20,000 Orphaned Children Who Became Mental Patients Thanks To The Canadian Government
I’ll be totally honest here, I didn’t find this one online on my own. I heard about it from the movie “Tusk” and looked it up so it sort of counts, okay? Anyway, in the 1950s, the premier of Quebec was Maurice Duplessis and he was a super-staunch Catholic. He decided that the Church should be the sole caretaker of the poor, alcoholics, orphans, and unwed mothers. Good idea in theory, right? Duplessis said he “trusted them completely” and signed over the responsibility of schools, orphanages, and hospitals to the Catholic Church.
Well, there were a few problems with that plan. A lot of orphans were actually born to parents who weren’t married, but the Church didn’t approve so they were sent away. So not only were the orphanages fuller than they should’ve been, but the Quebec government didn’t get enough money to subsidize orphanages. They did a little math and found out they were getting $1.25 a day for orphans but $2.75 a day for psychiatric patients.
Here’s where it gets really screwed up: there was an old law called Loi Sur Les Aisles d’aliénés (Lunatic Asylum Act) that said you could commit someone to an insane asylum for three reasons: to care for them, to help them, or a security measure to maintain social order. So the idea of “social order”, not being directly defined, translated into 20,000 orphans being deemed “mentally deficient”. Suddenly there were a lot fewer orphans and a hell of a lot more psychiatric patients. Weird how that worked out
These kids were subjected to abhorrent treatment, including sexual, mental, and physical abuse, all for a little extra cash — not to mention the drug testing and medical experiments because you know, they were “mentally deficient” so I guess that’s a good excuse? The 1960s ushered in the end of the asylum era but by then the damage was done for most of the former mental patients; about 78% of orphans from this time period reported difficulty in maintaining a normal, healthy adult existence. They dubbed themselves “Duplessis Orphans” for Maurice Duplessis, whose poor decisions they felt ruined countless lives. As of today, the Catholic Church has refused to apologize
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Politician Budd Dwyer’s On-Air Suicide
You’ve either never heard of Budd Dwyer in your life or you wish you’d never heard of Budd Dwyer. Let’s get the boring stuff out of the way: Dwyer was a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate and, most notably, the 30th Treasurer of Pennsylvania.
But something went wrong. In the early 80s, the state discovered its employees had overpaid federal taxes due to errors in withholding. Accounting firms lost their shit competing for the multimillion-dollar contract to fix the mess. Supposedly, Dwyer had received a bribe from a firm in California who wanted the contract; he maintained his innocence, but he was convicted and scheduled to be sentenced on those charges on January 23, 1987.
Which leads us to January 22, 1987? Dwyer called a press conference the day before his sentencing and the media went nuts, assuming he was going to resign from office. Reporters showed up in droves, ready to get the top story.
Dwyer began by reading what people described as a “rambling polemic about the criminal justice system”, where he speculated on his sentencing, which was a maximum of 55 years in prison and a $300,000 fine. He restated that he was innocent and hadn’t participated in any illegal activities. Then, he stopped reading from his prepared text (leaving out the last page, which contained the true reason for his press conference) and began handing out envelopes to his staffers.
Early in the morning of June 22, 1918, Alonzo Sargent was operating a Michigan Central Railroad train with 20 empty cars. He’d been following close behind a circus train going considerably slower, and whoopsy-doodle fell asleep at the wheel. (Do trains have wheels? Or is it like a control panel? Whatever, he fell asleep at a bad time.)
The 26-car circus train had stopped to check a hot box but Sargent was taking a little nap so his train plowed into the caboose and four rear sleeping cars at an estimated 35 miles per hour.
Most of the 104 dead were killed in less than a minute after a collision, and then the wreck burst into flames. Many of the bodies couldn’t be identified due to the severity of the injuries, so most casualties are marked “Unknown Male” or “Unknown Female”. In case that’s not creepy enough, you’ve also got graves marked “Smiley” and “Baldy”, plus the confirmed deaths of the Great Dierckx Brothers (a strongman duo) and Jennie Ward Todd of The Flying Wards. (If you’re interested, you can visit Showmen’s Rest in Forest Park, Illinois.)
A historic tragedy, sure — but there’s just something undeniably haunting about the idea of an early 20th-century circus wandering the train tracks at night, searching for the final performance that will never come.
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On September 20, 1988, 19-year-old Tara Calico went on a morning bike ride in her hometown of Belen, New Mexico. She never came back.
Almost a year later, on June 15, 1989, a Polaroid photo was found in the parking lot of a convenience store in Port St. Joe, Florida. The photo showed an unidentified young woman and an unidentified boy, both gagged and bound.
There was speculation on the identity of the boy that eventually fell through, leaving who he was a mystery — but Tara’s mother insists the woman in the photo is her daughter. There’s a definite resemblance, but the biggest clues were a scar on her leg (similar to one Tara had gotten in a car accident) and the V.C. Andrews book in the photo, which happened to be one of Tara’s favorite books.