Strangers in Our Midst : Sexual Deviancy in Post-war Ontario

E. Chenier

Contemporary efforts to treat sex offenders are rooted in the post-Second World War era in which an unshakable faith in science convinced everyday English-Canadian parents that pedophilia could be "cured." Strangers in Our Midst explores the popularization of sexual deviancy as a way of understanding sexual behaviour, the emergence of legislation in Canada directed at sex offenders, and the evolution of treatment programs in Ontario. Popular discourses regarding sexual deviancy, legislative action against sex criminals, and the implementation of treatment programs for sex offenders have been widely attributed to a reactionary, conservative moral panic over changing sex and gender roles after the Second World War. Elise Chenier challenges this assumption, arguing that, in Canada, advocates of sex offender treatment were actually liberal progressives. Drawing on previously unexamined sources, including medical reports, government commissions, prison files, and interviews with key figures, Strangers in Our Midst offers an original critical analysis of the rise of sexological thinking in Canada, and goes further to show how what was conceived as a humane alternative to traditional punishment could be put into practice in inhumane ways.