Media: Reviews & Interviews
Interviews
Podcast: "Journey For Truth", from Colorado, U.S.A.
Webtalk Radio radio and podcast.
Tami Urbanek interviews Thelma Wheatley.
Click here to listen to the interview >>
Podcast: Real Talk with Lee
Blog Radio. Aired January 9th 4:30pm EST:
Thelma Wheatley interviewed by Hollywood Lee from Los Angeles on live internet radio, TALK WITH LEE.
Click here to listen to the interview >>
Rogers TV Cable 10 Mississauga
May 2, 2013
Interview and footage of Thelma Wheatley’s presentation at Port Credit Library.
Watch Thelma Wheatley on Rogers Cable 'Access Peel' May 31, 2013.
Orillia Sunshine Radio FM 89.1
Orillia, Ontario
Interview of Thelma Wheatley by Jim Birchard. July 2, 2013
Reviews
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South Wales Evening Post, UK
September 16, 2013 pp 26-27
Former Teacher Picks the Write Time for New Novel
by CHRIS PEREGRIN
Wheatley recalls why she wrote the book about the abuses at Canada’s oldest institution for the “feeble-minded” in Orillia, Ontario: “I wanted to expose it because it had always been kept secret in Canadian history. It had all been swept under the table.”
Chris Peregrine is a reporter with the South Wales Evening Post, UK.
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Canada’s History
(Formerly The Beaver)
October/November 2013. Pp. 28-32
Book Describes Shocking Details of Life in Orillia Asylum in Heartbreak in Huronia
Review by HEATHER ROBERTSON
“A powerful new book”
“Wheatley brings the family members and their doctors, nurses, and social workers vividly to life”
“Critical and compassionate”
Heather Robertson is a Canadian journalist, novelist and award-winning non-fiction writer. Founding member of Writers Union of Canada and the Professional Writers Association of Canada.
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Literary Review Of Canada
September 2013. Vol. 21, No. 7. p. 22-23
History from the Dark Side (September 2013)
A review of “And Neither Have I Wings to Fly”: Labelled and Locked Up in Canada’s Oldest Institution
By MEGAN J. DAVIES
“In “And Neither Have I Wings To Fly: Labelled and Locked Up in Canada’s Oldest Institution”, Toronto writer Thelma Wheatley has given imaginative life to a largely forgotten chapter in Canadian history.”
“. . .Wheatley renders the broader story profoundly personal and underscores the deep injustice of this history.”
Megan J. Davies is a Professor in the Department of Social Science, York University, and a British Columbian social historian.
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Quill & Quire
July/August 2013 p. 38-39
A SORRY STATE: Two new books shed light on a history of institutional abuse and pain.
By PATRICIA MAUNDER
“Meticulous research”
Brings “key characters vividly to life”
“The author provides harrowing portraits of the time, from the squalor of Toronto’s slums in the first half of the 20th century to the overcrowded, underfunded asylum, where inmates were formally classified as idiots, imbeciles, or morons.”
Patricia Maunder is a reviewer based in Montreal.
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Orillia Packet and Times
June 30, 2013
New Book Explores LIves of Patients at HRC
by ROBERTA BELL
“Wheatley’s book delves into over half a century of the institution’s history.”
Speaking of developmentally challenged people, Wheatley says “They’re so vulnerable and they’re so honest and they’re so loving and so open. They’re everything that we are not.”
Roberta Bell is a reporter for Orillia Packet and Times, Orillia.
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