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The intellectually disabled: a history of suffering in Quebec

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   Was talking to someone who worked with an intellectually disabled young man of 19 who recently succumbed to cancer without ever realizing he was sick.
   Apparently the fact that he seemed to have little understanding or awareness of his many health problems made the whole thing unbearably sad for those around him who cared for him.
   I thought it was time to try to start compiling a list of sad moments suffered by Quebec's beautiful thinkers (a new term I am coining for what we used to call "mentally retarded" and now call "intellectually disabled" and surely something else in the future).
1-Thirty-seven beautiful thinkers were among the 40 people who died when the bus they were travelling in scooted off the road into the water in Eastman Quebec on Aug. 4, 1978. The bus was on its way back to Asebestos after an outing organized by the Sheltered Workshop of the Handicapped of Asbestos. Driver Denis Martel, 32, survived, and said that it happened because his brakes failed. He would be 67 now, assuming he's still among the living. The bus company said that they had checked the brakes earlier in the day and that they were fine.
2-Twenty young beautiful thinkers ("retarded children") died of measles at a special facility in Austin, near Magog in 1961. Lily Butters of the Cecil Butters Memorial Home, founded in 1946, said that they did their best to keep the disease from spreading but the kids would wander into areas they weren't supposed to.
3-The Roc d'Or Bar in Drummondville was busted for having a nightclub act in 1976 that employed beautiful thinkers. It's implied that the audience would laugh at the beautiful thinkers but hey I wasn't there. They were fined $800 in the mid-seventies.
If you're aware of others please submit them in the comments so I can fill out this list. 

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