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MONTREAL – Family members of patients allegedly brainwashed decades ago at a Montreal psychiatric hospital are afraid they’re running out of time to get compensation because the federal government and the McGill University Health Centre have filed motions to dismiss their lawsuit.

Glenn Landry’s mother, Catherine Elizabeth Harter, was among the hundreds of people to receive experimental treatments under the MK-ULTRA program, funded by the Canadian government and the CIA between the 1940s and 1960s at Montreal’s Allan Memorial Institute, which was affiliated with McGill University.

Landry was born after his mother’s 1959 stay in the hospital, and had to be raised by a foster family because she couldn’t care for him.

While he says early traumas she experienced before seeking treatment undoubtedly played a role in her mental health issues, he believes the shock treatments and drug therapy she received during her months-long stay under the care of Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron and his colleagues robbed him of a relationship with her.

“She was no longer the person that she would have been, because there was no way that I could ever ask her about any kind of memories,” he said of his mother, who he saw about once a year until her death in the 1980s.

“She spent time with me because I was her son, but there was nothing about herself as a person that I can glean. It was not there.”

Landry represents one of about 60 families participating in a lawsuit against the Canadian government, the McGill University Health Centre and the Royal Victoria Hospital over the MK-ULTRA program. The plaintiffs allege their family members were subjected to psychiatric experimentation that included powerful drugs, repeated audio messages, induced comas and shock treatment that reduced them in some cases to a childlike state.

Lawyer Alan Stein, who represents the group, said he had been hopeful the government and hospitals would agree to start talks around compensation for his clients — many of whom are elderly. Instead, the opposing parties filed motions in Quebec Superior Court last week to dismiss, arguing the lawsuit is “unfounded in law and constitutes an abuse of procedure.”

The government and hospitals argue the claims are prescribed — that they should have been filed years or even decades ago when the facts surrounding the case first came to light.

“In addition to being prescribed, the originating application is an abuse of process in that it seeks to re-litigate determinative questions of fact and law that the courts of Quebec adjudicated over two decades ago,” one of the motions read.

In an email, a spokesperson for Canada’s Department of Justice says the government “acknowledges the hurt and pain inflicted on those impacted by these historical treatments,” but believes the claims are unfounded.

The departmentsaid a 1986 report into Cameron’s work found that the Canadian government did not hold legal liability or moral responsibility for the treatments but nevertheless decided to provide victims with assistance in the 1990s for “humanitarian reasons.” The McGill University Health Centre declined to comment.

Stein, in a phone interview, says the motion to dismiss is a delaying tactic from government lawyers. “They feel that my clients will not proceed further, that they’ll lose confidence and just not agree to continue further with the proceedings,” he said.

He says his clients should still have the right to sue because they didn’t know earlier that it was an option available to them. And while some victims were compensated, the money for the most part did not extend to family members, he added.

The lawsuit is asking for close to $1 million per family, for what Stein calls a “total miscarriage of justice.”

Landry compares the victims’ long legal ordeal to the wait Japanese Canadian survivors of Second World War internment camps faced before receiving justice, and he says MK-ULTRA victims also want an apology.

Because another group of Cameron’s alleged victims, and a different lawyer, had previously filed a class-action request, Stein chose instead to file a direct action, which allows plaintiffs to be mandated by others in similar circumstances to sue on their behalf. Quebec Superior Court set the stage for a trial in 2022 when it rejected an application by the government and the hospitals to partially dismiss the lawsuit, but the process was dragged out by an appeal, which also failed.

The proposed class-action lawsuit representing the other victims had tried to include the United States government as a defendant, but Quebec’s Court of Appeal ruled earlier this year that the U.S. state cannot be sued in Canada for its alleged role in the experiments; the Supreme Court of Canada refused to review the case.

While the two lawsuits are separate, Stein believes a victory by the government and hospitals in his lawsuit would make it very hard for the other effort to move forward since it would likely be targeted with a similar motion.

One of the two named plaintiffs in Stein’s suit has already dropped out. Marilyn Rappaport said in an interview that she withdrew after her husband died. That devastating loss, combined with her ongoing need to support her siblings who were victims of the experiments, made it too hard to contemplate the prospect of reliving her terrible childhood memories in court, she said.

Rappaport says her once beautiful and artistic sister Evelyn has experienced what she describes as a “living death” in the decades since she went to the hospital for treatments including being put to sleep for “months at a time” and subjected to audio messages on repeat. Now in her 80s, her sister is institutionalized and her memory is “totally gone,” Rappaport says.

While she’s no longer part of the lawsuit, Rappaport is still hoping for a victory and upset that the government is still fighting.

“I cannot understand why it’s taking so long,” she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version said McGill University filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. In fact, it was the McGill University Health Centre.

The Canadian Hockey League is looking to capitalize on the sport’s cross-border rivalry by having its top draft-eligible prospects face USA Hockey’s National Development team in an annual two-game series starting in November.

Unveiled on Tuesday by the CHL, the series is being billed as the CHL-USA Prospects Challenge with this year’s games played at two Ontario cities — London and Oshawa — on Nov. 26-27. The CHL reached a three-year deal to host the series, with sites rotating between the group’s three members — the Ontario, Quebec Maritime, and Western hockey leagues.

Aside from the world junior championships, the series will feature many of both nation’s top 17- and 18-year-olds in head-to-head competition, something CHL President Dan MacKenzie noted has been previously lacking for two countries who produce a majority of NHL talent.

“We think we’ve got the recipe for something really special here,” MacKenzie said. “And we think it’s really going to deliver for fans of junior hockey who want to see the best payers of their age group play against each other with something on the line.”

A majority of the CHL’s roster will be selected by the NHL’s Central Scouting Bureau.

The Michigan-based NTDP, established by USA Hockey in 1996, is a development program for America’s top juniors, with the team spending its season competing in the USHL, while rounding out its schedule playing in international tournaments and against U.S. colleges. NTDP alumni include NHL No. 1 draft picks such as Patrick Kane, Auston Matthews and Jack Hughes.

For the CHL, the series replaces its annual top-prospects game which was established in 1992 and ran through last season. The CHL also hosted a Canada-Russia Challenge, which began in 2003 and was last held in 2019, before being postponed as a result of the COVID pandemic and then canceled following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The success of USA Hockey’s program has really evolved and sort of gets them in a position where they’re going to be competitive in games like this,” MacKenzie said. “We’re still the No. 1 development league in the world by a wide margin. But we welcome the growth of the game and what that brings to the competition level.”

The challenge series is being launched at a time when North America’s junior hockey landscape could be shifting with the potential of NCAA Division 1 programs lifting their longstanding ban against CHL players.

On Friday, Western Hockey League player Braxton Whitehead announced on social media he has a verbal commitment to play at Arizona State next season. Whitehead’s announcement comes on the heels of a class-action lawsuit filed last month, challenging the NCAA’s eligibility ban of CHL players.

A lifting of the ban could lead to a number of CHL players making the jump to the U.S. college ranks after finishing high school.

MacKenzie called it difficult for him to comment due to the litigation and because the CHL is considered an observer in the case because it was not named in the lawsuit.

“My only comment would be that we continue to be a great option for 16- to 20-year-old players to develop their skills and move on to academic or athletic pursuits by being drafted in the NHL, where we’re the No. 1 source of talent,” MacKenzie said. “And we’re going to continue to focus on that.”

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BOSTON (AP) — Runners hoping to qualify for the 2026 Boston Marathon are going to have to pick up the pace.

The Boston Athletic Association has updated its qualifying times for the world’s oldest annual marathon, asking most prospective competitors to run a 26.2-mile race five minutes faster than in recent years to earn a starting number.

“Every time the BAA has adjusted qualifying standards — most recently in 2019 — we’ve seen athletes continue to raise the bar and elevate to new levels,” Jack Fleming, president and CEO of the BAA, said in a statement posted Monday. “In recent years we’ve turned away athletes in this age range (18-59) at the highest rate, and the adjustment reflects both the depth of participation and speed at which athletes are running.”

The BAA introduced qualifying times in 1970 and has expanded and adjusted the requirements through the decades. Runners participating in the event to raise money for charity do not have to meet the qualifying standards.

The latest change means men between the ages of 18 and 34 will have to run a marathon during the qualification window in 2 hours, 55 minutes or faster to earn a spot in the 2026 race — five minutes faster than for this year’s edition.

Women and nonbinary applicants need to complete the distance in 3:25.

The slowest competitors that can earn qualification are in the 80 and over age group. The men in that category must complete a marathon in 4:50, while women and nonbinary competitors have 5:20 to finish. Those numbers were not changed in the most recent adjustment.

The BAA said it had 36,406 qualifier entry applications for next year’s race, more than ever before.

“The record number of applicants indicates the growing trend of our sport and shows that athletes are continuously getting faster and faster,” Fleming said.

The qualifying window for the 2026 race began on Sept. 1 and will run through the conclusion of the registration period of that race next September.

Next year’s Boston Marathon will take place on April 21.

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