Provincial Training School

The Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives (PTS) in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada operated as an institution for mentally disabled children and adults between 1923 and 1977, at which time it was renamed the Michener Centre. It aimed to provide care and training to facilitate the integration of individuals with intellectual disabilities into their communities. While today it houses a service for persons with developmental disabilities, the nearly one-century-old facility is preceded by a diverse, remarkable and even shocking history, marked by eugenic practices like involuntary sterilization.

The three-storey building, which once housed the Provincial Training School, has undergone many administrative changes since its construction in 1913. Located on the Michener hill in the city of Red Deer, Alberta, it originally housed the Alberta Ladies' College of Red Deer as one of Western Canada's finest residential college buildings at the time. In 1916, the provincial government converted the college into a psychiatric hospital for shell-shocked soldiers. It was not until 1923 that the facility saw the inception of the Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives, which would serve as a care facility for the mentally disabled until 1973. Today, it functions as Michener Services-PDD, a residential care facility for persons with developmental disabilities and currently has 227 residents.

In 1923, the Provincial Training School (PTS) was conceived as a residential school, aiming to enable the "academic, vocational and personal development of retarded children and young adults". It allowed developmentally disabled children to live apart from psychiatrically diagnosed children, and provided the parents of these children respite of the daily struggles of raising children with special needs. Before the opening of the PTS, Alberta’s mentally disabled children that were not living with their families were usually grouped with psychiatric patients in care facilities as far away as Brandon, Manitoba. At its founding, the PTS was viewed as a progressive step for Canadians because it focused on segregating the "mentally retarded from the mentally ill," and was claimed to support the shift "from incarceration to education". In due time, the PTS expanded its function to include occupational therapy and vocational training, which was meant to serve as stepping-stones for the residents' integration into the larger community. In the 1950s, the PTS claimed to centre its efforts on "increasing the trainee's independence," and in the 1960s, on "resident training". The view of the school as "humane, well run, evolving as attitudes towards feeble-mindedness evolved," was upheld by Albertans throughout the span of its operation. However, rising population figures indicated that most residents of the PTS did not, in fact, return to their communities. To the greater Red Deer community, the PTS served as its chief employer, and enriched the local community with its own farm and opulent gardens. The school featured state-of-the-art classrooms, a chain of dormitories, and even a separate hospital. This idealistic establishment appealed to even Alberta's most prestigious families, including ex-Premier of Alberta, Ernest Manning, who enrolled his eldest son, Keith, at the school.

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