'Thinking it Savors of the Miraculous': The Manitoba Institute for the Deaf and Dumb and the Growth of Deaf Public Life in Manitoba, 1884-1909

Abstract

This study analyzes the role of the Manitoba Institute of the Deaf and Dumb in the growth of deaf communities in Brandon and Winnipeg, Manitoba. It asserts, using Habermas’s theoretical model of the growth of the public sphere, that while the school was built in response to an educational crisis for deaf school-age children in an emerging region of Canada, it also increasingly served to publicise and advocate for the concerns and politics of deaf people in Manitoba. Through an analysis of government correspondence, newspapers, and publications from the MIDD itself, this study argues that the school contributed to an increased political visibility of people with sensory disabilities in Western Canada between 1889 and 1909.