Harvey Brownstone conducts an in-depth interview with Barri Cohen, Award-Winning Documentary Filmmaker, “UNLOVED - HURONIA’S FORGOTTEN CHILDREN”
About Harvey's guest:
Today’s guest, Barri Cohen, is an award-winning filmmaker, best known for documentaries focusing on health, mental health, environmental and social justice issues. Some of her best known works include her feature documentary entitled, “Toxic Trespass: Children’s Health & The Environment”, “Toxic Beauty” and “Girls Night Out”.
Her latest film adds to the recent revelations here in Canada, of brutal legacies of neglect, abuse, violence and the trauma inflicted on our most vulnerable citizens. We know about the tragic and horrendous plight of Indigenous children in residential schools. We’ve learned what’s happened to many children at the hands of Catholic priests. We’ve heard about the treatment of elderly people isolated in nursing homes.
And now, thanks to our guest, we’re learning about the shameful and horrific treatment of disabled, institutionalized children, in her multi-award winning documentary entitled, “UNLOVED - HURONIA’S FORGOTTEN CHILDREN”.
The movie takes us on an intensely personal journey of the filmmaker’s quest to uncover the mystery of what happened to her 2 long-deceased, intellectually disabled half-brothers, who were rarely talked about, after they were institutionalized in the 1950’s at a government run facility in Orillia, Ontario, first opened in 1876, and called the “Ontario Hospital School”. It was neither a hospital nor a school. In 1945, it was renamed the Huronia Regional Center, and it operated until it was finally closed in 2009, after having held captive, tens of thousands of vulnerable children and youth, who suffered dehumanizing treatment.
That institution forms part of the immense tragedy of Canada’s, and the 20th century’s, disastrous treatment of intellectually disabled children. In the film we meet a number of survivors who speak frankly about the physical, emotional and sexual abuse and trauma they endured, and the landmark class action lawsuit they brought against the Ontario government, which was finally settled in 2013. The film, written and directed by our guest, will be televised in Canada on the CBC network on Sunday January 29, and will then be available on CBC GEM.
Our guest was the co-chair and a founding member of the Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival. She was the National Executive Chair of the Documentary Organization of Canada. And she’s the former editor and publisher, and currently a columnist, at Point of View Magazine. And if that weren’t enough, she’s currently studying psychoanalysis.
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