Domestic Colonies in Canada: Rethinking the Definition of Colony

Abstract

What is a colony? In this article, I reconsider the meaning of colony in light of the existence of domestic colonies in Canada around the turn of the twentieth century. The two case studies examined are farm colonies for the mentally disabled and ill in Ontario and British Columbia and utopian colonies for Doukhobors in Saskatchewan. I show how both kinds of colonies are characterized by the same three principles found in Lockean settler colonialism: segregation, agrarian labour on uncultivated soil and improvement/cultivation of people and land. Defining “colony” in this way is theoretically interesting as it is different from the definition found in most dictionaries and post-colonial scholarship. There is also an inherent contradiction within domestic colonies as they both support state power over indigenous peoples, Doukhobors and the mentally ill and disabled but also challenge the principles of domination, individualism, private property and sovereignty upon which the Canadian settler state was founded.

The politics of irrationality

“…What is especially pernicious in these contemporary charges of irrationality is that in framing the issue as a question of individual behavior, it turns it into a question of education, thereby justifying intervention in the form of “re‐education” initiatives. As Arneil ( 2012 ) explains, this coupling of irrationality and behavior change is not without historical precedent. Colonial logics propelled the construction of labor and farm colonies where the “irrational” and “idle” were housed and re‐educated to “break them free .…”

“…. from their bad customs/habits and teaching them, through education and agrarian labor, to become proper citizens” (Arneil, 2012 , 491). To reduce antibiotic use to an individual farmer's ignorant, irrational behavioral choice, to be corrected via behavior‐change interventions, is an insidious move, but one that is deeply sticky.…”