of the hospitals, former Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard declared a public apology to the orphans, but "without blaming or imputing legal responsibility to anyone." Fate of human remains In 2004, some Duplessis orphans asked the Quebec government to unearth an abandoned cemetery in the east end of Montreal, which they believed to have held the remains of orphans who may have been the subject of human experimentation. According to testimony by individuals who were at the Cité de St-Jean-de-Dieu insane asylum, the orphans in the asylum's care were routinely used as non-consensual experimental subjects, and many died as a consequence. The group wanted the government to exhume the bodies so that autopsies may be performed. In November 2010, the Duplessis orphans made their case before the United Nations Human Rights Council. In 2021, preliminary ground-penetrating radar analyses on grounds around former Canadian Indian residential schools allegedly indicated the presence of unmarked graves that could include the remains of Indigenous children that were also mainly administered by Christian churches. This has spurred further calls for the Quebec government and the Catholic Church to excavate former psychiatric hospital sites where the orphans were committed, with a class action lawsuit launched in 2018 denouncing the earlier settlement as "an insult" and not a "true apology" by the government and religious organizations. See also Wrongful involuntary commitment Political abuse of psychiatry Anti-psychiatry Child abuse Magdalene asylum Religious abuse Project MKUltra Crimes against humanity Notes References Paulin, Marguerite. Maurice Duplessis: Powerbroker, Politician, XYZ Publishing, Montreal, 2005 Thifault, Marie-Claude and Perreault, Isabelle. "The Social Integration of the Mentally Ill in Quebec Prior to the Bédard Report of 1962", Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, 2002, vol. 29, no. 1 Further reading "Les enfants de Duplessis" (Duplessis Children), 1991, by Pauline Gill "Les fous crient au secours" (The mad cry for help) 1961, by Jean-Charles Pagé "Naître rien: Des orphelins de Duplessis, de la crèche à l'asile." 2002 by Rose Dufour, with the collaboration of Brigitte Garneau Les enfants de la Grande Noirceur. by Rod Vienneau, 2008 "Plaidoyer d'un ex-orphelin réprouvé de Duplessis." 2000, by Jacques Baugé-Prévost "Les heures sauvage" 2001 by Matthias Dickert: The Duplessis Orphans. A Historical, Political and Literary Approach. In: Teaching Canada – Enseigner le Canada Ed. Martin Kuester, Claire Köhling, Sylvia Langwald, Albert Rau. Wißner, Augsburg 2017, pp 165–175 External links The Duplessis Orphans at CBC Digital Archives O douce Providence a composition