During the first year of the Korean conflict, in 1950/51, senior military officials in Canada, Britain, and the United States became concerned about the development and use of so-called mind control techniques by communist forces. Authorities cited public denouncements of the conflict made by captured American soldiers as evidence that the Chinese had developed a method for brainwashing. With little or no evidence of physical coercion, Western authorities believed that communist forces had found a successful method for controlling the mind and inducing voluntary or genuine confessions. Long periods of isolation, followed by repetitive indoctrination to new beliefs, seemed to be key to mind control and confessional extraction. In response, all three countries committed to research in the hope that science might yield a solution for training soldiers to recognize, resist, and overcome brainwashing if captured.

Possible research subjects included not only military and government personnel but also civilians, with the aim of developing methods to protect Canadians from “enemy propaganda, sabotage, and the psychological threat of material warfare.” Authorities in the Defence Research Board, or DRB, the scientific branch of the Canadian armed services, also emphasized the value of psychological warfare for the reconstitution of government and military personnel of defeated enemy nations.

Although described as an area of only “very slight” interest to Canada, the forethought of funding psychological warfare research highlights the extent to which Cold War security anxieties permeated military research planning inside the Canadian defence department. Canada’s top military and defence officials believed that sensory isolation research could be useful for defending against mind control and was also valuable for understanding and counteracting the effects of monotonous military tasks, especially radar booth operation.

In 1949, the US Congress agreed to co-finance radar construction with the Royal Canadian Air Force—RCAF. Officials in Ottawa and Washington agreed on a construction plan for thirty-three radar stations, known as the Pinetree Line, located across the mid-north from Vancouver Island to Labrador.

In response to the escalating nuclear threat in the 1950s, strategic analysts in Ottawa and Washington also planned the construction of the Mid-Canada Line, or MCL, along the fifty-fifth parallel, paid for entirely by Canada. The number of northern radar stations increased for a third time by joint agreement in May 1955, when both countries agreed in principle to construct and operate a Distant Early Warning Line in the far north. Construction was only one issue, however. Effective operation of the North American radar network required advanced technology and capable operators.

Authorities in the defence department tied isolation research to multiple aspects of security in the nuclear age. They supported research not only in response to the fear of communist mind control but also to avoid having bored and exhausted radar operators miss a major attack, thus negating the entire air defence effort.

These concerns would eventually help fund Canada’s longest-running study of human isolation.

Canada had few research centres undertaking work in experimental psychology during the mid-1950s, but a growing body of qualified scientists expressed interest in the field. Curiosity about the human mind was one motivator, as was the increased government funding available for specific research projects undertaken at Canadian universities.

John Zubek, a psychologist at the University of Manitoba, began his research into sensory deprivation two years after the 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik. He created an isolation laboratory at the university and initiated a series of sensory deprivation experiments in 1959. For fifteen years, more than 500 volunteers were subjected to the isolation laboratory. Some participants experienced darkness and silence for up to two weeks, while others endured constant light and white noise in a translucent Plexiglas dome.

During the first year of tests, twenty-two people, ranging in age from nineteen to thirty-four, spent multiple days isolated in a darkened, soundproofed chamber approximately seven feet tall and nine feet in diameter. The test subjects included graduate students in the biological sciences and aircrew personnel from RCAF Station, Winnipeg.

Lying flat on their back and wearing noise-cancelling earmuffs, each person endured isolation until they decided to end the experiment. Six requested their release from isolation within the first three days. The other sixteen subjects experienced at least seven days in isolation, one remaining in the chamber for ten days. Research assistants passed food through a small locked device and occasionally tested the cognitive and perceptual abilities of each isolated individual, but subjects otherwise had no visual or aural contact and used rudimentary lavatories located under the floor.

Authorities in the DRB approved Zubek’s isolation research under the assumption that the experiment would not cause long-term negative health effects. In March 1960, the DRB’s Morley Whillans contacted Professor George Sisler, head of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Manitoba, while reviewing Zubek’s research grant for renewal. Whillans asked Sisler to provide information about the safety procedures for selecting student research subjects. Sisler replied, “I do not believe that a psychiatric interview would add anything of value to this.” Whillans accepted Sisler’s explanation, and the DRB subsequently renewed Zubek’s research grant.

Four months later, Zubek submitted a report that gave Whillans cause for concern. In a paper vetted for publication, Zubek described a nurse who had........

© The Walrus