Incorrigible

By: Velma Demerson

Narrated by: Kayla Hounsell

On a May morning in 1939, eighteen-year-old Velma Demerson and her lover were having breakfast when two police officers arrived to take her away. Her crime was loving a Chinese man, a “crime” that was compounded by her pregnancy and subsequent mixed-race child.

Sentenced to a home for wayward girls, Demerson was then transferred (along with forty-six other girls) to Torontos Mercer Reformatory for Females. The girls were locked in their cells for twelve hours a day and required to work in the on-site laundry and factory. They also endured suspect medical examinations. When Demerson was finally released after ten months’ incarceration weeks of solitary confinement, abusive medical treatments, and the state’s apprehension of her child, her marriage to her lover resulted in the loss of her citizenship status.

This is the story of how Demerson, and so many other girls, were treated as criminals or mentally defective individuals, even though their worst crime might have been only their choice of lover. Incorrigible is a survivor’s narrative. In a period that saw the rise of psychiatry, legislation against interracial marriage, and a populist movement that believed in eradicating disease and sin by improving the purity of Anglo-Saxon stock, Velma Demerson, like many young women, found herself confronted by powerful social forces. This is a history of some of those who fell through the cracks of the criminal code, told in a powerful first-person voice.

©2004 Wilfrid Laurier University Press (P)2020 Wilfrid Laurier University Press

Critic reviews

"A great read for those interested in legal history, and a reminder that those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it." -The Barrister (Alberta Civil Trial Lawyers Association), Issue #79, 2006 March

"Incorrigible describes in heart-rending detail the events leading up to the author's incarceration, her harrowing experiences while confined, her eventual release, and her relationship with her beloved son, Harry Yip. Demerson's powerful first-person account documents a shameful period in Canadian history, a time when outrageous abuses of power were committed in the name of social progress." -Beryl Hamilton, Canadian Book Review Annual 2006

"There is only one reaction to this sad story–a mixture of outrage, fury and shame.... Incorrigible, I believe, should be mandatory reading in every Women's Studies course in the land." -Clara Thomas, Canadian Woman Studies, Vol. 26 #1, 2007 October