John MacEachran was the only Canadian student to complete a Ph.D. under Wilhelm Wundt in Leipzig. Although Wundt is considered the nominal founder of experimental psychology, MacEachran completed a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1909. MacEachran could probably have obtained a position at any number of prominent institutions in the US or Canada but he agreed to found a philosophy and psychology department at the newly created University of Alberta in Canada. He would have remained a minor academic were it not for the fact that he chaired the Eugenics Board in the Province of Alberta from 1929 to 1965, a remarkable stretch during which he signed off on the sterilization orders of more than 4,000 candidates for sterilization, in excess of 2,000 were sterilized during his tenure. Alberta was one of two Canadian provinces that conducted organized sterilizations of its captive populations in provincial mental health hospitals. MacEachran was a private man, he left very little by way of papers or evidence of his intellectual progress through the 20th century (he lived until 1971). Since his death he has been severely criticized for his devotion to the sterilization program in Alberta and for the manner in which this work was carried out – largely in silence and out of public view with minimal oversight. In this paper I reconstruct MacEachran’s life and career in the light of his work for the Eugenics Board using published and unpublished sources. I argue that his life in Alberta isolated his 19thcentury sensibilities.
