Mk-ultra affects generations of victims
From the late 1950s to the early 1960s, Dr. Ewen Cameron, a psychiatrist based at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal, carried out experiments to better understand mental illness and how it could be corrected. The experiments were a part of the Mk-ultra subproject 68; one of the subprojects of the CIA funded mind control program known as Mk-ultra. The Mk-ultra project was started by the CIA at the beginning of the 1950s to develop mind control techniques to use during the interrogation of Soviet spies during the Cold War; a period where the fear of the spread of communism ran rampant. The Mk-ultra project had 144 subprojects, including that of Dr. Ewen Cameron’s. Despite his successful reputation in his profession at the time, the experiments he carried out on his patients changed the course of their lives forever.
One of his patients was Townshipper Allison Steel’s mother Jean.
Dr. Ewen Cameron worked at the Allan Memorial Institute at Mcgill and was a highly respected doctor. He carried out his experiments on mental illness from 1957 to 1964. His research focused on the root cause of mental illness and finding ways to cure them.
He strongly believed that mental illness was the result of a poor upbringing and a consequence for those who learned “incorrect” behaviors; those behaviors, according to Ewan, then created brainwaves that lead to a repetition of abnormal behavior.
With the funding of the CIA and the Canadian government, so began Mkultra subproject 68.
To correct these brain pathways, Dr. Cameron wanted to depattern patients’ minds. In essence, he wanted to break down his patients’ minds to a blank slate so that he could repattern them correctly. To do so however, he took extreme measures.
To have their brain depatterned, patients underwent a long process that many have described as psychological torture. Patients were deprived of their senses and they were placed in drug-induced sleep for days on end using a variety of drug cocktails including LSD and amphetamines. They also underwent electroshock therapy several times a day for over two weeks, when the norm at the time was three times a week maximum, as he believed these would break the incorrect brain pathways.
When he believed his patients mind finally reached a child-like state, he then began the process of repatterning the brain. To do this, he would play messages to his patients on tape recorders to replace negative messages with positive ones. These messages could be played up to half a million times a day. U p until 1977, all records of the Mk-ultra project and its subjects were classified. No one was aware of the experiments that were carried out under the project because almost all records were destroyed in 1973. There just so happened to be one box left behind that provided information on Dr. Cameron’s experiments that was found in 1977. It was a breaking story like no other.
These experiments had harmful and devastating impacts for Dr. Cameron’s patients and their loved ones, leaving families in ruins. Now, victims and their families are seeking justice for what happened to them.
A group of around 70 individuals called Survivors Allied Against Government Abuse (SAAGA) recently filed a direct action lawsuit against the Canadian government for the damages Dr. Ewen Cameron’s experiments caused the patients and their family. “Families were ruined,” explained Alison Steel, a member of SAAGA, “children did suffer.”
Steel’s mother Jean Steel was a patient of Dr. Ewen Cameron’s after she gave birth to Alison. After being treated by the doctor, she was never the same. “My mother was brought up in Westmount and had a wonderful childhood. She did many activities like tennis, horseback riding, skiing, and rollerskating. I have photos so I can see the type of lifestyle she endured growing up.”
After meeting Steel’s father, they got married and had their first child together. Unfortunately, the child only lived until four months of age due to a disease called Spinabissida. Doctors encouraged her mother to have another child right away and that’s when Steel was born. “When I was born, my father said she went into a depression and she couldn’t take care of me. I was five years old when she was admitted. It was well known that Dr. Cameron was going to be the best in the world and would be there to deal with mental illness. My grandparents and father thought it would be a good thing for my mom to see this doctor.”
Upon being admitted to the hospital, her family put all of their trust in Dr. Cameron. “They never explained how they would treat the patient when you were there. All these people trusted doctors of course.”
Like all patients, Steel’s mother underwent Dr. Cameron’s extreme treatments. After receiving her mother’s medical records from the Department of Justice from the time she was admitted to Allan Memorial to the moment she left, Alison was able to read through her mother’s treatments detail by detail. “My mother was in drug induced coma for a month. She received LSD treatments amongst other drugs and electroshock.” She also had to wear headphones and listen to the “positive” messages that Dr. Ewen wanted her to learn. “She was never the same after that. By 14 I started noticing my mother was very different compared to my friends’ mothers.”
While her mother knew how to do every day things, she wasn’t what Steel described as a “normal” mom who was doing dishes, cooking, cleaning the house, doing the laundry, but Steel knew her mother cared for her. “She had a huge heart and cared for people and cared for me. It must have been difficult; I had no clue what she went through.”
After coming home one day from school, Alison found that her mom had taken a can of spray paint and painted the ceiling in the living room. A similar situation occurred again when she came home from school one day and found their front porch all decorated in tree branches and aluminum. “I asked her ‘Mom, what is this?’ and she said, “It’s Sherbrooke Street.”
Similar situations occurred throughout Steel’s adolescence but she did not fail to emphasize that her mother did her best. “She was never able to show me affection growing up. She was very removed from the room. She was never really around but she did the best she could.”
With the treatments she received, she was left unable to be there for Steel and this had many consequences. “I was angry at her my whole life because she wasn’t normal and I couldn’t understand why. She couldn’t talk to me or be there for me; it’s terrible what they did. They stripped her of her soul and dignity. Not one person who came out of there was better, they were worse.”
After Steel opened up about her mother’s story, she started receiving phone calls from others whose loved ones were treated by Dr. Cameron. Together, they formed Survivors Allied Against Government Abuse who have already gone to court twice for a direct action lawsuit. “The judge has been hearing our case. Right now our members are trying to receive their loved ones’ files from the hospitals but they aren’t getting them. We need these files to look at the treatments because specific treatments are needed to qualify for reimbursement.”
Their next court date is scheduled for early next year and Alison is reaching out to other members of the community whose loved ones may also have been a patient of Dr. Cameron. If are looking for support, you can contact Alison at allysteel52@hotmail.com for more information about SAAGA.
Jean Steel