Montreal victims of medical experiments in ’50s and ’60s suing for millions

A lawsuit against the Canadian government, the Royal Victoria Hospital and the McGill University Health Centre is moving ahead, with 55 families of victims who underwent medical experimentation in the 1950s and 1960s at Montreal’s Allan Memorial Institute suing for millions of dollars. 

90-year-old Gerrie Jackson from Okanagan Falls, BC was a victim from 1960 to 1964. She and many others during that time received psychiatric treatments  by Dr. Ewen Cameron, including chemically induced sleep for weeks, rounds of electroshocks and experimental drugs. 

Gerrie Jackson was experimented on at the Allan Memorial Institute between 1960 and 1964. (Credit: Heather Jackson / handout)

“When I had a treatment, which was a shock treatment, I wasn’t capable of looking after the children,” Jackson says. “They missed out on that for years because I don’t think I was the kind of mother I became afterwards.”

She says that her husband Keith, who was in the Air Force, suffered also because he couldn’t climb the ranks at work because he had to care for her. 

“It was like being a zombie,” Jackson says.  “You don’t have a lot of memory, it becomes an automatic life.”

Quebecer Alison Steel’s mother, Jean, was admitted to the Allan Memorial Institute in 1957 to be treated for postpartum depression.  

Jean Steel was experimented on at the Allan Memorial Institute as of 1957. (Credit: Alison Steel / handout)

“There was no consent as to what they were going to do with the treatments for my mother at the time,” Steel says. “She came out worse than when she went in.”

Steel says this caused her family pain: “She lost her soul. I lost a bond with my mother that I could have had.”

#WATCH: “She lost her soul,” says Alison Steel, whose mother Jean was experimented on at the Allan Memorial Institute in 1957, treated postpartum depression. Alison is one of the main plaintiffs in the lawsuit seeking millions in damages.

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Today, Steel is one of the main plaintiffs in the lawsuit, asking for $1 million in compensation for each of the families affected by Dr. Cameron’s experiments.

“My clients want to be compensated in damages for the damage they suffered at the loss of their sibling or sister or brother or their parents, having been subjected to the experimentation by Dr. Cameron, whether their sibling or their parents were used as guinea pigs without obtaining their informed consent,” says lawyer, Alan Stein.

The plaintiffs claim the Canadian government played a role in the supervision and control of these experiments, which were part of the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program of covert mind-control.

The McGill University Health Centre tells CityNews that they “acknowledge that Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron carried out experiments at the Allan Memorial Institute during the 50s and 60s The research attributed to him continues to be controversial, and its consequences, unfortunate. The courts have already established that the Royal Victoria Hospital was not considered, by law, the employer of Dr. Cameron; at the time, he exercised his profession in an autonomous and independent manner.”

After Quebec’s Superior Court ruled the case could move ahead last month. The federal Department of Justice is now reviewing the decision.

“I thought I was the only one, but there’s so many other people that were in the same boat,” Steel says. “It makes me realize that something went terribly wrong.”

90-year-old Gerrie Jackson today, 58 years after she was experimented on at the Allan Memorial Institute. (Credit: Heather Jackson / handout)

“Everybody has talked about the people who survived, but there were a lot of people that didn’t survive,” Jackson says. “But it’s the families of the survivors of the patients who suffered.”