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This is a CBC Podcast.
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So we are on 800 Main Southwest. This is the
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American Psychiatric Association, and they've actually pulled what I understand
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is three banker boxes of files on Dr.
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Cameron.
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Hi.
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Hi.
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How are you?
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Hi, how are you?
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Hi, I'm Gina Gorlin. Nice to meet you.
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Michelle.
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This is Chris.
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The American Psychiatric Association Archives is on Main Avenue in Washington, D.C.
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They moved into this location in 2018, and everything about
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it feels new. Fresh white paint, huge clean windows with
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sweeping views that include just a sliver of Capitol Hill.
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I'm here to find out all I can about Dr.
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Ewan Cameron.
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Dr.
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Cameron was once the president of the American Psychiatric Association,
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and he went on to lead the Canadian and World
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Psychiatric Associations, too. Cameron had also been the doctor in
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charge of the devastating treatments given to unwitting psychiatric patients
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at Montreal's Allen Memorial Institute. We know his resume, but
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we wanted to know what motivated him. What exactly was
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he doing at the Allen?
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And why.
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Dena Gorland, the APA Foundation's archivist and librarian, is our guide.
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There's the library. Well, I'll show it to you later,
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but let's get you guys down to business. We're sorting
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through hundreds of pages, speeches Dr. Cameron gave, carbon copies
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of his correspondence, reports he wrote. This is so incredibly
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well organized.
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Look at this.
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The opening address at the Allen Memorial Institute. This is
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actual speech. Oh god, this paper is so thin.
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July 12, 1944.
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Professor Dr. Ewan Cameron.
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The Institute is now opening its doors, and those who
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have come here to attend this event must reflect upon
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what this may mean. The setting into action of a
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new center of inquiry and of healing is always an
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occasion of importance and solemnity. For passing forward in time,
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one can conjecture upon and in some measure foresee the
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later consequences. I think he needs a bit of an editor.
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Then-producer Chris Oak comes across a thick file. Nuremberg.
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Folder for Nuremberg.
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Yeah, that.
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Would be interesting.
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This is CBC News Roundup. Tonight, Matthew Houlton discusses the
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fate of the men in the dock at Nuremberg.
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The Nuremberg trials prosecuted Nazi war criminals in the wake
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of World War II.
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Today at Nuremberg, the 21 defendants heard the justices read
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in relays the 250-page judgment, which pronounced Nazism a criminal
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system and condemned its leadership for conspiracy, crimes against peace,
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war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
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One of the defendants, Rudolf Hess, the number three man
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in Hitler's Germany, arrived at Nuremberg claiming to be suffering
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from amnesia, and a group of ten internationally renowned psychiatrists
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were asked to assess this claim and determine whether Hess
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was mentally fit to stand trial. Dr. Ewan Cameron was
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one of those experts.
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The tribunal is of opinion that the defendant Hess is
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capable of standing his trial at the present time.
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The doctors found that he suffered from psychoneurosis and there
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was some genuine amnesia, but he faked the rest. They
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concluded he was sane enough to stand trial.
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It's judgment day at the Nuremberg trial, the greatest trial
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of all time is nearing its end.
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And the tribunal later found him guilty.
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They're accused of crimes on a scale so vast, of
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an evil so black, as the world has never seen before.
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It's ironic that Dr. Ewing Cameron was involved in the
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evaluation of Hess at Nuremberg especially considering the trial that followed.
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The prosecution of Nazi physicians who conducted cruel and often
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deadly experiments on prisoners and civilians. It was known as
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the doctor's trial. Their crimes shocked the world and the
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scientific community, leading to the creation of the Nuremberg Code.
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A promise that this kind of human experimentation would never
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happen again. A promise that would be broken again and again.
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By Dr.
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Cameron himself.
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I'm Michelle Shepard and this is Brainwashed.
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Episode 2, Psychic Driving.
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Let this trial be a warning. Let it be a
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milestone on a long, hard road from barbarism to universal peace.
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The Nuremberg Code is actually a set of ten principles,
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ethical and legal guidelines for experiments conducted on humans.
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The first principle of Nuremberg states that the voluntary consent
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of the human subject is absolutely essential. That means the
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person involved should have legal capacity to give consent should
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be able to exercise free power of choice and that
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they should know the consequences of participation in this.
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This is Harvey Weinstein. I'm sorry I have to clarify this,
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but your name is Harvey Weinstein.
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Unfortunately, yes.
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It is a tough name to have these days.
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I usually introduce myself by saying Harvey Weinstein, the other one.
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This Harvey Weinstein is a doctor, a psychiatrist, and he
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has spent a good part of his life thinking about
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and researching Dr. Cameron and the Allen.
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So Nuremberg, they also say that the duty and responsibility
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for ascertaining the quality of the consent rests upon the
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individual who carries out the experiment. That's the bedrock. And
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that's what did not happen at the Allen.
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And Dr. Cameron would know the Nuremberg Code.
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I would certainly assume so, yeah. Dr.
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Cameron's patients came to the Allen willingly, hoping to seek
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relief from their psychiatric ailments. They had no idea they
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were going to be part of a medical experiment, essentially
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human guinea pigs. Dr. Cameron's goal was to determine whether
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something he'd developed called psychic driving could fundamentally alter the
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minds of his patients.
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The story is that he heard about these language courses
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where you put a loudspeaker under your pillow at night
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and you learn Spanish or French or whatever, and he thought.
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Around 1948, there was a fad called sleep teaching. The
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idea being that you could master a new language or
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break a bad habit if you just listened to tapes
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played during the night. Dr. Cameron was curious.
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And in Montreal at the Allen Memorial Institute of McGill University,
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a new technique called psychic driving has been developed. Here
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is Dr.
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Ewan Cameron of the Institute and Raymond Hazan of the CBC.
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Would you describe the new treatment, Dr.
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Cameron?
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This is essentially an attempt to modify and improve our
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methods of carrying out psychotherapy. In the institute we have
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been attempting to find ways of speeding up psychotherapy and
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one of the ways is to find methods of bringing
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out into action important and valuable parts of the patient's
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personality that have hitherto been repressed. The driving consists in
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the repetition on a tape or a record of a
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statement which deals with the desirable repressed characteristics. A good
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example of this is.
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Here's one of the recordings Dr. Cameron used on a
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patient who came to him with what would now be
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known as postpartum depression.
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You can get along with people by now. You are
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not afraid of others, and you are very pleased to
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be with them. People like you and your relationship with
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people is good. You are an adult and you want
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to accept the responsibilities of a wife and a mother.
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As you feel better, you like to see things neat
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and tidy. If you see things disorderly like papers on
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the floor you pick them up. You look after things
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as you look after yourself.
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That line about picking up the papers on the floor
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was added to test whether the messages were being absorbed.
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But not all the messages were positive.
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And he had two kinds of messages. He had positive messages,
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like you're a good person, you're kind to everybody, because
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that was supposed to change the behavior. And negative messages,
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like you're an awful person, you're mean to people, etc.
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And he would first have people listen to negative messages
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and then to positive messages. Sometimes he would use what
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was called auto-psychic driving in which he used the patient's
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own words. Sometimes it would be hetero-psychic driving in terms
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of how the physicians interpreted how these messages were being
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created in the patient's own mind.
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These voices were played through headphones, helmets or speakers sometimes
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installed right inside patients' pillows. The positive and negative messages
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would be repeated over and over for periods of up
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to 20 hours a day, whether they were asleep or awake.
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So patients could sometimes hear the same messages up to
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half a million times.
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He thought that if he could have people listen to
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these kinds of messages over and over, that it would
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ultimately result in their changing their attitudes and behaviors. He
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actually thought it would change the physiology of their brains,
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because it's likely that psychotherapy actually does that at some level.
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This type of recording, playing the recording back to the
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patient over and over again, sounds something like the conditioning
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technique in The Brave New World, Does it have any
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similarity at all to it or to communist brainwashing, for instance?
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No, it certainly doesn't, because what we are attempting to
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do is to bring into operation aspects of the patient's
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own personality. We are not trying to impose upon the
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individual things which probably might be quite foreign to him
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and which would be at marked variance, as in the
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case of brainwashing, with the kind of person that he
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naturally is.
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Does it have any adverse effects on the patient's health
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or mental outlook after he's been treated with it?
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No, and otherwise we wouldn't use it. The patient is
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usually very much better afterwards, and our problem is to
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ensure that that improvement is lasting.
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In 2010, a family of four in California goes missing,
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and the clues left behind send investigators on a years-long search.
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Is this a family on the run, or is the
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truth far more sinister? From ABC Audio in 2020, this
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00:13:12.110 --> 00:13:15.470
is What Happened to the McStaves, coming August 11th. Listen
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on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast app.
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Or subscribe to 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts
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to listen early and ad-free.
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When we were in the APA, the American Psychiatric Association Archives,
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some of Dr. Cameron's papers talked about psychic driving.
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Hi.
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That's Dina, the archivist. Well, we just read through the
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whole psychic driving one. It's really interesting. Yeah, I think
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so too.
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I think, like, just the concept of it.
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Dina goes on to tell us that a year before
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we visited, she had another request for those files. Okay,
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so his son.
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His name is Duncan Cameron. He called me in 2018
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and he said, you know, I understand that you have
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the archives of my dad and I'm just extremely, extremely
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upset that the way he's being portrayed because that was
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only one part of his life at a certain time
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because he did so many other things and he was
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You know, really upset.
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Dina had a lot of empathy for Dr. Cameron's son, Duncan.
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It's understandable.
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Psychiatry has a very ugly past. You know, there's Hannibal
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Lecter-type machines. You know, you had lobotomy. You had, you know,
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bloodletting was huge.
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We didn't know. Nobody knew.
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It can't be easy living with your father's legacy when
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the only story told is what he did to patients
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at the Allent.
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You know, and he's just like, but my father was
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such an intelligent man. And they're just bashing him. They
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keep bashing him.
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Hello?
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Hi, Duncan. It's Michelle here.
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Oh, yes.
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Hi, Michelle.
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How are you?
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Fine. I'm in a little room here with all sorts
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of electronic equipment around me.
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They've got you all set up?
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Yeah, I think I am. Okay.
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Well, why don't we start by just getting you kind
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of formally to introduce yourself. Just tell me your name
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and a little bit about who you are.
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Okay.
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Well, my name is Duncan Cameron. I'm the oldest son
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of Dr. Donald Ewan Cameron, and I live in Washington,
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and I have spent most of my life practicing law.
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Duncan Cameron is now a retired lawyer. He's 85 years old.
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And you mentioned on the phone to me that you
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had a Canadian connection, but you wanted to wait to
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tell me in person.
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Well, all right, now I will. Well, I was born
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in Canada, in Brandon, Manitoba, where my father's first appointment
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was at the Brandon Medical Institute. I think it has
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a slightly different name than that, but it was in Brandon, Manitoba.
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Ewan Cameron was born in Scotland in 1901, the son
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of a Presbyterian minister. After medical school, he did his
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residencies in psychiatry in London, Zurich, and in the US
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at the prestigious Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was recruited to
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Manitoba in 1929 to the Brandon Hospital for Mental Diseases. Dr.
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Cameron lived with his family in Canada on and off
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for nearly three decades, but he never sought Canadian citizenship.
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He moved to Montreal in 1943 and became the director
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of the Allen. And how old would you have been
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around that time when you moved there?
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I would have been about nine years old or ten.
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What are your recollections of your dad?
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Well, if I got up early in the morning, I'd
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see him before he got to work. And then I
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would see him at night at dinner. But he was
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a very busy man. And I think he was always
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very concerned about our education. Occasionally, we would do something
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on the weekend. But he was very busy. I could
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remember also he could be quite strict about bedtime.
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How so? What do you remember?
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Well, I could remember listening to a hockey game past bedtime,
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but I very quickly hid it under the sheets and
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blankets as he passed by the door, except my thigh
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accidentally hit the volume button, and suddenly this great noise
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of the hockey game came out.
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Oh, no.
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And what happens then?
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Well... Punishment, of course. Not a serious one, though. I
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think another thing that we did as a family was
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we hiked. He loved the Outer Doors and particularly loved
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climbing mountains, which I think probably has its very beginnings
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in Scotland.
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Duncan said he was happy to talk to us, but
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only if we focused on his father's character, not his
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work specifically.
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He did love the Outer Doors.
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Many people describe him as quite charming and charismatic.
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Yes, he can be. The ladies loved him. He always
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had some good jokes. On the other hand, he was
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not sort of somebody that just liked to go out
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to have a drink with the boys. He was busy
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most of the time.
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But he did mention that his father was searching for
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a cure for schizophrenia and that this mission drove some
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of his work at the Allen. Some colleagues said Dr.
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Cameron's life ambitions was to win a Nobel Prize.
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I think the work that he was engaged in trying
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to find a solution to the problem of schizophrenia, that
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work in Montreal, it was unfortunate that people then concluded
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that the treatments that he gave were reflected on his character.
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I'm not trying to put you on the spot, but
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I just don't quite understand what you mean by that.
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Well, he was not a harsh person. unfeeling sort of person.
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I think he was ambitious, and I think he was
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genuinely excited by the field of psychiatry and the opportunities
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that it provided for breakthroughs in many areas. I've admired
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most of the things he's done.
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Not all.
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You can get along with people by now. You are
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not afraid of others, and you are very pleased to
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be with them. People like you and your relationship with others.
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I know it's hard to talk about somebody else's motives,
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but I think among the guests that we're speaking to,
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you probably have researched the most about what Dr. Cameron
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was doing and talked to the most people who knew him.
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How would you best describe his motivations for this?
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Complicated question.
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This is Dr. Harvey Weinstein again.
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I have to acknowledge that in many ways Cameron was
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a unique psychiatrist. He was heavily influenced by social psychiatry
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in which people look at those with emotional disturbance in
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the context of their social situation, the context of their families,
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and context of society. I also have to acknowledge that
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initially he wrote quite clearly about the brain as a
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biological entity and trying to understand issues related to memory, etc.
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So all that's really good. But what happened, it seems,
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is that he became motivated by a desire to be famous,
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to win a Nobel Prize. He was very ambitious and
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known to be very ambitious. And in many ways, he
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was very successful in terms of being recognized around the
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world as an amazing psychiatrist. The second thing is that
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Cameron was invited to evaluate Rudolf Hess at Nuremberg after
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the Second World War ended and became heavily influenced by
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what he surmised had happened in Germany in the 30s
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and 40s, that evil people had taken over, people who
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were sociopaths or were very passive or very ambitious or whatever.
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And One of his takeaways, interestingly enough, was that social scientists, psychiatrists, psychologists,
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and other sociologists needed to be very careful to control
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those people and to decide who should be in power, basically,
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and who shouldn't. It is just a very interesting kind
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of takeaway in which he assumes power to particular disciplines,
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and that's very troubling. So you have a combination of
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a very ambitious man, somebody who thinks that psychiatry should
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be the discipline that determines the kind of future for
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society and being the person to cure schizophrenia. And I
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think he got carried away.
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You are not afraid of others and you are very
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pleased to be with them.
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Cameron was having difficulties with his initial experiments with psychic driving.
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Patients were resistant to listening to messages looped over and over.
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You are not afraid of others and you.
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Are very pleased He decided that he had to come
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up with a method for breaking down these defenses. A
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way to break mines down so that he could build
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them back up. And he didn't have to look very
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far for one potential solution. A colleague at McGill, a
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brilliant researcher and the head of the university's psychology department,
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named Donald Hebb, was doing some groundbreaking research. We did
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an experiment here with students at McGill. an experiment in
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sensory deprivation. Could you describe for me the way in
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which they were deprived?
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They were asked to lie on a hospital bed with
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a plywood cubicle built around it, to lie wearing goggles
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over their eyes. The goggles were translucent. They had light
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but saw nothing. They had a small speaker embedded in
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a foam rubber pillow around their ears. which had a
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small buzzing noise. They wore cuffs on their arms so
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their joints could move freely. They would have no joint pains,
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but still couldn't explore the environment. And apart from that,
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they were asked to lie still.
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Do nothing.
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Be calm and peaceful on this hospital bed. They were
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fed on request. They were taken to the toilet on request.
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They were allowed a cigarette if they were smokers after
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each meal, each time they wanted to eat. Apart from that,
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they did nothing. The result of that experiment was with
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the subjects who stayed more than three days, they found
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it very difficult. We were paying them $ 20 a day,
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which at the time was the rate at which you'd
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pay an associate professor. But when they stayed for three
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days or so, they began to see things. They had
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some magnificent hallucinations of squirrels marching across a snowy field
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wearing snowshoes and carrying packs over their backs or little
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men in bathtubs rolling into the scene and rolling across
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the bathtub on wheels.
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Here's a student interviewed after the experiment.
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Toward the end of the experiment, I began to feel
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very uneasy.
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I felt as if my whole body was going to
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be torn apart, possibly because.
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I had nothing to do, just lie there.
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He said he wouldn't go through with it again, even
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if he was given $ 400 a day. Dr. Cameron was
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inspired by Hebb's work with sensory deprivation. But unlike Hebb,
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who paid students well for being test subjects and let
404
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them stop the experiment as soon as they wanted, Dr.
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Cameron used unwitting psychiatric patients. The longest any student lasted
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00:25:11.490 --> 00:25:14.230
before asking Hebb to stop the experiment was five days.
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00:25:15.170 --> 00:25:18.740
One of Dr. Cameron's patients spent 35 days in a
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sensory isolation chamber, which is basically a box that he
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00:25:22.180 --> 00:25:27.700
had built in the converted stables behind the hospital. Cameron
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thought that confining his patients to a dark box may
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force them to better accept psychic driving messages. And he
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went far beyond this extreme sensory isolation. He drugged patients, too,
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00:25:39.849 --> 00:25:44.750
with LSD or a variety of barbiturates. Some patients would
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00:25:44.849 --> 00:25:49.549
also undergo electroconvulsive shock therapy, up to 30 times what
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00:25:49.589 --> 00:25:58.789
was considered normal. He called this depatterning. The goal of
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this intensive shock therapy was to reduce patients to a
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childlike state, often with no memory, unable to speak, or
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even go to the bathroom. He believed that he could, quote,
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break up the pathways of the brain and then repattern
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them with new psychic driving messages.
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Breaking someone's resistance down by all these massive drugs and
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electroshocks and insulin comas and sleep and sensory deprivation. It's
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an attempt to break down any of the normal coping
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and resistance mechanisms that individuals have to deal with stress.
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By the way, Dr. Weinstein's interest in Dr. Cameron and
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the Allen, it isn't just academic. It's personal. His father,
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00:26:40.660 --> 00:26:42.759
Lou Weinstein, was one of Cameron's patients.
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Reading about sensory isolation is one thing, and then recognizing
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that my father is in this room for two months
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in sensory deprivation with, you know... His eyes covered and
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00:26:56.990 --> 00:27:02.769
his hands covered and hearing voices hundreds of thousands of times.
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I mean, it's mind-boggling. Well, what happened was that over
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00:27:12.099 --> 00:27:17.700
the Christmas holidays of 1955, my father's anxiety attacks increased,
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00:27:17.880 --> 00:27:21.779
particularly his panic episodes. He had been seeing a psychiatrist
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00:27:21.859 --> 00:27:25.299
in Montreal and was feeling that nothing good was happening.
436
00:27:26.450 --> 00:27:30.269
And my father was someone, as part of his needing
437
00:27:30.349 --> 00:27:34.410
to have the best, was looking for the best psychiatrist
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00:27:35.029 --> 00:27:38.369
who could treat him. And at that time, Ewan Cameron
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at the Allen Memorial was world famous. When I finally
440
00:27:45.640 --> 00:27:51.319
got his records, it just corroborated what I had been
441
00:27:51.380 --> 00:27:56.559
reading about in terms of Cameron's papers. But the actual wording,
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00:27:56.740 --> 00:28:02.559
the nursing notes, the lack of empathy shown by Cameron
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00:28:03.400 --> 00:28:08.230
was astounding. The pitiful pictures of my father that are
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00:28:08.309 --> 00:28:13.150
painted in the notes are a little difficult to read, frankly.
445
00:28:13.930 --> 00:28:21.579
And it's unbelievable to hear the aggressive attempts to break
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00:28:21.660 --> 00:28:27.579
down my father and to basically turned him into a two-year-old.
447
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I mean, he was soiling himself, urinating, just sort of
448
00:28:31.940 --> 00:28:38.390
an experimental animal, unfortunately. One day, my father went into
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the hospital, age 49, and that was the end of
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his life and the end of my life, the end
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of my childhood as I knew it.
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Cameron did write reports about his work that were published
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00:29:00.930 --> 00:29:04.349
in various medical journals, but the full extent and the
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00:29:04.529 --> 00:29:08.099
impact of his experiments were not revealed until decades later.
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00:29:08.940 --> 00:29:11.880
He never had to answer for his methods or face justice.
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00:29:18.559 --> 00:29:21.109
He died climbing a mountain with my youngest brother.
457
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Dr.
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Cameron died at the age of 65, just three years
459
00:29:25.369 --> 00:29:26.589
after resigning from the island.
460
00:29:27.859 --> 00:29:33.349
He had a heart condition that he had not disclosed
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00:29:33.390 --> 00:29:35.809
to me and probably should not have taken that hike,
462
00:29:35.849 --> 00:29:38.210
but it was up one of the mountains that he
463
00:29:38.250 --> 00:29:40.700
really wanted to climb. It was one that he frequently
464
00:29:40.759 --> 00:29:43.880
talked about. And there were about three quarters of the
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way up and he stopped for a rest. And my
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00:29:46.549 --> 00:29:51.069
youngest brother looked around and he had passed out and
467
00:29:51.450 --> 00:29:51.930
had died.
468
00:29:54.950 --> 00:29:58.869
Dr. Cameron was celebrated in his obituaries as a man
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dedicated to science and medicine.
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People like you, and your relationship with people is good.
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A year before he left the Allen, Dr. Cameron did
472
00:30:11.279 --> 00:30:15.920
admit that psychic driving, those repetitive messages, did not work.
473
00:30:16.779 --> 00:30:19.519
And once he left the Allen, the next director launched
474
00:30:19.599 --> 00:30:25.180
an evaluation of depatterning, the extreme electroshock treatments. The treatment
475
00:30:25.460 --> 00:30:28.900
was found to be ineffective and damaging and was banned.
476
00:30:33.140 --> 00:30:36.289
Not all of Cameron's documents are in the archives at
477
00:30:36.309 --> 00:30:41.329
the American Psychiatric Association. Before Cameron's family donated them, his
478
00:30:41.390 --> 00:30:45.349
son Duncan removed certain files and they were destroyed. He
479
00:30:45.390 --> 00:30:48.170
later claimed he was concerned about the privacy of patients.
480
00:30:51.839 --> 00:30:55.210
But what other information might be missing from the archives?
481
00:30:55.950 --> 00:30:59.210
What if these experiments weren't really about advancing medicine and
482
00:30:59.250 --> 00:31:02.750
finding a cure for schizophrenia? What if there was another
483
00:31:02.789 --> 00:31:07.119
goal behind learning to control people's minds that went way
484
00:31:07.180 --> 00:31:16.970
beyond the Allen? On June 1st, 1951, A meeting took
485
00:31:17.009 --> 00:31:21.650
place at Montreal's Ritz-Carlton Hotel, which brought together the military, medical,
486
00:31:21.769 --> 00:31:25.490
and scientific elite from Canada, the UK, and the US.
487
00:31:26.930 --> 00:31:30.410
Cameron's colleague, Donald Hebb, was invited to that meeting because
488
00:31:30.509 --> 00:31:33.490
there was great interest in his work on sensory deprivation.
489
00:31:34.299 --> 00:31:37.400
We were asked by the Defence Research Board to see
490
00:31:37.420 --> 00:31:40.900
if we could find any means of defence against the
491
00:31:41.059 --> 00:31:44.220
brainwashing procedure for the Canadian soldier who fell into the
492
00:31:44.279 --> 00:31:45.960
hands of an.
493
00:31:45.839 --> 00:31:52.549
Enemy Also at that Ritz meeting were agents for a
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00:31:52.630 --> 00:31:57.789
new American spy service called the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA.
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00:31:58.869 --> 00:32:01.890
They were interested in Hebb, but it was what Cameron
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00:32:01.930 --> 00:32:06.269
was doing, his adaptation of Hebb's work, his psychic driving treatments,
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that really interested them. So a CIA front organization, the
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00:32:11.450 --> 00:32:15.309
Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, paid him a visit,
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suggesting he apply for a grant. And that's how the
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CIA started funding Cameron's experiments, which now made him part
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00:32:23.819 --> 00:32:28.619
of a much, much larger clandestine program, which the CIA
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00:32:28.700 --> 00:32:35.299
called MKUltra. That's next time on Brainwashed.
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00:32:38.420 --> 00:32:42.640
Under the cover of MKUltra, the CIA hired prostitutes to
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00:32:42.680 --> 00:32:45.309
give LSD to their clients in order to help the
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00:32:45.329 --> 00:32:46.480
United States fight communism.
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00:32:47.319 --> 00:32:50.200
It was Operation Midnight Climax.
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00:32:58.819 --> 00:33:02.220
Brainwashed is written and produced by Lisa Ellenwood, Chris Oak,
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00:33:02.420 --> 00:33:05.970
and me, Michelle Shepard. Sarah Melton is our associate producer.
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00:33:06.450 --> 00:33:10.849
Sound design by Cecil Fernandez. Our digital producer is Emily Cannell.
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00:33:11.529 --> 00:33:14.869
The senior producer of CBC Podcasts is Tanya Springer, and
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our executive producer is Arif Noorani. Special thanks to Alina Ghosh,
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Chris Sullivan, Keith Hart with CBC Radio Archives, and the
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Brainwashed is produced by CBC Podcasts and The Fifth Estate.
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The 1950s and 1960s saw a wave of radical movements.
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The Cuban Revolution, the Black Panthers, Quebec had the FLQ.
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Recall How to Start a Revolution dives into the story
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of a groundbreaking political movement that rocked Canada in the 1960s. Bombings, kidnappings,
521
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and terror filled the headlines, while soldiers filled the streets.
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Find Recall How to Start a Revolution on CBC Listen
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This is a CBC Podcast.
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00:00:37.840 --> 00:00:41.939
So we are on 800 Main Southwest. This is the
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American Psychiatric Association, and they've actually pulled what I understand
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is three banker boxes of files on Dr.
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Cameron.
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Hi.
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Hi.
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How are you?
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Hi, how are you?
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Hi, I'm Gina Gorlin. Nice to meet you.
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Michelle.
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This is Chris.
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The American Psychiatric Association Archives is on Main Avenue in Washington, D.C.
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They moved into this location in 2018, and everything about
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it feels new. Fresh white paint, huge clean windows with
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sweeping views that include just a sliver of Capitol Hill.
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I'm here to find out all I can about Dr.
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Ewan Cameron.
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Dr.
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Cameron was once the president of the American Psychiatric Association,
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and he went on to lead the Canadian and World
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Psychiatric Associations, too. Cameron had also been the doctor in
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charge of the devastating treatments given to unwitting psychiatric patients
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at Montreal's Allen Memorial Institute. We know his resume, but
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we wanted to know what motivated him. What exactly was
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he doing at the Allen?
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And why.
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Dena Gorland, the APA Foundation's archivist and librarian, is our guide.
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There's the library. Well, I'll show it to you later,
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but let's get you guys down to business. We're sorting
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through hundreds of pages, speeches Dr. Cameron gave, carbon copies
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of his correspondence, reports he wrote. This is so incredibly
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well organized.
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Look at this.
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The opening address at the Allen Memorial Institute. This is
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actual speech. Oh god, this paper is so thin.
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July 12, 1944.
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Professor Dr. Ewan Cameron.
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The Institute is now opening its doors, and those who
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have come here to attend this event must reflect upon
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what this may mean. The setting into action of a
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new center of inquiry and of healing is always an
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occasion of importance and solemnity. For passing forward in time,
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one can conjecture upon and in some measure foresee the
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later consequences. I think he needs a bit of an editor.
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Then-producer Chris Oak comes across a thick file. Nuremberg.
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Folder for Nuremberg.
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Yeah, that.
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Would be interesting.
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This is CBC News Roundup. Tonight, Matthew Houlton discusses the
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fate of the men in the dock at Nuremberg.
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The Nuremberg trials prosecuted Nazi war criminals in the wake
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of World War II.
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Today at Nuremberg, the 21 defendants heard the justices read
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in relays the 250-page judgment, which pronounced Nazism a criminal
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system and condemned its leadership for conspiracy, crimes against peace,
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war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
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One of the defendants, Rudolf Hess, the number three man
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in Hitler's Germany, arrived at Nuremberg claiming to be suffering
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from amnesia, and a group of ten internationally renowned psychiatrists
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were asked to assess this claim and determine whether Hess
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was mentally fit to stand trial. Dr. Ewan Cameron was
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one of those experts.
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The tribunal is of opinion that the defendant Hess is
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capable of standing his trial at the present time.
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The doctors found that he suffered from psychoneurosis and there
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was some genuine amnesia, but he faked the rest. They
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concluded he was sane enough to stand trial.
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It's judgment day at the Nuremberg trial, the greatest trial
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of all time is nearing its end.
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And the tribunal later found him guilty.
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They're accused of crimes on a scale so vast, of
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an evil so black, as the world has never seen before.
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It's ironic that Dr. Ewing Cameron was involved in the
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evaluation of Hess at Nuremberg especially considering the trial that followed.
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The prosecution of Nazi physicians who conducted cruel and often
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deadly experiments on prisoners and civilians. It was known as
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the doctor's trial. Their crimes shocked the world and the
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scientific community, leading to the creation of the Nuremberg Code.
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A promise that this kind of human experimentation would never
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happen again. A promise that would be broken again and again.
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By Dr.
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Cameron himself.
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I'm Michelle Shepard and this is Brainwashed.
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Episode 2, Psychic Driving.
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Let this trial be a warning. Let it be a
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milestone on a long, hard road from barbarism to universal peace.
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The Nuremberg Code is actually a set of ten principles,
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ethical and legal guidelines for experiments conducted on humans.
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The first principle of Nuremberg states that the voluntary consent
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of the human subject is absolutely essential. That means the
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person involved should have legal capacity to give consent should
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be able to exercise free power of choice and that
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they should know the consequences of participation in this.
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This is Harvey Weinstein. I'm sorry I have to clarify this,
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but your name is Harvey Weinstein.
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Unfortunately, yes.
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It is a tough name to have these days.
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I usually introduce myself by saying Harvey Weinstein, the other one.
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This Harvey Weinstein is a doctor, a psychiatrist, and he
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has spent a good part of his life thinking about
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and researching Dr. Cameron and the Allen.
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So Nuremberg, they also say that the duty and responsibility
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for ascertaining the quality of the consent rests upon the
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individual who carries out the experiment. That's the bedrock. And
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that's what did not happen at the Allen.
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And Dr. Cameron would know the Nuremberg Code.
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I would certainly assume so, yeah. Dr.
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Cameron's patients came to the Allen willingly, hoping to seek
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relief from their psychiatric ailments. They had no idea they
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were going to be part of a medical experiment, essentially
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human guinea pigs. Dr. Cameron's goal was to determine whether
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something he'd developed called psychic driving could fundamentally alter the
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minds of his patients.
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The story is that he heard about these language courses
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where you put a loudspeaker under your pillow at night
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and you learn Spanish or French or whatever, and he thought.
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Around 1948, there was a fad called sleep teaching. The
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idea being that you could master a new language or
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break a bad habit if you just listened to tapes
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played during the night. Dr. Cameron was curious.
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And in Montreal at the Allen Memorial Institute of McGill University,
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a new technique called psychic driving has been developed. Here
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is Dr.
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Ewan Cameron of the Institute and Raymond Hazan of the CBC.
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Would you describe the new treatment, Dr.
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Cameron?
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This is essentially an attempt to modify and improve our
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methods of carrying out psychotherapy. In the institute we have
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been attempting to find ways of speeding up psychotherapy and
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one of the ways is to find methods of bringing
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out into action important and valuable parts of the patient's
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personality that have hitherto been repressed. The driving consists in
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the repetition on a tape or a record of a
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statement which deals with the desirable repressed characteristics. A good
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example of this is.
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Here's one of the recordings Dr. Cameron used on a
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patient who came to him with what would now be
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known as postpartum depression.
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You can get along with people by now. You are
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not afraid of others, and you are very pleased to
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be with them. People like you and your relationship with
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people is good. You are an adult and you want
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to accept the responsibilities of a wife and a mother.
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As you feel better, you like to see things neat
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and tidy. If you see things disorderly like papers on
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the floor you pick them up. You look after things
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as you look after yourself.
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That line about picking up the papers on the floor
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was added to test whether the messages were being absorbed.
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But not all the messages were positive.
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And he had two kinds of messages. He had positive messages,
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like you're a good person, you're kind to everybody, because
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that was supposed to change the behavior. And negative messages,
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like you're an awful person, you're mean to people, etc.
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And he would first have people listen to negative messages
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and then to positive messages. Sometimes he would use what
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was called auto-psychic driving in which he used the patient's
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own words. Sometimes it would be hetero-psychic driving in terms
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of how the physicians interpreted how these messages were being
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created in the patient's own mind.
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These voices were played through headphones, helmets or speakers sometimes
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installed right inside patients' pillows. The positive and negative messages
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would be repeated over and over for periods of up
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to 20 hours a day, whether they were asleep or awake.
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So patients could sometimes hear the same messages up to
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half a million times.
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He thought that if he could have people listen to
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these kinds of messages over and over, that it would
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ultimately result in their changing their attitudes and behaviors. He
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actually thought it would change the physiology of their brains,
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because it's likely that psychotherapy actually does that at some level.
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This type of recording, playing the recording back to the
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patient over and over again, sounds something like the conditioning
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technique in The Brave New World, Does it have any
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similarity at all to it or to communist brainwashing, for instance?
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No, it certainly doesn't, because what we are attempting to
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do is to bring into operation aspects of the patient's
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own personality. We are not trying to impose upon the
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individual things which probably might be quite foreign to him
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and which would be at marked variance, as in the
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case of brainwashing, with the kind of person that he
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naturally is.
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Does it have any adverse effects on the patient's health
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or mental outlook after he's been treated with it?
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No, and otherwise we wouldn't use it. The patient is
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usually very much better afterwards, and our problem is to
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00:12:47.710 --> 00:12:50.330
ensure that that improvement is lasting.
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In 2010, a family of four in California goes missing,
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00:12:59.690 --> 00:13:03.629
and the clues left behind send investigators on a years-long search.
200
00:13:04.570 --> 00:13:06.669
Is this a family on the run, or is the
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00:13:06.730 --> 00:13:11.909
truth far more sinister? From ABC Audio in 2020, this
202
00:13:12.110 --> 00:13:15.470
is What Happened to the McStaves, coming August 11th. Listen
203
00:13:15.509 --> 00:13:20.340
on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast app.
204
00:13:20.580 --> 00:13:23.820
Or subscribe to 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts
205
00:13:23.960 --> 00:13:25.519
to listen early and ad-free.
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00:13:29.899 --> 00:13:33.639
When we were in the APA, the American Psychiatric Association Archives,
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00:13:34.240 --> 00:13:37.179
some of Dr. Cameron's papers talked about psychic driving.
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Hi.
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00:13:42.259 --> 00:13:46.429
That's Dina, the archivist. Well, we just read through the
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whole psychic driving one. It's really interesting. Yeah, I think
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so too.
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I think, like, just the concept of it.
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Dina goes on to tell us that a year before
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we visited, she had another request for those files. Okay,
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so his son.
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His name is Duncan Cameron. He called me in 2018
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and he said, you know, I understand that you have
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the archives of my dad and I'm just extremely, extremely
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upset that the way he's being portrayed because that was
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only one part of his life at a certain time
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because he did so many other things and he was
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You know, really upset.
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Dina had a lot of empathy for Dr. Cameron's son, Duncan.
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It's understandable.
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Psychiatry has a very ugly past. You know, there's Hannibal
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Lecter-type machines. You know, you had lobotomy. You had, you know,
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bloodletting was huge.
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We didn't know. Nobody knew.
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It can't be easy living with your father's legacy when
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the only story told is what he did to patients
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at the Allent.
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You know, and he's just like, but my father was
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such an intelligent man. And they're just bashing him. They
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keep bashing him.
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Hello?
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Hi, Duncan. It's Michelle here.
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Oh, yes.
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Hi, Michelle.
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How are you?
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Fine. I'm in a little room here with all sorts
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of electronic equipment around me.
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They've got you all set up?
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Yeah, I think I am. Okay.
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Well, why don't we start by just getting you kind
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of formally to introduce yourself. Just tell me your name
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and a little bit about who you are.
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Okay.
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Well, my name is Duncan Cameron. I'm the oldest son
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of Dr. Donald Ewan Cameron, and I live in Washington,
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and I have spent most of my life practicing law.
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Duncan Cameron is now a retired lawyer. He's 85 years old.
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And you mentioned on the phone to me that you
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had a Canadian connection, but you wanted to wait to
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tell me in person.
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Well, all right, now I will. Well, I was born
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in Canada, in Brandon, Manitoba, where my father's first appointment
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was at the Brandon Medical Institute. I think it has
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a slightly different name than that, but it was in Brandon, Manitoba.
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Ewan Cameron was born in Scotland in 1901, the son
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of a Presbyterian minister. After medical school, he did his
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residencies in psychiatry in London, Zurich, and in the US
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at the prestigious Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was recruited to
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Manitoba in 1929 to the Brandon Hospital for Mental Diseases. Dr.
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Cameron lived with his family in Canada on and off
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for nearly three decades, but he never sought Canadian citizenship.
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He moved to Montreal in 1943 and became the director
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of the Allen. And how old would you have been
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around that time when you moved there?
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I would have been about nine years old or ten.
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What are your recollections of your dad?
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Well, if I got up early in the morning, I'd
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see him before he got to work. And then I
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would see him at night at dinner. But he was
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a very busy man. And I think he was always
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very concerned about our education. Occasionally, we would do something
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on the weekend. But he was very busy. I could
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remember also he could be quite strict about bedtime.
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How so? What do you remember?
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Well, I could remember listening to a hockey game past bedtime,
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but I very quickly hid it under the sheets and
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blankets as he passed by the door, except my thigh
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accidentally hit the volume button, and suddenly this great noise
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of the hockey game came out.
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Oh, no.
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And what happens then?
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Well... Punishment, of course. Not a serious one, though. I
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think another thing that we did as a family was
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we hiked. He loved the Outer Doors and particularly loved
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climbing mountains, which I think probably has its very beginnings
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in Scotland.
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Duncan said he was happy to talk to us, but
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only if we focused on his father's character, not his
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work specifically.
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He did love the Outer Doors.
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Many people describe him as quite charming and charismatic.
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Yes, he can be. The ladies loved him. He always
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had some good jokes. On the other hand, he was
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not sort of somebody that just liked to go out
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to have a drink with the boys. He was busy
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most of the time.
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But he did mention that his father was searching for
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a cure for schizophrenia and that this mission drove some
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of his work at the Allen. Some colleagues said Dr.
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Cameron's life ambitions was to win a Nobel Prize.
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I think the work that he was engaged in trying
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to find a solution to the problem of schizophrenia, that
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work in Montreal, it was unfortunate that people then concluded
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that the treatments that he gave were reflected on his character.
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I'm not trying to put you on the spot, but
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I just don't quite understand what you mean by that.
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Well, he was not a harsh person. unfeeling sort of person.
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I think he was ambitious, and I think he was
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genuinely excited by the field of psychiatry and the opportunities
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that it provided for breakthroughs in many areas. I've admired
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most of the things he's done.
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Not all.
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You can get along with people by now. You are
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not afraid of others, and you are very pleased to
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be with them. People like you and your relationship with others.
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I know it's hard to talk about somebody else's motives,
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but I think among the guests that we're speaking to,
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you probably have researched the most about what Dr. Cameron
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was doing and talked to the most people who knew him.
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How would you best describe his motivations for this?
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Complicated question.
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This is Dr. Harvey Weinstein again.
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I have to acknowledge that in many ways Cameron was
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a unique psychiatrist. He was heavily influenced by social psychiatry
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in which people look at those with emotional disturbance in
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the context of their social situation, the context of their families,
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and context of society. I also have to acknowledge that
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initially he wrote quite clearly about the brain as a
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biological entity and trying to understand issues related to memory, etc.
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So all that's really good. But what happened, it seems,
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is that he became motivated by a desire to be famous,
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to win a Nobel Prize. He was very ambitious and
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known to be very ambitious. And in many ways, he
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was very successful in terms of being recognized around the
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world as an amazing psychiatrist. The second thing is that
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Cameron was invited to evaluate Rudolf Hess at Nuremberg after
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the Second World War ended and became heavily influenced by
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what he surmised had happened in Germany in the 30s
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and 40s, that evil people had taken over, people who
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were sociopaths or were very passive or very ambitious or whatever.
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And One of his takeaways, interestingly enough, was that social scientists, psychiatrists, psychologists,
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and other sociologists needed to be very careful to control
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those people and to decide who should be in power, basically,
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and who shouldn't. It is just a very interesting kind
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of takeaway in which he assumes power to particular disciplines,
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and that's very troubling. So you have a combination of
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a very ambitious man, somebody who thinks that psychiatry should
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be the discipline that determines the kind of future for
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society and being the person to cure schizophrenia. And I
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think he got carried away.
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You are not afraid of others and you are very
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pleased to be with them.
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Cameron was having difficulties with his initial experiments with psychic driving.
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Patients were resistant to listening to messages looped over and over.
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You are not afraid of others and you.
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Are very pleased He decided that he had to come
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up with a method for breaking down these defenses. A
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way to break mines down so that he could build
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them back up. And he didn't have to look very
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far for one potential solution. A colleague at McGill, a
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brilliant researcher and the head of the university's psychology department,
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named Donald Hebb, was doing some groundbreaking research. We did
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an experiment here with students at McGill. an experiment in
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sensory deprivation. Could you describe for me the way in
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which they were deprived?
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They were asked to lie on a hospital bed with
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a plywood cubicle built around it, to lie wearing goggles
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over their eyes. The goggles were translucent. They had light
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but saw nothing. They had a small speaker embedded in
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a foam rubber pillow around their ears. which had a
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small buzzing noise. They wore cuffs on their arms so
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their joints could move freely. They would have no joint pains,
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but still couldn't explore the environment. And apart from that,
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they were asked to lie still.
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Do nothing.
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Be calm and peaceful on this hospital bed. They were
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fed on request. They were taken to the toilet on request.
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They were allowed a cigarette if they were smokers after
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each meal, each time they wanted to eat. Apart from that,
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they did nothing. The result of that experiment was with
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the subjects who stayed more than three days, they found
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it very difficult. We were paying them $ 20 a day,
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which at the time was the rate at which you'd
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pay an associate professor. But when they stayed for three
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days or so, they began to see things. They had
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some magnificent hallucinations of squirrels marching across a snowy field
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wearing snowshoes and carrying packs over their backs or little
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men in bathtubs rolling into the scene and rolling across
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the bathtub on wheels.
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Here's a student interviewed after the experiment.
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Toward the end of the experiment, I began to feel
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very uneasy.
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I felt as if my whole body was going to
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be torn apart, possibly because.
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I had nothing to do, just lie there.
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He said he wouldn't go through with it again, even
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if he was given $ 400 a day. Dr. Cameron was
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inspired by Hebb's work with sensory deprivation. But unlike Hebb,
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who paid students well for being test subjects and let
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them stop the experiment as soon as they wanted, Dr.
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Cameron used unwitting psychiatric patients. The longest any student lasted
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before asking Hebb to stop the experiment was five days.
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One of Dr. Cameron's patients spent 35 days in a
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sensory isolation chamber, which is basically a box that he
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had built in the converted stables behind the hospital. Cameron
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thought that confining his patients to a dark box may
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force them to better accept psychic driving messages. And he
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went far beyond this extreme sensory isolation. He drugged patients, too,
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with LSD or a variety of barbiturates. Some patients would
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also undergo electroconvulsive shock therapy, up to 30 times what
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00:25:49.589 --> 00:25:58.789
was considered normal. He called this depatterning. The goal of
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this intensive shock therapy was to reduce patients to a
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childlike state, often with no memory, unable to speak, or
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even go to the bathroom. He believed that he could, quote,
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break up the pathways of the brain and then repattern
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them with new psychic driving messages.
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Breaking someone's resistance down by all these massive drugs and
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electroshocks and insulin comas and sleep and sensory deprivation. It's
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an attempt to break down any of the normal coping
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and resistance mechanisms that individuals have to deal with stress.
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By the way, Dr. Weinstein's interest in Dr. Cameron and
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the Allen, it isn't just academic. It's personal. His father,
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00:26:40.660 --> 00:26:42.759
Lou Weinstein, was one of Cameron's patients.
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Reading about sensory isolation is one thing, and then recognizing
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that my father is in this room for two months
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in sensory deprivation with, you know... His eyes covered and
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his hands covered and hearing voices hundreds of thousands of times.
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I mean, it's mind-boggling. Well, what happened was that over
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the Christmas holidays of 1955, my father's anxiety attacks increased,
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00:27:17.880 --> 00:27:21.779
particularly his panic episodes. He had been seeing a psychiatrist
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in Montreal and was feeling that nothing good was happening.
436
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And my father was someone, as part of his needing
437
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to have the best, was looking for the best psychiatrist
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who could treat him. And at that time, Ewan Cameron
439
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at the Allen Memorial was world famous. When I finally
440
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got his records, it just corroborated what I had been
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reading about in terms of Cameron's papers. But the actual wording,
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00:27:56.740 --> 00:28:02.559
the nursing notes, the lack of empathy shown by Cameron
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was astounding. The pitiful pictures of my father that are
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painted in the notes are a little difficult to read, frankly.
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And it's unbelievable to hear the aggressive attempts to break
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down my father and to basically turned him into a two-year-old.
447
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I mean, he was soiling himself, urinating, just sort of
448
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an experimental animal, unfortunately. One day, my father went into
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the hospital, age 49, and that was the end of
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his life and the end of my life, the end
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of my childhood as I knew it.
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Cameron did write reports about his work that were published
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in various medical journals, but the full extent and the
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impact of his experiments were not revealed until decades later.
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He never had to answer for his methods or face justice.
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He died climbing a mountain with my youngest brother.
457
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Dr.
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Cameron died at the age of 65, just three years
459
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after resigning from the island.
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00:29:27.859 --> 00:29:33.349
He had a heart condition that he had not disclosed
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00:29:33.390 --> 00:29:35.809
to me and probably should not have taken that hike,
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00:29:35.849 --> 00:29:38.210
but it was up one of the mountains that he
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really wanted to climb. It was one that he frequently
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00:29:40.759 --> 00:29:43.880
talked about. And there were about three quarters of the
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way up and he stopped for a rest. And my
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00:29:46.549 --> 00:29:51.069
youngest brother looked around and he had passed out and
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had died.
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00:29:54.950 --> 00:29:58.869
Dr. Cameron was celebrated in his obituaries as a man
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00:29:58.950 --> 00:30:01.049
dedicated to science and medicine.
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People like you, and your relationship with people is good.
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00:30:08.690 --> 00:30:11.220
A year before he left the Allen, Dr. Cameron did
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00:30:11.279 --> 00:30:15.920
admit that psychic driving, those repetitive messages, did not work.
473
00:30:16.779 --> 00:30:19.519
And once he left the Allen, the next director launched
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00:30:19.599 --> 00:30:25.180
an evaluation of depatterning, the extreme electroshock treatments. The treatment
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00:30:25.460 --> 00:30:28.900
was found to be ineffective and damaging and was banned.
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00:30:33.140 --> 00:30:36.289
Not all of Cameron's documents are in the archives at
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00:30:36.309 --> 00:30:41.329
the American Psychiatric Association. Before Cameron's family donated them, his
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00:30:41.390 --> 00:30:45.349
son Duncan removed certain files and they were destroyed. He
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00:30:45.390 --> 00:30:48.170
later claimed he was concerned about the privacy of patients.
480
00:30:51.839 --> 00:30:55.210
But what other information might be missing from the archives?
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What if these experiments weren't really about advancing medicine and
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00:30:59.250 --> 00:31:02.750
finding a cure for schizophrenia? What if there was another
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00:31:02.789 --> 00:31:07.119
goal behind learning to control people's minds that went way
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00:31:07.180 --> 00:31:16.970
beyond the Allen? On June 1st, 1951, A meeting took
485
00:31:17.009 --> 00:31:21.650
place at Montreal's Ritz-Carlton Hotel, which brought together the military, medical,
486
00:31:21.769 --> 00:31:25.490
and scientific elite from Canada, the UK, and the US.
487
00:31:26.930 --> 00:31:30.410
Cameron's colleague, Donald Hebb, was invited to that meeting because
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00:31:30.509 --> 00:31:33.490
there was great interest in his work on sensory deprivation.
489
00:31:34.299 --> 00:31:37.400
We were asked by the Defence Research Board to see
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00:31:37.420 --> 00:31:40.900
if we could find any means of defence against the
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00:31:41.059 --> 00:31:44.220
brainwashing procedure for the Canadian soldier who fell into the
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00:31:44.279 --> 00:31:45.960
hands of an.
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00:31:45.839 --> 00:31:52.549
Enemy Also at that Ritz meeting were agents for a
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00:31:52.630 --> 00:31:57.789
new American spy service called the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA.
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00:31:58.869 --> 00:32:01.890
They were interested in Hebb, but it was what Cameron
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00:32:01.930 --> 00:32:06.269
was doing, his adaptation of Hebb's work, his psychic driving treatments,
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00:32:06.589 --> 00:32:11.390
that really interested them. So a CIA front organization, the
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00:32:11.450 --> 00:32:15.309
Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology, paid him a visit,
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00:32:15.750 --> 00:32:19.599
suggesting he apply for a grant. And that's how the
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00:32:19.640 --> 00:32:23.599
CIA started funding Cameron's experiments, which now made him part
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00:32:23.819 --> 00:32:28.619
of a much, much larger clandestine program, which the CIA
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00:32:28.700 --> 00:32:35.299
called MKUltra. That's next time on Brainwashed.
503
00:32:38.420 --> 00:32:42.640
Under the cover of MKUltra, the CIA hired prostitutes to
504
00:32:42.680 --> 00:32:45.309
give LSD to their clients in order to help the
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00:32:45.329 --> 00:32:46.480
United States fight communism.
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00:32:47.319 --> 00:32:50.200
It was Operation Midnight Climax.
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00:32:58.819 --> 00:33:02.220
Brainwashed is written and produced by Lisa Ellenwood, Chris Oak,
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00:33:02.420 --> 00:33:05.970
and me, Michelle Shepard. Sarah Melton is our associate producer.
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00:33:06.450 --> 00:33:10.849
Sound design by Cecil Fernandez. Our digital producer is Emily Cannell.
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00:33:11.529 --> 00:33:14.869
The senior producer of CBC Podcasts is Tanya Springer, and
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00:33:14.910 --> 00:33:19.119
our executive producer is Arif Noorani. Special thanks to Alina Ghosh,
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00:33:19.240 --> 00:33:22.599
Chris Sullivan, Keith Hart with CBC Radio Archives, and the
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00:33:22.640 --> 00:33:27.460
CBC Reference Library. For discussions, posts, videos, and pictures, find
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00:33:27.500 --> 00:33:31.769
us on social media. Just search for CBC Podcasts on Facebook, Twitter,
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00:33:32.119 --> 00:33:36.170
and Instagram. Our theme song is Desert Novel by Key Witness.
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00:33:37.009 --> 00:33:40.569
Brainwashed is produced by CBC Podcasts and The Fifth Estate.
517
00:33:59.650 --> 00:34:03.440
The 1950s and 1960s saw a wave of radical movements.
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00:34:03.839 --> 00:34:07.880
The Cuban Revolution, the Black Panthers, Quebec had the FLQ.
519
00:34:08.719 --> 00:34:12.000
Recall How to Start a Revolution dives into the story
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00:34:12.079 --> 00:34:18.489
of a groundbreaking political movement that rocked Canada in the 1960s. Bombings, kidnappings,
521
00:34:18.590 --> 00:34:21.849
and terror filled the headlines, while soldiers filled the streets.
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00:34:22.630 --> 00:34:26.070
Find Recall How to Start a Revolution on CBC Listen
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00:34:26.289 --> 00:34:32.119
or wherever you get your podcasts. For more CBC podcasts,
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00:34:32.389 --> 00:34:35.320
go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.
