Anne Collins (born 1952 [1] ) is a Canadian writer, editor and publishing executive who won the Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction in 1988.
Born in Whitby, Ontario, Collins earned a Bachelor of Arts from York University and has held a wide range of writing and editorial jobs in the Canadian publishing and magazine industry. [1] The publisher at Knopf Random Canada Publishing Group and vice-president of Random House of Canada, Collins has also written the award-winning In the Sleep Room: The Story of The CIA Brainwashing Experiments in Canada. [2] [3] In the Sleep Room explored the history of Dr. Ewen Cameron and Montreal's Allan Memorial Institute and was made into a movie directed by Anne Wheeler in 1998.
Brainwashing is the controversial theory that purports that the human mind can be altered or controlled against a person's will by manipulative psychological techniques. Brainwashing is said to reduce its subject's ability to think critically or independently, to allow the introduction of new, unwanted thoughts and ideas into their minds, as well as to change their attitudes, values, and beliefs.
Project MKUltra was a human experimentation program designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used during interrogations to weaken individuals and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture. The term MKUltra is a CIA cryptonym: "MK" is an arbitrary prefix standing for the Office of Technical Service and "Ultra" is an arbitrary word out of a dictionary to denominate this project.
David Jay Bercuson is a Canadian labour, military, and political historian.
McClelland & Stewart Limited is a Canadian publishing company. It is owned by Penguin Random House of Canada, a branch of Penguin Random House, the international book publishing division of German media giant Bertelsmann.
Donald Ewen Cameron was a Scottish-born psychiatrist. He is largely known today for his central role in unethical medical experiments, and development of psychological and medical torture techniques for the Central Intelligence Agency. He served as president of the American Psychiatric Association (1952–1953), Canadian Psychiatric Association (1958–1959), American Psychopathological Association (1963), Society of Biological Psychiatry (1965) and the World Psychiatric Association (1961–1966).
Diane Marie Francis is a Canadian journalist, author and editor-at-large for the National Post newspaper since 1998.
William Walters Sargant was a British psychiatrist who is remembered for the evangelical zeal with which he promoted treatments such as psychosurgery, deep sleep treatment, electroconvulsive therapy and insulin shock therapy.
Anne Wheeler, OC, is a Canadian film and television writer, producer, and director.
Psychic driving was a psychiatric procedure of the 1950s and 1960s in which patients were subjected to a continuously repeated audio message on a looped tape to alter their behaviour. In psychic driving, patients were often exposed to hundreds of thousands of repetitions of a single statement over the course of their treatment. They were also concurrently administered muscular paralytic drugs such as curare to subdue them for the purposes of exposure to the looped messages. The procedure was pioneered by Donald Ewen Cameron, and used and funded by the CIA's Project MKUltra program in Canada.
Lester & Orpen Dennys was a Canadian book publishing company based in Toronto, originally as Lester & Orpen. It operated as a publisher from 1973 to 1991.
A verse novel is a type of narrative poetry in which a novel-length narrative is told through the medium of poetry rather than prose. Either simple or complex stanzaic verse-forms may be used, but there is usually a large cast, multiple voices, dialogue, narration, description, and action in a novelistic manner.
The Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award was a literary award given annually to recognize a Canadian children's book. The award was given to a book written in English by a citizen or permanent resident of Canada and published in Canada during the preceding year.
Wade Rowland is a Canadian science, technology, and history writer. He is currently an emeritus Professor at Toronto's York University.
Basil H. Johnston was an Anishinaabe (Ojibwa) and Canadian writer, storyteller, language teacher and scholar.
Andrew Podnieks is a Canadian author and ice hockey historian. He has written more than 45 books about hockey. He also has contributed extensively to international hockey research at the International Ice Hockey Federation, the Hockey Hall of Fame, Hockey Canada, and Canada's Sports Hall of Fame. Some of his books have been translated into French and Swedish. He is also a frequent contributor to www.IIHF.com, the official website of international hockey.
It has been traditionally believed that any U.S. Central Intelligence Agency activity in Canada would be undertaken with the "general consent" of the Canadian government, and through the 1950s information was freely given to the CIA in return for information from the United States. However, traditionally Canada has refused to voice any anger even when it was clear that the CIA was operating without authorisation.
Suzette Mayr is a Canadian novelist who has written five critically acclaimed novels, and who is currently a professor at the University of Calgary's Faculty of Arts. Mayr's works have both won and been nominated for several literary awards.
The National Business Book Award is an award presented to Canadian business authors. The award, presented every year since 1985, is sponsored by Bennett Jones, The Globe and Mail, and The Walrus, DeGroote, and supported by CPA Canada and with prize management by Freedman & Associates.
The Sleep Room is a 1998 Canadian television movie about experiments on Canadian mental patients that were carried out in the 1950s and 1960s by Donald Ewen Cameron and funded by the CIA's MKUltra program. It originally aired as a miniseries and is based on the book In The Sleep Room: The Story of CIA Brainwashing Experiments in Canada by Anne Collins.
The Montreal experiments were a series of experiments, initially aimed to treat schizophrenia by changing memories and erasing the patients' thoughts using the Scottish psychiatrist Donald Ewen Cameron's method of "psychic driving", as well as drug-induced sleep, intensive electroconvulsive therapy, sensory deprivation and Thorazine. The experiments were conducted at the Allan Memorial Institute of McGill University between 1957 and 1964 by Cameron and funded by the CIA as part of Project MKUltra, which lasted until 1973 and was only revealed to the public in 1975.