Velma Demerson

Velma Demerson (September 4, 1920 – May 13, 2019) was a Canadian woman who was imprisoned in 1939 in Ontario for being in a relationship with a Chinese immigrant, Harry Yip. She wrote the book Incorrigible in her sixties about her experiences and spent the rest of her life in campaigning for an apology and restitution for all women who had been incarcerated under the Female Refuges Act, the law that imprisoned her for being "incorrigible." It provided a reason that was formulated for police to arrest women who failed to comply with the status quo in Canadian society at the time. In her nineties, she also wrote and self-published a historical fiction book "Nazis in Canada" about the doctor who performed unusual treatments on her and other women in the Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Women.

Demerson won an apology and compensation from the government when she was in her eighties.

Early life Demerson was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, to a family of Greek ancestry. After her parents divorced, she lived in Toronto in a rooming house on Church Street with her mother, who supported the family by managing the house and reading tea leaves in the parlour under the name "Madam Alice". Her father, on the other hand, remained in Saint John, where he was a successful restaurateur.

At the age of 18, Demerson met Harry Yip in a Yonge Street café, where he worked as a waiter. Eventually gaining his attention, they began dating, and she soon moved in with him.

Upon her release from the Mercer Reformatory in 1940, she married Yip, but the marriage ended in divorce three years later. Frustrated that her son was also subject to racial taunting at school, she took him to Hong Kong to avoid bigotry and obtained work teaching English and shorthand to Chinese students. She found herself in financial distress, sent him back to Toronto, and returned herself to live with his father, who was unable to care for him and work and gave him up to foster care.

While Demerson worked as a waitress, she continued to see her son regularly, but he became attached to his foster mother, and the stability her home provided. Her husband, Harry Yip, disappeared. She could not find him to reconcile. She gave up hope of reuniting the family, she fled to Vancouver, joined political groups and became involved in the peace movement and protests during the Vietnam War. Her son became estranged from her, and later died of an asthma attack while he was swimming at the age of 26. That crushed Demerson, who had tried to maintain a relationship with him.

In Vancouver, she remarried and had a daughter and a son. After later separating from her second husband, she continued to raise the two older children as a single parent and worked as a secretary until her retirement. Later that year, however, she settled out of court and received an apology from the Attorney-General of Ontario and financial compensation in an undisclosed amount from the provincial government.

Later life Demerson was one of the only inmates of the Andrew Mercer Reformatory for Women who, sixty years after her incarceration at the Reformatory in 1939, received compensation from the Ontario government, at the age of 81.

She relocated back to Vancouver and later returned to Toronto to research the eugenist doctor and over several more years wrote the book "Nazis in Canada" about that doctor's life and how she was able establish an elitist position as a head doctor in the Mercer Reformatory, with government approval, where she conducted invasive painful treatments on inmates without being scrutinized, and she did her eugenic research.

Demerson returned to British Columbia in 2018, where her adult children lived, at 97, and died in a Vancouver hospital on May 13, 2019, at the age of 98.

In 2020, Demerson was featured in the Canadian documentary film Ketchup and Soya Sauce on how partners in mixed relationships involving first-generation Chinese immigrants and their non-Chinese partner share and navigate their cultural differences.

She was also the subject of a 2022 documentary, Incorrigible - A film about Velma Demerson, based upon her life and experiences.

Published Works

(a satirical work based on her experiences in the reformatory)