Canada Created a Cold War Isolation Laboratory. It Ended in Scandal

During the first year of the Korean conflict, in 1950/51, senior military officials in Canada, Britain, and the United States became concerned about the development and use of so-called mind control techniques by communist forces. Authorities cited public denouncements of the conflict made by captured American soldiers as evidence that the Chinese had developed a method for brainwashing. With little or no evidence of physical coercion, Western authorities believed that communist forces had found a successful method for controlling the mind and inducing voluntary or genuine confessions. Long periods of isolation, followed by repetitive indoctrination to new beliefs, seemed to be key to mind control and confessional extraction. In response, all three countries committed to research in the hope that science might yield a solution for training soldiers to recognize, resist, and overcome brainwashing if captured.

Possible research subjects included not only military and government personnel but also civilians, with the aim of developing methods to protect Canadians from “enemy propaganda, sabotage, and the psychological threat of material warfare.” Authorities in the Defence Research Board, or DRB, the scientific branch of the Canadian armed services, also emphasized the value of psychological warfare for the reconstitution of government and military personnel of defeated enemy nations.

Although described as an area of only “very slight” interest to Canada, the forethought of funding psychological warfare research highlights the extent to which Cold War security anxieties permeated military research planning inside the Canadian defence department. Canada’s top military and defence officials believed that sensory isolation research could be useful for defending against mind control and was also valuable for understanding and counteracting the effects of monotonous military tasks, especially radar booth operation.

• How I Solved the Century-Old Mystery of a Miraculous Shipwreck Survivor
• When Canada’s Most Famous Brain Surgeon Almost Killed His Own Sister
• Chalk River: The Forgotten Nuclear Accidents

In 1949, the US Congress agreed to co-finance radar construction with the Royal Canadian Air Force—RCAF. Officials in Ottawa and Washington agreed on a construction plan for thirty-three radar stations, known as the Pinetree Line, located across the mid-north from Vancouver Island to Labrador.

In response to the escalating nuclear threat in the 1950s, strategic analysts in Ottawa and Washington also planned the construction of the Mid-Canada Line, or MCL, along the fifty-fifth parallel, paid for entirely by Canada. The number of northern radar stations increased for a third time by joint agreement in May 1955, when both countries agreed in principle to construct and operate a Distant Early Warning Line in the far north. Construction was only one issue, however. Effective operation of the North American radar network required advanced technology and capable operators.

Authorities in the defence department tied isolation research to multiple aspects of security in the nuclear age. They supported research not only in response to the fear of communist mind control but also to avoid having bored and exhausted radar operators miss a major attack, thus negating the entire air defence effort.

These concerns would eventually help fund Canada’s longest-running study of human isolation.

Canada had few research centres undertaking work in experimental psychology during the mid-1950s, but a growing body of qualified scientists expressed interest in the field. Curiosity about the human mind was one motivator, as was the increased government funding available for specific research projects undertaken at Canadian universities.

John Zubek, a psychologist at the University of Manitoba, began his research into sensory deprivation two years after the 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik. He created an isolation laboratory at the university and initiated a series of sensory deprivation experiments in 1959. For fifteen years, more than 500 volunteers were subjected to the isolation laboratory. Some participants experienced darkness and silence for up to two weeks, while others endured constant light and white noise in a translucent Plexiglas dome.

During the first year of tests, twenty-two people, ranging in age from nineteen to thirty-four, spent multiple days isolated in a darkened, soundproofed chamber approximately seven feet tall and nine feet in diameter. The test subjects included graduate students in the biological sciences and aircrew personnel from RCAF Station, Winnipeg.

Lying flat on their back and wearing noise-cancelling earmuffs, each person endured isolation until they decided to end the experiment. Six requested their release from isolation within the first three days. The other sixteen subjects experienced at least seven days in isolation, one remaining in the chamber for ten days. Research assistants passed food through a small locked device and occasionally tested the cognitive and perceptual abilities of each isolated individual, but subjects otherwise had no visual or aural contact and used rudimentary lavatories located under the floor.

Authorities in the DRB approved Zubek’s isolation research under the assumption that the experiment would not cause long-term negative health effects. In March 1960, the DRB’s Morley Whillans contacted Professor George Sisler, head of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Manitoba, while reviewing Zubek’s research grant for renewal. Whillans asked Sisler to provide information about the safety procedures for selecting student research subjects. Sisler replied, “I do not believe that a psychiatric interview would add anything of value to this.” Whillans accepted Sisler’s explanation, and the DRB subsequently renewed Zubek’s research grant.

Four months later, Zubek submitted a report that gave Whillans cause for concern. In a paper vetted for publication, Zubek described a nurse who had experienced trouble adjusting to regular professional duties after leaving the isolation chamber. The paper caused Whillans to question Zubek’s safety procedures and visit Winnipeg, where he personally inspected the isolation laboratory on campus.

“There is no check of each subject’s condition beyond one day after the completion of tests,” Whillans documented in his report. “Dr. Zubek is confident that the 7-day period of isolation (the maximum period now planned is 7 days for each test) will result in no undesirable after-effects beyond 24 hours following the test period. The only undesirable effect he had noted has been loss of recent recall, leading to annoyance and frustration.”

“We are pushing into unexplored territory. These are very drastic conditions.”

Convinced that Zubek had taken the necessary precautions to protect the safety and well-being of his research subjects, Whillans returned to Ottawa and filed his report approving the experimental procedures.

Despite Whillans’s report, senior military officials expressed concern for the safety of Zubek’s test subjects. On August 10, Lieutenant General S. F. Clark, chief of the general staff, wrote a letter seeking clarification about the experiment. Zubek had argued that monetary incentives were necessary for motivating service volunteers, but Clark hesitated to sign a submission to the governor general requesting authority to pay military personnel a special remuneration for volunteering as test subjects. In a follow-up memorandum, Major General Desmond Smith indicated that Surgeon General T. B. McLean thought Zubek’s experiment could “impose [a] severe physiological and psychological reaction on the participants” involved. McLean wanted all participating service personnel to receive medical monitoring.

As an added safeguard, Zubek recommended no flying by aircrew test subjects for two days after isolation. RCAF medical officers accepted the recommendations and examined volunteer participants before their return to regular service duties. Although Whillans had expressed concern for the safety of non-military research subjects, the civilians who participated did not receive the medical attention given to the RCAF volunteers.

The long duration represented a significant difference between Zubek’s research and any prior isolation experiment conducted by Canadian scientists. Subjects received $100 for spending a minimum of one week in the isolation chamber, with bonus payments if their confinement meant absenteeism from work.

“The purpose of the research project is to answer three main questions,” Zubek wrote in a 1961 research report prepared for the DRB. “First, what are the effects of various adverse environmental conditions (e.g., darkness and silence, constant light and noise), operating in restricted quarters, on intellectual and perceptual functioning? Second, what methods or procedures might be employed to counteract or minimize any impairment that may occur under the previously mentioned conditions? Third, what type of personality structure might be most conducive to adequate psychological functioning under various adverse environmental conditions?”

Despite the intensity of the experimental research, participation did not guarantee payment. Subjects who decided to leave Zubek’s isolation chamber within twenty-four hours received no pay. “We would like to have them stay in longer [than one week] but we are running risks,” Zubek said when interviewed about the experiments. “We are pushing into unexplored territory. These are very drastic conditions.” Despite this clear recognition of the dangers associated with prolonged isolation, the experiment continued.

Zubek’s concern for the safety of his test subjects derived from his own personal experience. Before he conducted research on willing participants, Zubek himself spent ten days isolated in the chamber. He lived in confinement, with minimal contact, for nearly one week longer than any previously recorded experimental period. His experience and the reactions of the people isolated for one week or more produced surprising results, because long periods of confinement allegedly produced no discernible impairment of individual cognitive abilities.

It is difficult to say whether Zubek consciously underplayed the human problems of his research, but he knowingly and deliberately reiterated the value of his research when speaking with the media. He understood isolation affected his test subjects, but firmly convinced in the value of sensory deprivation research, he conducted the experiment nonetheless.

Some of his volunteers recalled harmful experiences. The volunteer nurse who concerned Whillans was distraught after her first day back to work, because she experienced short-term memory loss and forgetfulness. Others vividly described the uneasy experience of isolation. Ernest Enns, a third-year arts student, described his six and a half days in isolation as “comfortably boring.” He exited the chamber feeling “very groggy” and recalled having suffered a headache for the first two days, followed by hallucination-like visualizations on the third, fifth, and sixth days.

Eleven participants reported visual and aural sensations ranging from amorphous flickering or pulsating lights, lines, and shadows to wind and water noises. Some recalled eerie whistling sounds while others endured the noise of a repetitive alarm clock or the constant howling of dogs. Throughout the various experiments, Zubek tested the effects of sensory deprivation by monitoring his subjects for behavioural, cognitive, and psychological responses.

“It was horrible, really uncomfortable,” psychology major Gordon Winocur told investigative journalist Cecil Rosner. “If you have any latent claustrophobia, it’s going to come out.”

Winocur was not alone. Others recalled experiencing physical and mental discomfort during the experiment, as evidenced by Zubek’s closely related research into physical stillness.

Zubek’s isolation chamber doubled as an experimental laboratory for subjecting volunteers to physical confinement. In a related study, the psychology professor immobilized people by securing the hands, arms, legs, and head of each test subject while they lay flat on their back with their eyes toward the ceiling. Zubek confined his subjects and restricted movement because he theorized a connection between immobility and mental degeneration. He suggested that the experiment could prove beneficial in the treatment of patients confined to iron lungs or in training astronauts for space travel.

Zubek conducted his research as the competition in space research escalated between the superpowers. The Canadian public watched with anticipation and alarm in April 1961 when Yuri Gagarin became the first human to enter space and orbit Earth. As the Soviets appeared to gain an edge on their American rivals, reassurances from scientists like Zubek reiterated Canada’s commitment to the West.

Zubek used the human challenges of space travel to justify subjecting his volunteers to much longer periods of isolation and confinement. Extended discomfort, he thought, produced the physiological and psychological conditions necessary to understand the limits of the human body.

“Our work of the past month has indicated that merely restricting the degree of bodily movements for a week, with no interference of vision or hearing, can produce intellectual and perceptual impairments as severe as those occurring in the isolation chamber,” Zubek wrote in an October 1962 letter requesting additional research funds from the DRB. “These preliminary results . . . [will] have important Defence [sic] applications since there are numerous military situations in which the human operator is required to work in cramped quarters involving restrictions of body movements, e.g., tanks, aircraft, space capsules, etc.”

Of a reported forty test subjects, only a small number endured the experiment for an extended period. Most experienced short-term cognitive deficiencies, regardless of the time spent confined. Several subjects thought that their heads and limbs had swollen or shrunk to abnormal sizes, while others recalled hallucinatory experiences and the feeling of floating above the test apparatus.

Although Zubek admitted physical confinement caused his subjects cognitive harm, he put a positive spin on the experiment. “We’ve never thought about the importance of movement before,” he told one reporter. “It is a subject that has never been thoroughly investigated. A patient could well be deteriorating mentally, and we wouldn’t know about it. In long cases of immobilization it is possible there would be no recovery.”

Zubek also suggested women reacted differently than men. Wilma Sansom, one of four research assistants, allegedly reported no visualizations or ill effects during a confinement of six hours and thirty minutes. Sansom’s experience led Zubek to speculate that women might be physiologically capable of longer space flight.

“There have been statements that we are involved in brainwashing techniques, and that is not the case at all.”

Zubek continued his research until the early 1970s, when international scrutiny of interrogation and torture cast a negative spotlight on his work. In 1969, he edited a comprehensive collection titled Sensory Deprivation: Fifteen Years of Research. Along with a lengthy list of related publications in top scientific journals, the book cemented Zubek’s reputation as a leading authority in the field.

Two years later, in August 1971, in a seemingly unrelated event, police arrested 342 people in Northern Ireland after the British government passed legislation allowing for internment without trial. Twelve of the detainees endured in-depth interrogation, leading to accusations of torture and two official inquiries. In the report of the second inquiry, a minority opinion about the moral justification of interrogation referenced experimental work published in Canada.

The reference ignited a media storm among Canadian journalists, with Zubek’s isolation research in the crosshairs. “There have been statements that we are involved in brainwashing techniques, and that is not the case at all,” Zubek told the press when approached for his opinion. He thought the media had misrepresented his research and responded by reiterating the positive outcomes of experimental science involving isolation and confinement.

To underscore the potential value of his research, Zubek cited military and civilian problems associated with confined work. In addition to northern radar stations, he mentioned bomb shelters, aircraft, submarines, spacecraft, and prisons—each human situation a potential beneficiary of isolation and confinement research. Unconvinced by this explanation, student activists denounced military research at the University of Manitoba. More than 100 students attended a meeting in November 1972 to discuss the university’s connection with the interrogation techniques used in Northern Ireland.

Zubek refused an invitation to attend, avoiding direct confrontation. He maintained his position when communicating with the media, defending his research, and refuting any suggestion directly linking his experiments with techniques developed for interrogation and torture.

As for the sinister uses of his research, Zubek never explicitly denied the possible connection between sensory isolation and interrogation. He told reporters that his focus was basic research but conceded that scientists have little or no control over the wrongful uses of their work. When asked about the application of his research for developing techniques related to mind control or brainwashing, Zubek responded, “I can say that in certain circumstances, for example during the war, that it would be extremely important to get certain types of information down there. There’s a time and place. What bothers me about the cases in Northern Ireland is that these are non-convicted individuals on whom these techniques have been employed.” This convoluted explanation backfired, adding to the growing tide of skepticism that fuelled the controversy about Zubek’s experimental work.

Facing constant criticism and mounting pressure to explain his research, Zubek’s health began to diminish. His research funding from the DRB ended in March 1974. Although under the age of fifty and still near the height of his career, the following month, amid the continuing controversy over his research, Zubek resigned from the board of the Canadian Psychological Association. He disappeared unexpectedly on August 17. His body appeared three days later, found floating in Winnipeg’s Red River. Initially, the exact cause of death was unclear. Some of Zubek’s colleagues suggested disorientation had led to his accidental death, while others thought he had committed suicide. The coroner’s report confirmed the latter.

The circumstances of Zubek’s death shaped the opinion of his colleague and friend Alexander Pressey, who also worked in the department of psychology at the University of Manitoba during the 1960s. “He was born in 1925 and we tend to forget that great public adoration was heaped upon those who opened up the frontiers of the Arctic, the Antarctic, and the open skies,” Pressey wrote upon reflection in May 2012. “Names like Amundsen, Lindberg and Earhart were venerated for their selfless commitment to gain knowledge. . . . So it is not surprising that he chose a high profile project such as sensory isolation to define his scientific career.”

Zubek’s rise to prominence in his field made his fall more dramatic. He was a top scientist who lost research funding and gained an association with torture because of events on the other side of the Atlantic over which he had no control. For Pressey, Zubek’s story demonstrated how involvement in experimental research could result in tragic and unintended consequences for a scientist.

Although widely discussed during the 1960s, brainwashing, Pressey claimed, was not the goal of Zubek’s isolation research. He remained adamant that caution and pragmatism guided the work of his former colleague. Where some saw space research as an excuse or cover-up for a hidden agenda, Pressey remained convinced about the honesty and integrity of his colleague, claiming Zubek was the victim of “loutish radicals and juvenile journalists” who wrongly connected his research with torture techniques such as brainwashing.

The media scrutiny Pressey referenced continued well after Zubek’s death. In March 1982, the CBC’s Fifth Estate televised a report called “The Hooded Men” that investigated the accounts of torture in Ireland. Documented by journalists Brian McKenna and Eric Malling, the investigation involved interviews with members of the Irish Republican Army who claimed to have had experienced internment and torture at the hands of the British Army.

“Use of isolation techniques, a torture more effective than old-fashioned beatings, was refined by a Canadian psychiatrist, John Zubek, at the University of Manitoba,” wrote journalist Jim Bawden in a column applauding McKenna and Malling for their reporting. “Zubek was not using his experiments for torture but to explore the mind. But they were misused by a wide variety of agencies from British forces in Northern Ireland to military officers in Argentina and Nicaragua.”

Recorded footage of Zubek added to the controversy. In a CBC interview filmed before his death, he explained that the brainwashing of prisoners by communist forces in Korea provided the original impetus for sensory deprivation research. He maintained that mind control was not the goal of his work. But the documentary implied the purpose of his research was obvious.

For Gordon Winocur, the former psychology student who described his claustrophobic experience in isolation as horrible and uncomfortable, Zubek’s motives remain suspect. In fact, Winocur doubted the scientific basis of the research while studying at the University of Manitoba. “As a young, impressionable graduate student, I didn’t question it in the early stages,” he recalled during an interview. “We were encouraged to think this was groundbreaking research. As I became more sophisticated and talked to more people, I realized there was little of theoretical interest attached to it.”

Now a senior scientist at the Rotman Research Institute and professor of psychology at both Trent University and the University of Toronto, Winocur thinks his unfortunate experience as a student subject raises stark questions about the intent and purpose of Zubek’s research. “The major question was how well people reacted to this kind of treatment and what kinds of changes there were in perceptual and cognitive functions, things that might be useful in developing interrogation techniques,” said Winocur. “I began to realize there was a different agenda.”

Whether Zubek’s research contributed to a hidden agenda involving torture remains unclear, but his experiments resulted in short- and long-term health effects for Winocour and other documented subjects.

Adapted and excerpted, with permission, from “Overcoming Monotony: Sensory Deprivation and Psychological Research in the Cold War” by Matthew S. Wiseman in Cold War Workers: Labour, Family, and Community in a Nuclear State, edited by Isabel Campbell, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025.