Deaf Education, the Politics of Humanitarianism, and State Formation in Saskatchewan and Alberta, 1880-1931

Deaf Education, the Politics of Humanitarianism, and State Formation in Saskatchewan and Alberta, 1880-1931 by Sandy Barron A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario © 2021 Sandy Barron Abstract This study traces the development of deaf education in Alberta and Saskatchewan between 1880 and 1931 and its corresponding effects on state formation in Western Canada. Through this topic, it identifies a rise of deaf politics in the wake of the First World War that achieved notable successes in Saskatchewan in the interwar period. A new term for discussing oppressive attitudes against deaf communities from hearing people, humanitarianism, is proposed and explored. These provinces took decades to develop state institutions that were meant to ensure “productive” and “independent” futures for deaf children in the burgeoning nineteenth-century liberal colonial order on the Prairies. In doing so, they began to define their own provincial boundaries, both in the sense of geography and responsibility. They also began to define theoretical boundaries between deafness and hearing, intellectual ability and disability, as well as rights and humanitarian assistance. The development of deaf education in Alberta and Saskatchewan, I argue, pushed emergent provinces to accept the rights of deaf youth to education, though this process was uneven and did not represent a straight teleological arch. Deaf associations and individuals themselves pushed the provinces and took leadership roles in this process, making them heretofore unrecognized political agents in search of rights. Chapters include considerations of deaf education as an instrument of settler colonialism, histories of hearing and deaf families with deaf children, the role played by the Manitoba School for the Deaf in marking intellectual disability in the three Prairie provinces, and the role of the Western Canadian Association of the Deaf in the founding of the Saskatchewan School for the Deaf in 1931. ii Acknowledgements This project began as an extension of my career in formative education, at an educational clinic in Calgary, Alberta. Working with, and planning programs for, so many different kids and youth fostered my interest in educational accommodation. A brief foray into a project about the Simplified Spelling movement led, thankfully, to my discovery of Issue #1 of Silent Echo in a class entitled The Practice of History at the University of Calgary. Between 2013 and 2014, several professors at the university pushed me to go after my goal of attaining a History PhD through a study of the Manitoba School for the Deaf for my MA thesis. R. Douglas Francis, David Marshall, Jewel Spangler, Ken MacMillan, and Nancy Janovicek all encouraged my work and helped me focus my efforts from my time as a returning student in 2012 to the completion of my MA thesis in 2016. Several of my fellow MA students, especially Shawn Brackett and Kesia Kvill, remain colleagues and friends. I came to Carleton in 2016 to work with Dominique Marshall, with the knowledge that a network of interdisciplinary disability scholars worked there. I quickly fell in with Kristin Snoddon, Roy Hanes, Adrian Chan, and Beth Robertson through the Carleton University Disability Research Group and the Disability Studies Minor Committee. Pat Gentile, John C. Walsh, James Miller, Norman Hillmer, James Opp, Danielle Kinsey, Laura Madokoro, and other faculty members at Carleton have, at various times, helped me keep going with encouragement and advice throughout my four years here. Joan White, the History Department’s Graduate Administrator, has been essential to my progress through the program, and has been wonderful while doing it. Special thanks to Danielle Kinsey and James Opp for both serving on my committee and helping to shape iii this project through their criticism and feedback. I also wish to thank the external examiner on my committee, Dr. Joseph J. Murray at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., for his time, attention, and helpful comments. Finally, I wish to thank Dr. Kelly Fritsch, my internal-external examiner, and ASL interpreters Amy Cook and Melissa Cyr. My PhD cohort, defined widely to include students from four different starting points, was essential to my success and survival in the program. Breanna Lester, Jacqueline Di Bartolomeo, Helen Kennedy, Rick Duthie, and Tyla Betke have been sounding boards and supportive friends. I have leaned on them all throughout my years at Carleton, and I’m sure the load was heavy at times, especially during a Trump Administration and global pandemic (for which we all deserve two campaign medals). Though not in my PhD cohort, Hollis Pierce has become a great friend in my adoptive city. An inspiring scholar, a committed Guinness drinker, and a long-suffering Oilers fan, Hollis helped me through these years more than he knows. No one who knows him would be surprised by that, and I am far from the only person who can say that. My supervisors have been essential to this project. Dominique Marshall’s mixture of trust in my judgement and modelling what it means to work like a scholar were essential to this project. Her insistence that I take some time to “get lost” in my field before honing in on my project was a good roadmap for what I could expect a PhD program to look like. Dr. Marshall, above all, takes concerted work in the interest of others, supports and highlights the ideas of those around her, and served the Department as chair for several consecutive terms. She gives a lot to those on the fourth floor of Paterson Hall, and stands in contrast to the stereotype of the inward-gazing, self- concerned ivory (concrete?) tower scholar. Much of what is interesting and good in this iv study is due to her inspiration and encouragement, either through questioning and criticism or through drawing attention to where what I was saying was important. My propensity for hackneyed, over-manicured metaphors was often tamed by Dr. Marshall, but sometimes left fallow. All hackneyed metaphors within remain my responsibility. Kristin Snoddon has also been very important to this project. Though an applied linguist, Dr. Snoddon’s interest in the history of her communities kept me tethered to both the Deaf Studies literature and the possibilities and limits of a project dependent upon a sketchy archival record that was assembled and maintained by several provinces without deaf interpretation and involvement. I thank her for staying involved with my project after her move from Carleton to Ryerson University. She was also very supportive and positive when I made mistakes in my writing and conduct (and signs), and has been very helpful as I think about what lies ahead for me in a professional sense. My PhD program also tracked the peaks and valleys of periodic crises in my mental health. My wife Sonia, friends, professors, and supervisors were supportive and understanding when I needed it. I was far from alone in experiencing a mental health crisis in my PhD program, and mental health issues remain an epidemic in academic programs across the country. While I (and others) clashed with the Grad Studies Committee at times, my department gave me space and support when I needed to step away and recharge. For a person with a history of major depressive episodes, I chose well with a small, supportive department. Bre, Helen, Tyla, and Hollis did some heavy lifting from 2018-2020 as well. Thanks guys. Aside from Kristin Snoddon, several deaf community members across the country have inspired and supported me throughout the years that have culminated in this v dissertation. Len Mitchell and Jonathan Miller at the Manitoba School for the Deaf in Winnipeg welcomed me in 2014 and allowed me access to the Deaf Heritage Room at the school. Educator Joanne Weber of Regina has been supportive and interested in the project, and I hope that some of the video-interview work we broadly outlined can still happen in Saskatchewan in the future. My deaf ASL instructors at Carleton have been interested and supportive of my project as well, especially Denise DeShaw and Cynthia Benoit. Hearing archivists Tim Novak at the Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan and Chris Kotecki at the Provincial Archives of Manitoba have also been of invaluable help for a researcher learning the ropes on the fly. My family in Nova Scotia and British Columbia also deserve thanks and acknowledgements. My brothers Matthew and Stephen have taken interest in my work and given me academic and life advice for years. My mother, Carol, has been supportive and has celebrated my successes and supported me in my tough spots. I think every day about my father, Bill, who likely did not foresee me returning to school at the time of his death eleven years ago, but would have really enjoyed tracing my progress. I miss him all of the time, but especially wish that I could run ideas by him and get his take on my theoretical stabs in the dark. A forester by training, he always told us that one can only gauge the health of the forest by “looking down, not up,” a maxim that has stuck with me in several contexts. My father and mother-in-law, Hiroshi and Yukiko Okamoto, have taken interest, helped to hold me up, and celebrated with me. Sonia Okamoto has been with me for this entire foray into academic life. While we married in 2016 shortly before moving to Ottawa, we have been together since 2007, and she has been my partner through the ups and downs of the past thirteen years. Thanks vi to her for her support, love, and critical ear.

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