Incorrigible

"On a May morning in 1939, eighteen-year-old Velma Demerson and her lover were sharing breakfast when the police arrived to take her away. Her "crime," loving a Chinese man, was compounded by her pregnancy and subsequent mixed-race child. Sentenced to a home for wayward girls, Ms. Demerson was soon transferred, together with forty-six other young women, to Toronto's Mercer Reformatory for Females." "Locked in their cells for twelve hours a day and compelled to work in the on-site laundry and factory, they also endured repeated suspect medical examinations. When Velma Demerson was eventually…