Eugenics: What a Child Does Not Understand

 November 26, 2021

This whole topic of eugenics — it’s big, and it’s ugly. As a society, we have lived with its warped, terribly bad science for the last 138 years. It has come to infect the planetary population as a whole. Francis Galton, who in 1883 coined the term eugenics — meaning “good living” — gave us what is arguably the worst translation of a term in human history. Good living, my ass. Eugenics has brought nothing but misery to untold millions.

In our articles “What If,” parts 1 and 2, we give a primary example of eugenics in practice: the Canadian Indian Act. Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald (January 11, 1815 – June 6, 1891), was born in Scotland and, in early Canadian politics, was known as “the sly fox.” He led our government with a firm and discerning hand, serving as Prime Minister from 1867 to 1873. It was the men — and women, too — of Macdonald’s generation who made eugenics what it came to be, taking the principles of the philosophy and making them real.

Lost in the Barrens. As a youth I must have read this book 10 or more times. Mowat has a library of both adult, and children's books, most of which I've read. He's written extensively about the north, and its peoples. His writings more than any other writer, provided the desire for me to go north, and see the beauty of both its people, and the land

For me, discovering the effects of eugenics began in grade five with the events surrounding our article “Someone Is Going to Be Offended.” As I have related elsewhere, that year — and for the following sixty months — was a period of extraordinary isolation. To help combat those feelings of loneliness, I lost myself in books. My interests were broad. I read many of the classics — Moby Dick, Catcher in the Rye, a lot of Poe’s work.

An author whose work I particularly enjoyed was a Canadian, by the name of Farley Mowat. I especially loved his children’s novel Lost in the Barrens,  a story about two teenagers — one white, the other a Chipewyan Native American — who became separated from a hunting party and had to rely on each other for survival as the brutal winter in the Canadian sub-Arctic set in. It’s truly a story of bravery and resilience in the face of long odds. In addition, it is a beautiful example of what cooperation and respect for each other’s culture should be.

As is the case for most of us, when we find an author we like, we tend to read all their work. This was definitely the case with Mr. Mowat and me. Most of his library was very adult-oriented, dealing with the Inuit of Canada’s North and the horrors of their lives. The reasons the Canadian government treated the people the way it did were, of course, way above the head of the twelve-year-old I was — I only knew that they were suffering and needed help.

Reading Mowat’s material had a profound effect on me. I was both incredibly impressed and inspired by the bravery and toughness shown by the explorers of our northern territories, and I developed great sorrow and respect for the peoples of the North. Because of this, I tried to read anything I could get my hands on regarding the North.

For my 13th birthday, my father bought me a copy of Across the Sub-Arctic of Canada: A Journey of 3,200 Miles by Canoe and Snowshoe Through the Barren Lands (1898) by James Williams Tyrrell. The book fascinated me 

Most of Mowat's work is about the Inuit, and being a child when I'd read them, I hadn't been able to connect the dots. That the conditions that he described, would be universal throughout the north. Tyrell's work then, was an eye opener for me, an unpleasant one. In the years after I'd read it, I wondered if it might be possible to actually travel their route, and what it might cost. Maybe if I'd been more serious about it, I might have tried harder to find those answers, but right then, it seemed tht I couldn't find anyone to help. I held on to this dream/hope until well after my marriage ended, and anytime that I'd brought it up with my wife, the whore, she'd scoffed at it.

both because it was filled with information about the actual routes they took and the difficulties they endured. Since I was intensely interested in geology — and the whole effort they were engaged in was on behalf of the Canadian Geological Survey — it matched my interests perfectly. Rare 10/10 score, Dad! As I have said elsewhere, sometimes he understood me very well indeed.

So, what does this have to do with eugenics, you may be asking?

The Tyrrell brothers were educated men. They would have willingly partaken in the “latest” scientific and societal “changes for the better.” When we look at the date of Tyrrell’s journey — 1898 — it would have been right during the upward curve of eugenics becoming intensely popular. Throughout the book, it is liberally peppered with racist slurs — not only toward the voyageurs (the licensed canoe workers transporting furs and trade goods across the interior) and the laborers hauling samples, but also toward the Indigenous populations they encountered over those 3,200 miles.

I was raised to believe that “Indians” were untrustworthy, savage low-lives. The savagery I understood — they had been fighting for their homes and families. The “low-life” part, I began to question as I came to appreciate their socio-economic situation. For far too many years, I could not understand why they simply didn’t assimilate into Canadian-Western culture. I was very wrong in thinking that way, and I offer here a very public apology for that.

We have much to learn from our Indigenous peoples. They are one avenue back to our reintegration with Source.