychologists, case workers, a psychiatrist, sympathetic house supervisors and teachers were hired as the budget permitted. The cost of the rehabilitation program— four dollars and fifty cents a day per child —is the highest, of any reform institution in Ontario, but Miss Macneill has made her school one of the world’s most progressive penal institutions.

Her salvage record is impressive: almost seventy percent of her girls eventually rejoin the community as happy and well adjusted women.

Macneill spent six years at Grandview but then was called back into active service in the Navy in 1954. That term of service ended in 1957. In 1959 she went on a trip across Europe to study women's prisons there, and was eventually appointed Warden of the Kingston Women's Prison in 1960. She kept that position until 1966.

Taking Callwood's article on face value, I can only assume that Macneill's regime was just an isolated "blip" on an otherwise awful history of upper management at Grandview.  Unfortunately, it is the tendency of governments, lawyers, and, victims to protect their privacy. This means that it is probably impossible for a reporter---even one with far more access to records and individuals than me---to really find out how one ever got put into the job of being superintendent at a Training School. There's even less chance that I would ever be able to find out what process was followed when one of them had complaints leveled against them.

&&&&

It's a strange thing asking for money. I don't really "need" it. But I do think that if you get some value from what I write, and you can afford it, you should consider giving. A dollar a month is fine because it's really the principle that I'm after.

I don't mention it much, but I've studied under various spiritual teachers for long periods of time. One of them told me that payment is important for learning not because the teacher needs it, but because the student does. Whether we like it or not, most people simply do not take seriously what they do not pay for. And that's why I ask for a token submission. Please tell me and all journalists that you take us seriously---it's easy to do through Patreon and PayPal. 

&&&&

The Training School system has shut down in Ontario. The only things I could find out about the local one in Guelph---Hillcrest---was

1. its location, at the North East corner of Stone and Victoria---nothing at all is left
2. a FaceBook group titled Hillcrest Training School Guelph Ontario with no posts and absolutely nothing at all on it that would identify who set it up
3. one picture from the Guelph Public Library collection of Guelph Mercury photos

Open House at Hillcrest, from the Guelph Public Library Archives.
Guelph Mercury photos. Ref # CA ON00126 F45-F45-0-8-F45-0-8-0-0-237

A class action lawsuit was approved by the Ontario courts last year. If you were a victim of this particular type of institutional cruelty, there are law firms that are interested in hearing from you. Usually, part of the settlement is a non-disclosure agreement so we may very well never hear any particulars of why the schools had such a hard time figuring out how to treat the children with kindness instead of cruelty. Consider what follows rank speculation---. 

My feeling is that government institutions pretty much follow the general opinion and worldview of the people who live in a country. If a large percentage of the population have an urge towards anger and cruelty, so will their public institutions. A small part of the process of getting beyond these tendencies is educating people about what really happens---as opposed to what they think does. This is a large measure of why I wrote these articles. I think that I'll try to find another topic for next time.  

&&&&

Furthermore I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!