Context
The Eugenics Society of Canada, led by Dr. William L. Hutton, used popular media to spread ideas about how to improve perceived social problems and the decline of the so-called Anglo-Saxon-Canadian race. They used radio and print media to reach people in their homes and to make what they believed were “good” moral interventions into people’s lives.
Eugenicists in Southern Ontario emphasized the relationships between eugenics, education, and the middle-class Anglo-British-Canadian home. Eugenicists believed they needed to re-educate men and women, especially parents, about how to fulfil their roles as participants in family life.
Radio Addresses
In 1938 the Eugenics Society of Canada sponsored eight radio addresses.1(footnote) The radio series, called The Future of the Race, was intended for a weekly Tuesday evening broadcast. Leaders in Anthropology, Political Economy, Medicine, Law, and Governance wrote the addresses. For example, then-Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario, Dr. H.A. Bruce, wrote two of the radio addresses wherein he argued that Ontario needed to adopt and apply German population control laws and policies developed by the Nazi regime. Together, the addresses show how Canadian eugenics leaders used their legislated positions of authority to influence public opinion and policy about race betterment.
The Eugenics Society of Canada radio address included in this module demonstrates the eugenics ideas that Ontarians were being subjected to in their homes and in their educational institutions. Two of the addresses, “Tomorrow’s Children” and “The Future of the Race,” were written by Dr. William L. Hutton, who was the Medical Officer of Health in Brantford, President of the Eugenics Society of Canada, and a repeat guest lecturer for Macdonald Institute’s eugenics course in the 1930s.
The radio addresses are not original recordings. They are audio reproductions of the original text version, read by voice actor Russell Blower (“Survival of the Fittest”) and Reid Miller (“German Population Policy”).
