Castrato

“Twenty years ago today, while in the Red Deer Provincial Training School, I was castrated by the Social Credit government of Alberta, part of their great mischief in applying the insidious theory of eugenics. I was one of almost three thousand kids so abused, without permission. It wrecked our lives.” Jordan Larue “CASTRATO” comes out of the application of British eugenics theory by succeeding right wing governments. Their WASP thinking, when applied to children of ‘inferior’ background, and seeming low intelligence, resulted in a program to make sure such children did not reproduce. Initially, decisions to neuter children required an extensive review and permission, but this time element was reduced to a few minutes, decisions made previously, on very specious grounds. Most of these operations took place in or around the Provincial Training School in Red Deer. Children of dubious backgrounds (Native, immigrant, poor, born out of wedlock, sexually developing, etc.) were prime targets for neutering by one method or another. Jordan Larue had not yet started school when he ran away from an abusive home, and, was taken to Social Services. He was quickly passed on to the P.T.S., where he was kept until he escaped at age eighteen. He did not expect to survive, but he just had to go, leaving behind his three friends, the only ‘family’ he felt he had. The abuse and regimentation he had experienced, particularly at the hands of the senior boys’ supervisor, drove him out. He had been castrated at age thirteen. Uneducated past grade seven, bereft of any resources, he hitch hiked to Edmonton, where a kind man gave him a job. However, as Jordan rode north he carried with him horrific abuses that would haunt him. He felt inferior, and an unworthy misfit. He could never produce a family of his own. Through persistence and strength of character, Jordan pushed on to become educated as well as a building foreman. At university he studied about eugenics, and, after graduating with an M.A., he decided to write an expose about what had happened to him and so many other helpless kids. Luckily, Jordan was found by one of his old P.T.S. friends, and he had developed friendships with some supportive seniors, and Lynd Acton, a fellow master’s student, whom he came to love. In 1978, events pushed ahead pell mell in the struggle to deal with the public expose and it’s aftermath. One friend was killed, and Jordan came close to suicide, as his father had done. He was sure he was toxic to Lynd and his friends. Could he ever find salvation? Perhaps where he’d least expect it.