Canada’s Residential Schools:

The History, Part 21939 to 2000
The Final Report of theTruth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada
Volume 1

Canada’s Residential Schools
Volume 1 • Part 2

Canada’s Residential Schools:

The History, Part 21939 to 2000
The Final Report of theTruth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada
Volume 1

Published for the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission
by

McGill-Queen’s University Press
Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago

This report is in the public domain.
Anyone may, without charge or request for permission, reproduce all or part of this report.
2015
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
Website: www.trc.ca
ISBN 978-0-7735-4651-6 (v. 1, pt. 2 : bound).

ISBN 978-0-7735-4652-3 (v. 1, pt. 2 : paperback).

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper
An index to this volume of the final report is available online. Please visit http://nctr.ca/trc_reports.php
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada[Canada’s residential schools]
Canada’s residential schools : the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
(McGill–Queen’s Native and northern series ; 80–86)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents: v. 1. The history. Part 1, origins to 1939 — The history. Part 2, 1939 to 2000 — v. 2. The Inuit andnorthern experience — v. 3. The Métis experience — v. 4. The missing children and unmarked burials
report — v. 5. The legacy — v. 6. Reconciliation
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1. Native peoples—Canada—Residential schools. 2. Native peoples—Education—Canada.
3. Native peoples—Canada—Government relations. 4. Native peoples—Canada—Social conditions.
5. Native peoples—Canada—History. I. Title. II. Series: McGill–Queen’s Native and northern series ; 80–86
E96.5.T78 2016

971.004’97

C2015-905971-2
C2015-905972-0

Contents

Introduction..................................................................................................

3

Section 3: The Canadian residential school system, 1940 to 2000.............

7

32. Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000..............................

9

33. The educational record: 1940–2000.......................................................

107

34. The schools as child-welfare institutions: 1940–2000...........................

147

35. Building conditions: 1940–1969.............................................................

175

36. Health: 1940–2000..................................................................................

189

37. Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000...............................................................

237

38. Fire hazard: 1940–2000...........................................................................

301

39. Runaways and truants: 1940–2000.........................................................

335

40. Discipline: 1940–2000............................................................................

367

41. Abuse: 1940–2000...................................................................................

399

42. Student victimization of students: 1940–2000.......................................

453

43. Sports and the arts: 1940–2000..............................................................

461

44. The staff experience: 1940–2000............................................................

493

45. Getting to the Settlement Agreement ...................................................

551

Notes.............................................................................................................

581

Bibliography.................................................................................................

789

Canada’s Residential Schools
Volume 1 • Part 2

Introduction

By the 1930s, the federal government had come to the internal conclusion thatthe residential school system was failing to meet its goals. In 1936, R. A. Hoey,
a former Manitoba minister of education, was appointed as Indian Affairs’
superintendent of welfare and training. On coming into this position, he prepared anassessment of the residential schools. He noted that in 1935–36, spending on residential schools was $1,511,153.76. This amounted to 77.8% of the entire Indian Affairs education budget of $1,943,645. Enrolment was increasing at a rate of 250 pupils a year. To
provide these students with residential school schooling would require an additional
expenditure of $40,000 a year—a figure that did not include the cost of building new
schools or paying interest on the capital outlay. However, day school education for an
additional 250 students would cost only $7,000 a year. Not surprisingly, he opposed
any further expansion of the residential school system, observing, “To continue tobuild educational institutions, particularly residential schools, while the money at our
disposal is insufficient to keep the schools already erected in a proper state of repair,is, to me, very unsound and a practice difficult to justify.”
At the same time, Hoey made it clear that the department had no clear educational goals.
If it is our intention to make the Indian a white man and have him preparedto take his place in an industrial social order, the present curriculum may beconsidered fairly satisfactory. If, on the other hand, it is our intention to permit
our school graduates to return to the reserves to engage in agriculture, fishing,trapping, etc. there should be established a vital and direct relationship between
the instruction given and these activities.

He then went on to propose something similar to the Improved Federal Day Schoolsthat Frank Pedley had advocated when he was deputy minister of Indian Affairs thirty
years earlier. Hoey wanted to see residential schools replaced with on-reserve day
schools that provided both academic and vocational training. Such schools would
serve as community centres and provide education and training to adults as well as4 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

children. Hoey, who would become the director of the Indian Affairs branch in 1945,
pursued this policy, with limited success, for the next dozen years.1
Hoey was opposed by the three main religious bodies involved in the running of
the residential schools: the United Church, the Anglican Church, and the Oblatesof Mary Immaculate. While they were prepared to acknowledge that the residential
school system had failed to deliver the anticipated results, they believed the solution
to the problems lay in the intensification of the system. They also remained committed to the assimilation of Aboriginal people and the destruction of the reserves. A 1936
conference of United Church Indian Workers concluded that the goal of Indian education was “the abolition of the Reserves, with their restrictions, and the mingling of
our Indian people in fulness [sic] of personality and privilege among other Canadiancitizens.” The workers acknowledged that the present school system had failed tomeet this goal, stating that “possibly 5 per cent. of the pupils in our schools can be so
trained and educated that they will leave the schools and integrate themselves in thecommon life of the Canadian people.” The rest of the students would return to theirreserves. In order to ensure that the children reached the ideal of “Christian citizenship,” the church argued that “both the day school and the residential school should
be continued.”2
The secretary of the Indian and Eskimo Residential School Commission of the
Anglican Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada, T. B. R. Westgate,
argued in 1938 that First Nations people “must inevitably be assimilated with therest of the population, and share equal rights with all others as Canadian citizens.”
Westgate added, “It is the solemn duty of the Whiteman with his advanced knowledge,
to interpret to those less privileged than himself, the Indians included, the higher values of this present world, and to assist them in the difficult process of adjustment.”
When it came to determining which sort of school was to be preferred, Westgate
pointed out that for the 1936–37 fiscal year, Indian Affairs reported that there were
9,040 students in residential schools and 9,027 in day schools. The attendance rate in
the residential schools was 90.44%, but only 62.52% in day schools. Furthermore, 212
residential school students had graduated from Grade Eight, compared with 146 day
school students. For Grade Nine, the numbers were 87 and 15. On the basis of this, herecommended a policy of having “all Day School pupils transferred to the Residential
Schools either when they have attained the age of 10 years, or when they have attained
Grade V standing.” He also wanted to see the age of discharge from the residential
schools raised from sixteen to eighteen. “For those Indians in the remoter parts,
almost all of whom are nomads, only one kind of School will prove beneficial andthat is the Residential.”3 The Anglicans, in other words, wanted all students to attend
residential schools and to attend for a longer period of time.
At its 1939 meeting, the Oblate Fathers’ Committee on Indian Missions recognized that “the superiority of residential schools over the day schools is stronglyIntroduction • 5controversial.” It was thought that most government officials opposed residential
schools because they were too expensive and separated children and parents. It wasfeared that even if the government did not “totally suppress the existing residential
schools,” it would “prevent the construction of new schools.” As a result, the Oblatespassed a motion stating that residential schools were the best form of schooling to“rebuild the health of the Indian which is too often compromised by tuberculosis andother sicknesses; to instruct the Indian to better morals, as the promiscuity in the tents
and a majority of Indian houses is a little favourable environment.”
The Oblates also noted that day school attendance was irregular and, because of
the inertia of the parents, the home environment hindered the intellectual and civic
development of the children.4
In 1940, the government and churches were deadlocked. If only for economic reasons, the government wished to shift its resources away from residential schooling to
day schools. The churches were unwilling to give up the total control over the children that the residential schools had provided them. It would take decades to resolvethat impasse. In the meantime, the residential schools would remain in operation.
Another generation of First Nations students would pass through their doors, receiving the same substandard education that had been the hallmark of the first era ofresidential schooling, living in deteriorating buildings, and being underfed and overworked, harshly disciplined, emotionally neglected, and, far too often, sexually andphysically abused. This story is the subject of the following chapters.

3
The Canadian residential
school system, 1940 to 2000

CHAPTER 32

Operating and dismantling
the system: 1940–2000

By the 1940s, Indian Affairs officials were committed to the closure of the residential school system. In May 1944, R. A. Hoey, the superintendent of Welfare
and Training for Indian Affairs, told the House of Commons Special Committee
on Postwar Reconstruction and Re-Establishment of Indian Population, “I think weare outgrowing Indian residential schools.” He noted that he was not expressing government policy, but, he said, “I would like to see residential schools slowly and gradually closed as the Indians outgrow their need for them. I think you will always needa few for orphans and children from disrupted homes.”1 Later that year, he advised
Indian Affairs Branch Director Harold McGill that
we are rapidly approaching a time when a definite decision will have to bereached with respect to residential schools throughout the Dominion. If they are
not serving the purpose for which they were established, then in my judgment
they should be either closed or remodelled or the program now inforce [sic]modified to meet the more urgent needs of the Indian population.2

According to the Indian Affairs annual report for 1944–45, there were 8,865 residential students and seventy-six schools.3 Twenty-five years later, in the spring of 1969,
the federal government took over the full administration of the remaining fifty-six residential schools in southern Canada. At that time, there were 8,000 students living inresidences. (These figures do not include the hostels or the students living in themthat were operated by Northern Affairs in the Northwest Territories. The history of thatsystem is described in a separate volume of this report.)4 But, although residential
schooling had survived, it was no longer a dominant part of the Indian Affairs education program. In 1944–45, the 8,865 students in residential school accounted for 53.9%of the 16,438 First Nations students enrolled in school in Canada. The other 7,573 students were in Indian Affairs day schools.5
Indian Affairs stopped reporting residential school enrolment in its annual reports
after 1965. Graph 32.1 shows the reported residential school enrolment from 1940 to
1965. It illustrates that enrolment remained high throughout this period.

10 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Graph 32.1
Residential school enrolment, 1940–42 to 1964–65.
14,00012,00010,000
8,000
6,000
4,000
2,000
0

1940-41

1943-44

1946-47

1949-50

1952-53

1955–56

1958–59

1961-62

1964–65

Source: Indian Affairs and Northern Affairs annual reports.

According to the 1968–69 Indian Affairs annual report, there were 8,206 students
living in residences. These residential school students accounted for only 13% of the62,834 First Nations students enrolled in school in Canada. The majority of them—
33,351—were attending public or private schools operated under provincial or territorial authority.6 Since the 1950s, Indian Affairs had worked diligently to divest itselfof the direct provision of schooling to Aboriginal children. Its preference was to seethem educated in provincial or territorial schools. This was a central element of what
it termed its “integration policy.”
In this process, residential schools were slated for eventual closure. In 1968, foradministrative purposes, the government began reclassifying residential schools
as residences and schools, each with its own administrative structure. The schools
became absorbed into the government’s day school system. In 1969, when the government took over full control of the residences from the churches, Indian Affairs official R. F. Davey wrote that residential enrolment “has at last started to decline.” Heestimated that over the next five years, it would be possible to close twenty-five more
residences. This would not only end the unnecessary separation of children from parents, which Davey described as harmful to both, but also save the federal government$5 million a year.7
The major reason why residential school enrolment remained static until thelate 1960s is that Indian Affairs had not constructed enough classrooms to allow allFirst Nations parents to send their children to school. It was not until the 1966–67
school year that 95% of all school-aged First Nations children were attending school.8
Without enough classrooms, closing residential schools would only exacerbate theIndian Affairs classroom shortage. Residential schooling actually underwent a brief
expansion in the North as the federal government established new residences andOperating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 11

residential schools in its efforts to provide schooling to Aboriginal children in the
territories and northern Québec. The lifespan of the residential schools was also
extended by the continued support they received from the churches, particularly the
Roman Catholic Church, which opposed the federal government’s school closure andintegration policy.
Residential schooling survived largely intact to the end of the 1960s, but, in theminds of government bureaucrats, it was slated for closure. Although, on a number ofoccasions, the federal government significantly increased funding to the system, thereality is that it was retained at a consistently inadequate level.
During this period, residential schools were a neglected part of Indian Affairs education policy. When the government did take over full responsibility for the schools
in 1969, it did not do so as the result of a deliberate policy decision, but in response
to a federal labour board ruling that forced it to live up to the consequences of its
own actions.
Aboriginal children were the victims of this policy of drift, neglect, and government–church conflict. During a period of unprecedented economic growth and prosperity in the country, the children who attended residential schools continued to bepoorly housed, poorly fed, poorly clothed, and poorly educated. Separated from theirparents, they were emotionally neglected, subject to harsh discipline, and, due topoor staff recruitment and supervision, at risk of sexual abuse.
In the years following the government takeover of 1969, the number of residencesin southern Canada did, as R. F. Davey had predicted, decline rapidly. By 1980, only
sixteen residences were still in operation. (As discussed in the volume on schools in
the North, the northern residences had been transferred to territorial control in thelate 1960s.)
Graph 32.2 shows the number of residential schools and residences in operationfrom 1940 to 2000. It includes both of the residences that were operated in northern
Canada. The decline in numbers starts in the mid-1960s, and intensifies after the 1969
federal government takeover of the schools in the South and the transfer of northernschools to territorial governments in the same period.
Most of the residences that continued to operate into the 1990s owed their continued existence to a new political factor: Aboriginal assertion of the right to control
the education of Aboriginal children. In 1969, Indian Affairs Minister Jean Chrétien
released the Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy (more commonly referred to as the “White Paper”), a federal policy paper that sought to hasten the assimilation of First Nations people. The White Paper sparked a powerfuland effective proclamation of Aboriginal rights by Aboriginal political organizations.
The government publicly abandoned the policy paper and eventually accepted theprinciple of “Indian Control of Indian Education.” By that time, First Nations educational organizations had already taken control of at least one residential school12 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Graph 32.2
Number of residential schools and residences, 1940–1998.
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

1940 1943 1946 1949 1952 1955 1958 1961 1964 1967 1970 1973 1976 1979 1982 1985 1988 1991 1994 1997
Source: Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Indian Residential Schools of the Indian Residential Schools
Settlement Agreement, 2011.

in Alberta. Other Aboriginal organizations would follow suit elsewhere, particularly
Saskatchewan. The decision by those organizations to maintain residential schooling
was in large measure a rejection of the proposed alternative: assimilation into provincial education systems that Aboriginal people viewed as being unreceptive, inappropriate, and racist.
This chapter is intended as a framework for the rest of this section of the report.
After outlining the development of general Indian Affairs policy in this period, it looks
at Indian Affairs education policy. Special attention is given to the testimony provided
to the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and House of Commons hearings into
the Indian Act in the late 1940s. The testimony of First Nations witnesses at these hearings provides considerable insight into the range of Aboriginal views on residential
schooling and education in general.
The chapter then describes the two examples of expansion of the system in
Canadian provinces during this period (in mid-northern Québec and northwestern
Ontario). This is followed by a description of the major government policy changes ofthe period. These include the introduction of funding policies intended to strengthen
government control over the schools and the shifting of students from Indian Affairs
schools to schools that came under provincial authority. Considerable attention ispaid to the conflict that arose between the churches and the federal government.
These sections make it clear that residential schooling during this period was not asingle, well-functioning, system, but, rather, a set of systems whose relations weremarked by suspicion, mistrust, defiance, and, at times, wilful deception.

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 13

The final sections of the chapter describe the ultimate—and somewhat accidental—government takeover of the system in 1969 and the subsequent rise and eventual
demise of a number of residences that operated under Aboriginal control.

Canadian government policy: From the Special
Joint Committee to the White Paper
There was never a clearer statement of Canada’s Indian Affairs policy than Duncan
Campbell Scott’s testimony in support of amendments to the Indian Act in 1920.
Those amendments would give the government the right to enfranchise individuals(to strip them of their status under the Indian Act) without their consent and to compel First Nations children to attend residential schools. Scott, who was the deputy
minister of Indian Affairs, justified the adoption of these compulsory powers by saying, “Our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has notbeen absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian question, and no Indian
Department, that is the whole object of this Bill.”9The goal was assimilation: the end of special status for First Nations people, theeffective dissolution of the reserves, and the termination of the Treaties (if there were
no Indians, there could be no Treaty responsibilities). These goals were in keepingwith historic Indian Affairs policy. This policy had been developed and implemented
with no consultation with Aboriginal people. As were residential schools themselves,
this policy was, in fact, in direct contradiction to the Royal Proclamation of 1763 andthe commitments made during the negotiation of the Treaties.
In a lesser known remark from the same testimony, Scott commented on the factthat in performing his duties as deputy minister, he had “never had the opportunity ofgetting the opinion of the Indians.” Neither had he been able to get his minister to “sitdown and grasp the complicated nature of the Indian business.”10
Both statements represent ongoing patterns in Indian Affairs policy. During the1920s and 1930s, the government would adopt ever more restrictive measures in its
attempt to compel assimilation; again, without any consultation with Aboriginal people. At the same time, politicians, including the minister, remained largely ignorantof the day-to-day operation of Indian Affairs. For example, in 1944, J. R. MacNicol,
who had been a Conservative member of Parliament since 1930, told a parliamentary committee:
I have always taken a very vigourous [sic] stand in connection with Indian affairs
whenever opportunity presented itself. The opportunity has not presented itself
on many occasions because the estimates are brought down on the last daysof the session, almost the last hours of the session, and we vote them through14 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

without investigation or any report aside from what the minister makes when hebrings in his estimates.11

During the period from 1940 to 1973, by which time the federal government had
dramatically reduced the number of residential schools in Canada and was committed to closing the rest, the government’s policy goals remained largely unchanged.
Aboriginal policy was subject to two investigations by joint committees of Parliament:
one major academic survey, and a consultative process led by a cabinet minister. The
Indian Act underwent a major revision (1951) that stripped out many of its compulsory measures while retaining the commitment to assimilation. In 1969, the federal
government issued a policy document—the White Paper—that ignored virtually
everything First Nations people had been telling the government about Treaty andAboriginal rights. The goals of the White Paper amounted to a continuation and an
acceleration of the policies enunciated by Duncan Campbell Scott in 1920.
Since the 1930s, Indian Affairs had been almost unsupervised and underfunded.
Minister of Mines and Natural Resources T. A. Crerar, who had been responsible for
Indian Affairs since 1935, left the day-to-day operation of Indian Affairs to Dr. Harold
McGill, who had succeeded Duncan Campbell Scott as deputy minister of IndianAffairs in 1932 and served as the Indian Affairs branch director from 1936 onwards.12
By the mid-1940s, senior Indian Affairs officials were openly alarmed about thedegree to which the branch lacked direction and resources. For example, when LaborProgressive Party (Communist) Member of Parliament Dorise Nielsen told IndianAffairs officials appearing before a 1944 Joint Committee of the Senate and the Houseof Commons that the branch needed “a complete change of policy,” they agreed. The
superintendent of Welfare and Training, R. A. Hoey, told the committee:
I think this is the proper time to review the whole Indian problem. Incidentally,
I think the policy in respect to Indian affairs in this country was influenced
to some extent by the thought that the red man was disappearing. A very
outstanding member of the Anglican church said to me the first year I entered
the department [1936], “The better Indians will become gradually assimilated
and others are dying off. There is not going to be any [Indian] problem afew decades from now.” What are the actual facts? The Indian population isincreasing more rapidly than any other racial group.13

Later that same day, long-time Indian Affairs secretary T. R. L. MacInnes gave thecommittee a hint of the types of changes he would like to see. He said that althoughreserves might still be justifiable as a protective measure for First Nations people inwestern Canada, in eastern Canada, “there does not seem to be any justification forour staying in the Indian reserve business.” It was time, he said, that the First Nations
there “should be divorced from the reserve system entirely and put on their own. It istheir only salvation.”14

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 15

In the face of this testimony, Liberal Member of Parliament George Ross suggested
that a special committee of Parliament be struck to conduct an inquiry into Aboriginalissues in Canada.15 In August of 1944, T. A. Crerar promised to strike such a committee
after the end of the war.16 Before he could do so, in 1945, Crerar was appointed to the
Senate and McGill retired from his position as branch director.17 The new minister
was J. Allison Glen, who intended to be more involved in the operation of the IndianAffairs branch. At the same time, R. A. Hoey took over as Indian Affairs director.18 One
of Glen’s first departures from past practice was to inform staff that Indian Affairs
would no longer oppose Aboriginal political organizations.19
This was an important change. Into the 1930s, the federal government policy had
been to frustrate Aboriginal political organizations and subject them to police surveillance. For example, Indian Affairs had attempted to strip F. O. Loft, the leader ofthe League of Indians, of his Indian status, and considered prosecuting him under theprovision of the Indian Act prohibiting the raising of funds to pursue claims against
the government.20 In 1934, when John Tootoosis, a leader of the League of Indiansof Western Canada, travelled to the Driftpile Reserve in Alberta, he was picked up by
the Mounted Police in Edmonton and told that if he persisted in his journey, he ran
the risk of being arrested for trespass. On another occasion, when Tootoosis asked an
Indian Affairs official for twelve copies of the Indian Act, he was presented with twocopies and an explanation that it was not considered necessary to give it “wide distribution.” He was told that if people wanted to know more about the Act, they could ask
their Indian agent.21
To some degree, Glen was simply recognizing reality. In the later years of the war,
national Aboriginal organizations were beginning to reassert themselves. In 1943,
First Nation leaders from British Columbia met with First Nation leaders from Ontario
and Québec, and drafted a petition to government that drew on such documents as
the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and various Treaties to argue for the recognition of
their rights as Aboriginal people.22 The following year, two national organizations,the Indian Nation of North America and the North American Indian Brotherhood,
had emerged.23
After receiving continued pressure from both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal organizations for a review of Aboriginal issues, in December 1945, Glen announced that areview of the Indian Act would be established.24 In May 1946, the federal government
struck the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and House of Commons Appointed
to Examine and Consider The Indian Act. Among the issues that it was specificallycharged with examining was the operation of day and residential schools.25 One of thefirst witnesses to appear before the committee was R. A. Hoey. He stressed the needfor a dramatic increase in funding to Indian Affairs.
To undertake a worthwhile Indian betterment program based on existing needsof the population and other needs that are likely to arise during the period16 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

immediately ahead of us, it would, in my judgment, require a parliamentary
appropriation to begin with of approximately $14,000,000 or a sum a little morethan double the amount which appears in the 1946–47 estimates. To continue
this program it would, I am also convinced, require additional annual amounts
for the next fifteen years at least, or until a peak figure of $25,000,000 is reached.
If such a program were based on a sound policy and closely linked up withefficient administration, there should be a gradual decline in expenditures fromthe sixteenth year onward. A great deal would depend, of course, on the soundpractical value of our educational program and the extent to which we can arrest
the ravages caused by tuberculosis and other communicable diseases.26

The goal of such a program of betterment remained assimilation. According toHoey, “The education and ultimate assimilation of the Indian population will be, in
my judgment, a slow and painful process and one that will likely demand the exercise
of devotion, self-sacrifice and patience on the part of the men and women engaged inthis challenging and constructive task.”27
In his presentation to the committee, Indian Affairs secretary T. R. L. MacInnes
argued that the Treaty provisions were largely archaic and imposed few legal obligations on the government.28
These views were challenged by Aboriginal leaders, who stressed the need for
improvements in employment, housing, health, and education, and also the needto respect Aboriginal rights. Andrew Paull, representing the North American Indian
Brotherhood, presented a detailed critique of both the joint committee and government policy in June 1946. He pointed to the lack of Aboriginal people on the jointcommittee, which he called “a committee investigating yourselves.”29 Among the government failings Paull identified were:• the violation of Treaty rights• the fact that First Nations people had no input in defining who were and were
not band members• the fact that individuals could be enfranchised without their consent• the negative impact of schools run by religious denominations• the lack of First Nations people in Parliament• the lack of First Nations people working for Indian Affairs• the lack of band council control over local affairs30
From 1946 to 1948, the Special Joint Committee held 128 meetings, heard from 122
witnesses, and received 411 written briefs.31 It issued two interim reports and a final
report.32 The committee spent a great deal of time examining issues relating to education. (The resulting debate will be discussed in greater detail later in this chapter.) In
its final report, the committee concluded that the existing Indian Act was anachronistic, contradictory, and full of anomalies. It recommended that, “with few exceptions,
all sections of the Act be either repealed or amended.” The new Act should containOperating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 17

only provisions intended “to make possible the gradual transition of Indians fromwardship to citizenship and to help them advance themselves.”
Key recommendations can be summarized as follows:• granting the vote to First Nations men and women• granting women the right to vote in band elections• granting bands increased powers of self-government and increased financial
support, and, where “sufficiently advanced,” allowing reserves to become incorporated as municipalities• eliminating special offences and penalties that applied only to First Nations
people• clarifying the rules dealing with enfranchisement• educating First Nations children with non-Aboriginal children to better preparethem for assimilation• transferring responsibility for a variety of services for First Nations people fromthe federal government to the provincial governments• establishing a commission to review, assess, and settle outstanding Treaty
claims33
The methods were to be less coercive in nature, but the goal remained the same:
assimilation.
The same month that the committee issued its report, Allison Glen retired from
Cabinet. That summer, R. A. Hoey resigned his position with Indian Affairs to become
Canadian director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (unicef).34 Before they left,they had produced a draft of a new Indian Act. It did not represent a major improvement over the previous Act. The 1948 draft maintained the government’s right toenfranchise individuals without their consent, eliminated the Treaty rights and rights
to band funds of a woman with Indian Act status who married a person without status,and maintained ministerial control over the administration of the estates of individuals with status under the Indian Act. The draft also retained the restrictions on thesale of agricultural produce and resources, the prohibition on dances and ceremonies, and the prohibition on raising money to pursue claims against the government(essentially, a prohibition against pursuing land claims).35
The education provisions in the draft Act authorized the minister to enter into
agreements with provincial and territorial governments and school boards, as wellas with religious bodies and charities, to arrange for the education of children withstatus under the Indian Act. It allowed the minister to appoint an independent official
to resolve disputes as to which school a child should attend. Significantly, it also provided bands with the opportunity to determine if a reserve’s day school would operate as a denominational school or a non-denominational school.36 These provisions

18 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

were opposed by Roman Catholic officials and contributed to the draft bill’s not being
introduced to Parliament in 1948.37
In the following years, Indian Affairs ministers came and went with rapidity.
James A. MacKinnon had the position from 1948 to 1949; Colin Gibson, from 1949
to 1950; and Walter Harris, from 1950 to 1954. With Harris’s appointment, the IndianAffairs branch was transferred from Mines and Resources to the new Citizenship andImmigration department. The transfer suggested that the government viewed First
Nations peoples as being analogous to recent immigrants.38
Harris submitted a new draft Indian Act to Parliament in June 1950. Although anumber of offensive provisions, such as the ban on Aboriginal ceremonies, had been
dropped, it still allowed the minister a range of unilateral powers, including the ability
to enfranchise individuals against their will, and still included the ban on the raisingof funds to pursue claims against the government. The bill was withdrawn in the faceof criticism from First Nations leaders, politicians, and civil libertarians.39
It was only with the adoption of the 1951 Indian Act that many of the Act’s mostrestrictive and punitive elements were eliminated. Gone were the bans on ceremonies
and on the raising of money to pursue claims. The minister’s discretionary powers
had been reduced, as was the power of Indian agents to act as justices of the peace.
Compulsory enfranchisement remained, and the government declined to establish a claims commission. The Act also contained the provisions that authorized theminister to enter into agreements with school boards and provincial governments.
Although women were given the right to vote in band elections, the right to vote ingeneral elections continued to be denied to First Nations people who did not surrender the benefits associated with Indian status.40 The Act also held that all provincial“laws of general application” applied to Indians.41
Assimilation (or, as it was increasingly termed, “integration”) remained the objective of government policy. As Walter Harris explained to a parliamentary committee,
the intent was to make the First Nations person “equal in every respect. We want toassist him economically. We protect him for that purpose.… We do therefore want toinclude the equality of the White Man. We are not going to give him something thewhite man does not have.”42This statement is a clear indication of the view that Aboriginal people were not tobe allowed to retain any special Treaty or Aboriginal rights arising from their original
presence and ownership of the land and resources.
At the end of a five-year process, the Act had been made less restrictive. However,those elements of the First Nations presentations that suggested Aboriginal people
held a distinct political and cultural status—such as the recognition of Aboriginalrights, the resolution of Treaty violations, and the settlement of land claims—had
been ignored.43

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 19

Throughout the 1950s, the term integration came to replace assimilation in IndianAffairs policy, although it should be noted that the terms were also used interchangeably.44 It appears that few Canadians were aware of the distinction. In 1958, theCanadian Bar Association used the term assimilation to describe the federal government’s Aboriginal policy goals, as did the members of the Ontario government delegation who appeared before the Special Joint Committee of Parliament in 1960.45
It is clear that in the minds of the people charged with administering Indian Affairs
policy, there had been little change in the policy of assimilation. In 1953, J. E. Andrews,
the principal of the Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario, wrote that “we must facerealistically the fact that the only hope for the Canadian Indian is eventual assimilation into the white race.”46 In 1957, Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school principal Albert
Southard wrote that he believed that the cultural goal of residential schooling was to“change the philosophy of the Indian child. In other words since they must work andlive with ‘whites’ then they must begin to think as ‘whites.’” Southard said that theGordon’s school could never have a student council, since “in so far as the Indianunderstands the department’s policy, he is against it.”47 In a 1958 article on residential
schools, senior Oblate André Renaud argued that day schools were inferior to residential schools because when the day school students went back to their “homes at theend of the school day and for the weekend, the pupils are re-exposed to their native
culture, however diluted, from which the school is trying to separate them.” A residential school, on the other hand, could “surround its pupils almost twenty-four hours a
day with non-Indian Canadian culture through radio, television, public-address system, movies, books, newspapers, group activities, etc.”48
Throughout this period, the schools continued to be chronically underfunded.
Indian Affairs Branch Director H. M. Jones acknowledged this when, in 1957, he wrote
an internal memorandum to Deputy Minister Laval Fortier.
Both the Roman Catholic and Protestant schools are rapidly approaching acrisis because of the inability to obtain and retain competent staff. Although thesituation is less acute at Roman Catholic schools, religious orders are not able tomeet all the requirements, and lay staff must be engaged. No one can defend thesalaries residential schools are presently paying their help nor in some instances
the quality of the food and clothing.49

That same year, Fortier acknowledged that the federal government had failed toexert meaningful control over a system it had been funding for nearly a century. The
existing funding system, he wrote, was merely “a system of making outright donations
to the religious denominations, with the principal having unlimited control over themanner in which these funds are expended. In some instances the principals are notgood administrators, and it is felt the funds are not being used in the wisest manner.”50
The Conservative victory in the 1957 federal election set the stage for anotherIndian Affairs policy review. In 1959, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Ellen20 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Fairclough established a new joint committee of the Senate and House of Commons
to investigate Aboriginal issues.51 Before the committee finished its hearings, the government amended the Indian Act to allow people with Indian status to vote without
having to surrender any of the benefits associated with their status.52 During the hearing, a variety of First Nations groups made presentations that emphasized their rights
to sovereignty and self-government. There were variations and diverging opinions
among Aboriginal presenters, but they did not support measures intended to erode
their distinct status or that would lead to the abolition of reserves.53
The hearings of 1959 to 1961 led to a government commitment to establish an
Indian claims commission to deal primarily with Treaty and land claims, and an
amendment of the Indian Act that did away with the government’s power to enfranchise a man without his consent.54 Plans were drawn up for a new Indian Act that had
as its basis both a gradual withdrawal of the federal government from its role in theadministration of the lives of First Nations people and a commitment to continued
integration and assimilation of First Nations people into Canadian society. However,those proposals were never incorporated into the Indian Act. The Conservative government of John Diefenbaker was defeated in the 1963 federal election by the Liberals
under Prime Minister Lester Pearson.55
In the coming five years, there would be five, different, Liberal ministers of IndianAffairs; the rapid turnover at the ministerial level meant that there was little policychange.56 The first federal–provincial conference on Indian affairs was held in 1964. At
the conference, the provinces agreed to make their services available to First Nations
children. This, according to Indian Affairs, gave “impetus to major projects including
the extension of provincial welfare services to Indians, Indian education, and the newcommunity development program.”57
In 1964, the federal government commissioned the University of British Columbia
to coordinate a national survey of the condition of First Nations people in Canada.
The survey was headed by anthropology professor Harry Hawthorn; the first volumeof its report (known as the “Hawthorn Report”) was published in 1966.58 That report is
notable for the linked positions that it took on integration (which it found difficult todistinguish in practice from assimilation) and on Aboriginal rights. The report authors
wrote that they did notthink that the Indian should be required to assimilate, neither in order to receive
what he now needs nor at any future time. The possibility that many Indiansshould reject some values or institutions held dear by the Canadian majority
is comprehended in the goal of the economic and political recommendations
made in this Report. Ordinary respect for what values and institutions,languages, religions and modes of thought persist in their own small societies,
which were once fully viable and to varying extents are so today, calls formaintenance of this principle.59

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 21

In keeping with this, the authors argued that “Indians should be regarded as ‘citizens plus’; in addition to the normal rights and duties of citizenship, Indians possesscertain additional rights as charter members of the Canadian community.”60 The first
volume of the report, which made ninety-one separate recommendations, called fora level of investment in First Nations economic and social development that would
amount to “a truly massive undertaking by comparison with the limited bits-andpieces program which has been followed hereto.”61 While advancing the concept of
Citizens Plus, the report was in keeping with previous policy in that it favoured thedevolution of certain federal responsibilities, such as welfare, to provincial control.62
After the election of Pierre Trudeau as prime minister of Canada in June 1968,
Minister without Portfolio Robert Andras was assigned to carry out a consultation process with Aboriginal people across the country. At those meetings, Aboriginal leaders
once more raised concerns over unfulfilled Treaty commitments and land rights.63 On
June 25, 1969, Indian Affairs Minister Jean Chrétien presented his Statement of theGovernment of Canada on Indian Policy, a document that has entered into generalterminology as the “White Paper.”64 (“White paper” is a generic term used to describe
government policy papers.)65
In his prefatory remarks, Chrétien outlined the philosophy that underlay the White
Paper’s approach: “Special treatment has made of the Indians a community disadvantaged and apart.”66 To address this, the government intended to remove “the legislative and constitutional bases of discrimination.”67 This would involve repealing
the Indian Act and winding up the Indian Affairs section of the Department of IndianAffairs and Northern Development. The Indian Act would be replaced with an IndianLands Act, under whose authority First Nations people were to gain control over andtitle to “Indian lands.” Provinces were to be asked to take on “the same responsibility
for Indians that they have for other citizens in their provinces.”68 The federal government would fund the provision of these services. Those Indian Affairs responsibilities
that were not transferred to the provinces were to be “transferred to other appropriate federal departments.”69 In this way, the government would meet its goal of having
services to First Nations people “come through the same channels and from the same
government agencies for all Canadians.”70 The elimination of Indian Affairs and thecommencement of transferring control of Indian lands were to be carried out overa five-year period.71 During this period, “substantial funds” were to be made available for First Nations economic development.72 At the end of the process, the Treaties
would be extinguished. “Finally, once Indian lands are securely within Indian control,
the anomaly of Treaties between groups within society and the government of thatsociety will require that these Treaties be reviewed to see how they can be equitably ended.”73
The White Paper contained little that reflected the issues that had been raised by
Aboriginal people in their meetings with Andras over the previous year. It was also a22 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

seemingly total rejection of the Citizens Plus concept. Once more, the government
policy initiative had ignored those elements of the Aboriginal message that did not fit
with its assimilationist agenda.74 The stage had been set for a confrontation.
The recently formed National Indian Brotherhood described the White Paper asa document intended to bring about “the destruction of a Nation of People by legislation and cultural genocide.”75 David Courchene, the leader of the Manitoba Indian
Brotherhood, said, “We have not been consulted, we have been advised of decisions
already taken.”76 The prime minister responded in kind. On August 8, 1969, Trudeau
told an audience in Vancouver, “It’s inconceivable I think that in a given society, one
section of the society have a treaty with the other section of the society.”77 Before theyear was out, Harold Cardinal, the president of the Indian Association of Alberta, published The Unjust Society, a book whose title was a rebuke to Trudeau’s campaign commitment to creating “A Just Society.” Cardinal described the White Paper as “a thinly
disguised programme of extermination through assimilation. For the Indian to survive, says the government in effect, he must become a good little brown white man.”78
In June 1970, the National Indian Brotherhood adopted a policy paper that had
been originally developed by the Indian Association of Alberta, and presented it to
the federal government. Entitled Citizens Plus, it has come to be known as the “Red
Paper.” It took as its starting point the need for the government to recognize and honour Treaty and Aboriginal rights.79 To facilitate such a process, it called for the creationof a claims commission with powers to make binding decisions on claims made in
relation to Treaties, and also in the cases of First Nations people who had not madeTreaties.80 Although it sought changes in the Indian Act to make it less paternalistic, it
did not seek its repeal.81 Neither did it seek the abolition of the Indian Affairs branch.
Instead, it called on it to “stop being authoritarian and … start to serve people.”82 The
paper also called for the creation of a position of minister of Indian Affairs who had no
additional responsibilities.83
The paper opposed the transfer of education to provincial governments. It argued:
The funds for education should be offered to the tribal councils. Then the tribe
can decide whether it will operate schools itself or make contracts with nearby
public schools for places for some or all of its students. These contracts would
provide for Indian voice and vote in the operation of those schools. Opportunity
could be provided for children of other Canadians to attend schools on
the reserves.84

In March 1971, Chrétien formally announced that the federal government was abandoning the policy directions outlined in the White Paper.85 Since the White Paper
did not represent a new policy, but merely the acceleration of existing policy, theannouncement represented a significant victory for Aboriginal people.
Residential schooling was drawn directly into the conflict over the White Paper
when, in 1970, First Nations parents occupied the Blue Quills, Alberta, school toOperating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 23

protest a plan to close the school (but not the residence) and have students educatedin the public school in St. Paul, Alberta. The occupation ended with a government
agreement to turn both the school and the residence over to an Aboriginal education
authority. The takeover of the Blue Quills school set the stage for the National Indian
Brotherhood’s 1972 position paper, Indian Control of Indian Education. (The details ofthese events are discussed later in this chapter.)
The government retreat from the White Paper principles was only partial. In coming years, Treaty and Aboriginal rights would figure in a number of prominent court
cases. In all these cases, the position of federal and provincial governments sought
to deny and limit Treaty and Aboriginal rights. It was only after the Supreme Court
affirmed in 1973, in the Calder case, that Aboriginal rights existed that the federal
government moved to establish an Office of Native Claims.86 Aboriginal leaders
were excluded from the talks leading to repatriation of the Canadian Constitution
in 1981, and Aboriginal rights were excluded from the initial agreement on repatriation. After a very public lobbying campaign, and several days of heated public andbehind-the-scenes discussions at a national federal–provincial constitutional conference, Aboriginal rights were entrenched in the Constitution. However, governmental
goodwill throughout the process was limited: three federal–provincial conferences
intended to define these rights came to inconclusive results. Successive federal governments have not acted on the recommendation of the 1983 Special Committee ofthe House of Commons on Indian Self-Government to recognize self-government in
the Constitution.87 Aboriginal leaders also identified elements of the White Paper stillapparent in efforts of the subsequent Conservative government of Brian Mulroney, as
demonstrated in Deputy Prime Minister Erik Nielsen’s task force on First Nations programs in the mid-1980s. It too sought to transfer programs to provincial governments
and to dismantle Indian Affairs.88
The overall goal of the Canadian government in relation to Aboriginal people
during this period remained consistent with previous policy: assimilation and the endof Indian status. The federal government was never able to conceive of Indian status
as being anything other than a subordinate status that Aboriginal people would desire
to abandon as they became more ‘civilized.’ In the past, the government had tried toachieve this goal by segregating First Nations people on restricted and often isolated
reserves, outlawing their cultural practices, and adopting measures that limited theirability to participate in the Canadian economy and politics. From the 1940s onwards,
the government sought to achieve its goal by transferring most of its responsibilities
to Aboriginal people to provincial and territorial governments. These policies form
the backdrop for much of the history of residential schooling during this period. The
system’s final decades—when there were far fewer schools in operation—were playedout in a different setting, a setting created by Aboriginal people as they more forcefully
asserted their rights, including their rights to control the education of their children.

24 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The 1946–1948 Special Joint Committee
hearings and education
The minutes of the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and House of CommonsAppointed to Examine and Consider The Indian Act provide a valuable overview ofAboriginal, church, and government views on Aboriginal education in general, andresidential schooling in particular. From the minutes, it is apparent that although First
Nations witnesses were prepared to acknowledge that there was a role for residential
schooling in certain circumstances, they preferred to see their children educated intheir home communities in day schools. It is also clear that there were differencesamong Aboriginal people about the role that churches should play in the provisionof education. The testimony gives evidence of a growing difference in approaches
between the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches regarding the future of residential schooling. In the testimony, one can also see the seeds of what would turn into
an ongoing and increasingly bitter conflict between the federal government and the
Catholic Church.
As had been the case historically, First Nations witnesses usually expressed theiropposition to residential schools in terms of support for the expansion of day schooling. The Indian Association of Alberta and Union of Saskatchewan Indians used identical language in separate briefs to state their view that “the educational needs of many
reserves to-day can best be served by the establishment of day schools in proximity to
the children’s homes.” They based this position on the following arguments.
1)

Education is a threefold responsibility—school, church, and home. Day schools
can better serve this principle.
The day school can concentrate on the proper function of the school—
academic or vocational training. Instead, at present, language difficulties andthe half-time work system deprive children of approximately three years of
their allotted school time—from seven to sixteen years of age. Evidence of thisunfortunate condition can be verified by the figures on school attendanceissued by the Department of Mines and Resources, Indian Affairs Branch.
To speak about Indian advancement under such conditions is shear [sic]mockery. The present system encourages educational delinquency, retarded
development, and an aversion to education. Practically speaking, it develops aclass of people who are unable to be anything more than hewers of wood anddrawers of water in the land of their forefathers.

2)

No child can develop as he should, without the care and affection of family
life. The restrictions, discipline, exclusive use of English, etc. in the Residential
Schools are now recognized as having a harmful effect on immature minds
and bodies.

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 25

It is the belief of this Organization that this hiatus in family ties and parental
training is at least partially the cause of post-school delinquency. Regardless of
how kind and sympathetic the staff of a residential school may be, such a staff
cannot replace the average parent.
Where unsuitable home conditions exist, Indian children should be removed
from their parents just as white children are, when they are found tobe neglected.
Indian parents have an invaluable regard for the companionship of theirchildren and the association of children living at home while attending schoolis also an invaluable asset towards adult education and the subsequent
improvement in home conditions.89

According to the Indian Association of Alberta (iaa) brief:
Indian parents can now educate children in the household and farm duties,
so long a feature of the residential school. Parents moreover have a right to thecompany of their children, and a right as parents to supervise their home life.
The present system has been compared very aptly to the life of a calf of a dairy
cow. The calf is separated from its mother soon after birth; it is fed by a stranger
and in a short time is completely out of touch with its mother who neither
recognizes it nor is recognized by it.

The brief demonstrated support for the idea of integrating First Nations children
into public schools, noting that the fact thatan increasing number of progressive Indian parents are seeking the rightto withdraw their children from the residential schools … and to enter theirchildren in municipally operated schools, shows that there is an appreciationof day school education. The progress of these children who are attending
municipally operated schools compares favourably with that of their
white schoolmates.90

The association concluded that children in day schools made “faster progress” andacquired “facility in the use of English much more readily” than residential school
students. One of the few places for residential schools, in the iaa’s opinion, was onreserves that were “so completely inadequate that it is impossible for the Indians toremain on the reserve and stay alive.” The Stoney Reserve was given as an example ofsuch a reserve.91 Due to lack of space in local schools on that reserve, Indian Affairs
was proposing to send children from the Stoney Reserve to the Edmonton school. The
Brocket Local of the iaa wrote, “The parents would be perfectly justified in rejecting
any such proposal.” It argued, “No child should be brought up away from its parents
in an environment entirely unsuited to that to which it must return.”92 A residential
school on the reserve, in other words, was preferable to sending children to a moredistant residential school.

26 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The iaa recognized three other situations in which residential schooling mightplay a role. First, some reserves might wish to maintain existing residential schools.
Second, a certain number of residential schools were required to house orphans andchildren whose parents could not provide them with “proper home surroundings.”
Third, what it termed a “semi-residential school” would meet the needs of parents
who were home only part of the time.93
The iaa also argued that those residential schools that continued in operation
required a substantial funding increase. “The present per capita grant of $170 per
annum and $15 extra cost of living bonus is totally inadequate. No school can function on approximately sixty cents per day per child.” According to the iaa, in the
United States, the residential school per capita grant was $335. It recommended theCanadian grant be increased to $300. It also called for an end to the half-day system.
“No white parents would tolerate for an instant such a form of education,” which theiaa described as being “equivalent to child labour.”94
On a more localized level, the Goodfish Lake Local of the Alberta Indian Association
provided the following list of reasons for why it opposed sending students to residential school in Edmonton and St. Paul des Métis (the Blue Quills school).
1)

The distance to either Edmonton or St. Paul des Métis.

2)

The children are disrespectful to their parents and disobedient.

3)

The children are poorly clothed at the residential school,
particularly Edmonton.

4)

The half time work system retards progress and finally completely
discourages the children themselves from further studies without substituting
an interest in place of the interest in learning.

5)Children who are removed from the residential schools and sent to day
schools are put back a grade or two, indicating that standards are notmaintained in the residential schools according to the grade indicated.

6)

Segregation of the children in Indian residential schools is not in the bestinterests of Indian welfare. Indian children should be educated along withwhite children for the best interests of both.

7)

School nurses, employed by many school divisions, could check the health ofIndian children.

8)

Parents are not informed of their children’s illnesses.

9)Children attending day school near the reserve can speak much better
English than those who attend the residential schools.

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 2710) Overcrowding in the classrooms and mass instruction retard the brighter
child and render valueless whatever English he may have learned at home
before going to school.
11) Institutional care is over severe.
12) Bullying and, in some cases, other difficulties of a moral nature, are prevalent
in residential schools.95
The Union of Saskatchewan Indians brief accepted that residential schools had aplace on large reserves (communities with a low population density). Such schools
had to be “properly equipped, adequately financed and efficiently staffed to provide
the highest possible type of education.” The student labour requirement should be
abolished, and the time formerly spent on chores should be devoted to “essential
studies, physical exercise and organized games.”96 The Saskatchewan brief also called
for a separation of church and school, recommending that “public schools interdenominational in character should replace the existing institutions.”97
When asked to compare residential schools with day schools, Andrew Paull of theNorth American Indian Brotherhood said, “Day schools should be set up in a lot ofplaces and you should retain your present residential schools for underprivilegedchildren.”98 In subsequent testimony, he said residential schools were appropriate forfamilies that were nomadic.99
Drawing on his own experience, John Tootoosis, the president of the Union of
Saskatchewan Indians, made the argument that residential schooling shattered thebonds between parent and child.
The Indian child in the boarding school is brought up, he is put in a room there
and he does not have any contact with the outside world. When he is throughthe door is opened and he walks out into the outside world about which heknows nothing. It is different at the public schools. I have my boys in the publicschool and I find that they are much more obedient and show a greater respect
to their parents; in other words the discipline is better in the day schools. Whenthe children come back from the residential schools I have an awful time withthem compared to those I keep at home. The children whom I have not kept athome, who are at these residential schools, have no respect for their parents atall. I know that for a fact. There are many, many parents who will bear me out inthat statement.

When asked if he meant that “the discipline in residential schools is not good,”
Tootoosis responded, “It may be all right while they are in school, but after they comeout they don’t have that.”100
Joseph Dreaver from Saskatchewan also pointed out that family relations were broken up even within the schools. “We have had cases in these residential schools wherea brother and sister are attending the same school and they have to get permission

28 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

from the principal in order to talk to each other. They cannot go near each other. I do
not think that tends to give a home atmosphere in the schools.”101
Those bands that supported residential schools often had a school on their reserve,allowing band members to have more regular contact with children. In these cases,
although the band accepted the continued existence of the school, its brief pointed tothe inadequacies of the facility. The Brocket Local of the Indian Association of Alberta
listed the following concerns with residential schooling on that reserve.
In the case of the r.c. School—it simply cannot standup [sic] to the winds wehave on this reserve.
Some years back this school was supported by two iron rods on the second floor
running cross wise [sic]. One rod is on the west end of the building, and the otheron the east end.
Under the present conditions it is worse off than it was before.
In the boys’ dormitory, for instance on windy nights, they have to hold their beds
to prevent them from banging together.
In the girls’ dormitory which is on the west end of the building the smaller
girls are awakened from their sleep and start crying for fear the building willblow over.
Another proof that the building is unfit for occupation is that the roof leaks when
it rains and when the snow is melting.

The local said that similar conditions existed at the Anglican school on the reserve.
The parents were not opposed to residential schooling itself, because the schools werelocated on the reserve. “However,” they wrote, “the work system should, in the opinionof the members of this Association be abolished and full school hours with periods oforganized play at proper times be substituted.”102
The band at Cold Lake, Alberta, called for the construction of a residential school intheir community, and recommended that the per capita grant “should be set on a costplus basis which could easily be established by an independent commission or by an
official of Indian Affairs.” It also recommended that teachers be made members of thefederal civil service.103
Consistent throughout the presentations to the committee was the repeated andextensive criticism of the half-day system. John Tootoosis told the committee thatthe reason the Indian is opposed to child labour at the boarding schools is this:when a child works in a boarding school he is supposed to learn how to work.
It might be part of his exercise, but he can have exercise in playing games after
school. But whatever work he does in that school he is not so interested as hewould be working at home if he was attending day school and if he was really
doing something for his own use. In that case he would see what he is trying toOperating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 29

produce. It would be part of his benefit, and he would appreciate it. He would
be more interested in keeping on doing it than he would when he is at boarding
school. I know that for a fact, because I have been in school myself.104

Other witnesses also shared their personal experiences. Norman Lickers, a former
Mohawk Institute student, was serving as the joint committee’s independent counsel.
He told the committee:
When we got up in the morning we did chores, we had breakfast, and after that
we went out and did what ever else we were told to do. There was no actual
instruction about it, I mean as to why certain things were planted; or as to thenecessity of rotation of crops, or anything like that. We just went out and did
what we were told. And then, as to the cattle that were there, we were never given
any instruction as to the finer points of cattle raising or breeding. And the samewith other branches of farming, we were not given any instruction whatsoever.
The same applies to fruits, to chickens, to hogs to everything about the farm. That
was my experience in connection with these schools. We were given just enoughinstruction in school to know that we were dissatisfied when we went back to thereserve, and yet we never got enough instruction with which we could go on.105

On the same subject, Ahab Spence from Saskatchewan said that when he attended
an Anglican residential school in The Pas, Manitoba, “I learned how to carry wood,
how to plant potatoes and how to grease an engine. I had the privilege of walking
around acting as the aid to the engineer. I learned a lot. At least, I know which side of
the potato comes up first.” He said he was not opposed to teaching students how to
perform useful chores, but, he said, students needed more than a half-day in class.106
Chief Joseph Dreaver from Saskatchewan told the committee members that in theopinion of many parents, what was going on in schools amounted to child labour. “Itis not just a question of showing the children how to do these things, it is a question ofgetting the work done because, apparently, these schools have not sufficient money tocarry on without child labour. The grain that is raised and the proceeds from the cattle
which are kept all helps the school.”107
Brigadier Oliver Martin, who had been raised on the Six Nations Reserve and hadgone on to become an Ontario magistrate, testified about his experience as a school
inspector in the 1930s. He told the committee members it was his observation that at
the Mohawk Institute, the “vocational training which the children got there consisted
chiefly of the girls doing the necessary housework and the boys doing the farm labourand chores around the stables.” While he did not wish to disparage the work that the
churches had done, he felt the time had come “when the primary education of ourIndian children should take place in undenominational [sic] day schools.”108
The Lower Kootenay Band’s brief contended that, as a result of underfunding of the
Cranbrook school,30 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the children spend too much time in household duties and farm chores. This
could be changed we are told by the use of electrical power. Much of the labourof peeling potatoes, ironing clothes by hand irons, waxing floors by hand,milking cows and doing other chores could be eliminated by the use of electrical
driven machinery.

The band pointed out that the school was only two and a half miles (four kilometres)from a power source.109
There was much less consensus about another matter: the role that denominational
schools should play in Aboriginal education. There were strongly divergent views
expressed by First Nations witnesses to the joint committee. The brief from Chief C. L.
Big Canoe from Georgina Island, Ontario, asked that the “system of using missionary
teachers be abolished. We would like to see our day school system supervised by aschool board, as in white communities, so that a properly qualified teacher will always
get the appointment.”110 The brief from the band at Saanich, British Columbia, stated,“We are pleased to have schools if our children are taught education and learn to besmart Indians, not religion; vis; catechism and hymns. The priests are there to teachcatechism and hymns in church not taking children’s time off education.”111
Andrew Paull recommended thatthe school system be gradually controlled by the state. Our idea behind that isthat the responsibility for education is upon the state. We do not want you tokick out the churches entirely. But we want you to take hold of these schools,
and instead of the churches looking after the Indians on the basis of charity thestate will pay these churchmen to educate the Indians. You are now delegating
your responsibility in education to the churches. We want you to assume that
responsibility in toto. That means that you can continue your denominational
schools but under government pay from top to bottom. That is what we mean.112

In a written presentation, the Fort Vermilion Band from Alberta said that its
members favoured the existing system of church-administered education, addingthat they believed the per capita grants should be increased. They said they would“prefer to see our children without instruction” at all, rather than have to accept
non-denominational schooling.113
The presentation from the Fort Smith Band in the Northwest Territories spoke
highly of the accomplishments of the Roman Catholic day school and the Roman
Catholic residential schools in Fort Chipewyan and Fort Resolution. The brief, signed
by Chief Abraham Deneyutchele, André Deneyutchele, Baptiste Arcand, Baptiste
Niyalti, Josep Keskore, Adam Calumet, and Germain Tourangeau, stated that it was
the sincere hope of the band that
the Government will leave the direction of these schools in the hands of those
who are now in charge of them, and who have proven over the long period ofOperating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 31

years reaching from the foundation of these establishments, their worth aseducators capable of bringing honor both to the settlement in which they live,
as well as to the teaching of our children to which they have devoted their lives
and talents.114

Three chiefs from the Fort Norman (Tulita) region called for the establishment of
a Catholic school in the community. However, a letter accompanying the brief said,
The senior chief of the Fort refused to sign, saying that Indians at the Fort
did not wish to have nuns teaching at the School, alleging that pupils at theschool at Providence had not been well fed and, further, that several Indians
who had gone to the Hospital at Simpson had come back to the Fort swearingthat they would never again go to that Hospital because the nuns had not fed
them properly.115

In its initial brief, the Lower Kootenay Band called for the removal of the nuns andpriests from the Cranbrook, British Columbia, school. Subsequent to that, band members visited the school and submitted a second brief. In it, they withdrew the call for achange of management, saying that, given the low level of funding, it was thought that
the Oblates were doing a commendable job of running the school.116
The Veterans’ Association of Wikwemikong on Manitoulin Island in Ontario
expressed a strong attachment to the Roman Catholic faith in their brief. They were
opposed “to the public school system of education being foisted upon us. We want tokeep our Catholic denominational schools and we wish to keep religion in our schools
as we have always had it from the beginning.” The association held the two residential
schools at Spanish, Ontario, in high regard, adding that a “high school and training
school should be established there.” Despite this support for residential schooling, thebrief lamented the fact that “some sixty or seventy children from this reserve are separated from their families every year to go off to residential school. There is no needfor this whatsoever, as sufficient of them live close enough together that day schools
could be erected for them with at least 25 children in each.” The brief also called for the
introduction of the “full Ontario school course”—a measure that would entail ending
the half-day system.117
Others drew attention to the fact that the Indian Act provision that prevented
Catholic children from being sent to Protestant schools and Protestant children to
Catholic schools amounted to religious discrimination, since it provided no rights
to those who adhered to Aboriginal spiritual practices. Chief Teddy Yellowfly of theBlackfoot Reserve in Alberta told the committee thatsome Indians very definitely have a religion of their own, which to them contains
deep beauty and consolation. If an Indian is an adherent to his native religion,
what are you going to do with his children? In a country that advocates freedomof religion, are you going to force that Indian to become a hypocrite by assuming32 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

a veneer of either the religions mentioned in the Act, particularly if he is a better
Indian by respecting the sanctity of his real beliefs?

Yellowfly recommended that a non-denominational residential school be established in each province for the children of parents who were neither Catholic nor
Protestant.118 Yellowfly also argued that by relying on denominational schools, thegovernment had failed to meet its Treaty obligations in regard to education. He
acknowledged that the government had constructed schools, but “the purposes are
not served, the children are not being educated.” When pressed by members of thecommittee on this point, he said, “They have schools but the only kind of teachers they
have are those who are doing missionary work, and that is probably because they are
not paid, it is probably because of the wages they get.”119
Joseph Dreaver from Saskatchewan told the committee,
There are many Indians who do not profess to belong to any of the white man’s
religions. They have their pagan beliefs. Whenever any of these people want toplace their children in an Indian school the first thing they are asked is “Whatdenomination are you?” I should like to ask this question. Is there a school
anywhere in Canada where Indian children of pagan religion can be taken in?

The answer he received from the chair was “I do not think there is.” Dreaver went
on to observe that the requirement to identify as either Catholic or Protestant in orderto have one’s children educated created an inflated impression of the number of First
Nations people who were Christian. “We have people on the reserves today who aremarked down as belonging to different faiths, white man’s faiths, and then when the
Indians hold their tribal ceremonial dances those same Indians are taking part in the
ceremonial dances.”120
Of all the church briefs made to the committee, the Roman Catholic brief presented
by J. O. Plourde, the Oblates’ superintendent of Indian welfare and training, mounted
the strongest defence of the existing educational system. Plourde began by supporting
the Indian Act provisions requiring that Catholic children not be educated at schools
operated under Protestant auspices. Plourde argued that “the moral and intellectual
training given through the Christian schools is a guarantee to the Canadian government, that our Indians will maintain themselves individually, and socially, in proportion to their native ability, as trustworthy citizens of our great democracy.”121 Plourde
was not prepared to accept suggestions that “residential schools do not provide theeducational advantages that Indian children require.” Neither did he accept the validity of criticisms that focused on the way residential schools separated children fromtheir parents. Instead, he suggested that the schools should be compared with theboarding schools patronized by the country’s economic elite.
When we see the sons and daughters of our rich families, here in Canada, being
placed in residential schools so that they may receive a more thorough training

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 33

and when again the parents of such children are willing to deprive themselves of
their company during their formative years, it is very difficult for us to condemnsuch institutions as being unfit and unsuitable to train those children in theways of our common civilization and in the attainment of Christian ideals
and principles.122

The Catholic brief not only expressed overall satisfaction with the residential school
system, but it also sought its expansion, calling for the establishment of special residential schools for girls aged sixteen to eighteen. Keeping them in school for an extra
two years would ensure that “their moral stamina would be strengthened.”123
The Anglican Church brief identified the need for a clear statement of national
Aboriginal policy.
It is our conviction that they must advance from segregation and the inferior
status of wardship and not remain a backward and dependent minority group.
We have no hesitation in declaring that with adequate guidance and opportunity
our Indian people can be advanced to independence and will take a worthy
place as citizens of this Dominion.124

In addressing education specifically, the Anglicans stressed their belief that church
involvement in Aboriginal education should continue. Since Canada had “been established on Christian principles,” it was felt that “secular education is clearly inadequate
to enable our native Canadians to attain full citizenship in such a State.” It was also
argued that the churches had won the confidence of the “better elements” within the
Aboriginal community, and were therefore best placed to “influence and guide them.”
As well, it was possible to recruit an adequate supply of staff for remote schools only
“when the motive of [Christian] service is present.”125
For the Anglicans, residential schools were
the only answer to the need of a nomadic people and should be continued andextended wherever such conditions exist. When, on the other hand, a settled
mode of life becomes the rule and day schools can be established for the pupils
of a particular residential school, the residential school should normally cease tofunction along the ordinary lines.126

In such cases, the schools might be successfully transformed into hostels fromwhich students could continue their education at local public schools. This would
be “of great value in overcoming segregation and promoting assimilation.” In othercases, schools might be transformed into “Indian Colleges, specializing in higher
education or vocational training to which senior pupils from Day Schools could bepromoted.”127 Unlike the Roman Catholics, the Anglicans then were prepared to see
a reduction in residential schooling and an increased use of public, as opposed todenominational, schools.

34 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

George Dorey, the secretary of the United Church Board of Home Missions, told thecommittee, “We do not believe that any church has to justify its missionary work. In
spite of failures, we believe that the change from paganism to Christianity is such that
we can let the work speak for itself.”128 The United Church also believed the time hadcome for the government to re-evaluate its Aboriginal policy. It was necessary, Dorey
said, for the government to abandon the policy of segregating First Nations people on
reserves and treating them as wards of the state. This policy, he said, had hindered“the main objects both of Christianity and the democratic system—that is, to promote
the development of personality through the exercise of judgments of value.”129
The United Church was also more willing to question the future of residential
schooling. It called for the establishment of a national survey of First Nations education needs. It was on the basis of such a survey, rather than on “the protection ofseemingly vested interests,” that the church felt decisions about whether to increase or
reduce the availability of residential schooling should be made. If any new residential
schools were established, “more study should be given to determine how a residential
school can provide the home atmosphere which is essential to the normal development of a child rather than with the idea of building up a large institution.”130 Suchcomments reflected recognition of the schools’ failure to meet the emotional needs oftheir students. The United Church was also opposed tothe suggestion of setting up residential schools designed to provide secondaryor vocational education, thus continuing the segregation of Indian pupils fromother members of the community. We believe that the need for the higher
education of Indian people is very great but we think that children should obtainthis, as far as possible, in schools where they will come in contact with childrenof other races.131

This highlighted what would be, in coming years, a major point of division between
the federal government and the Roman Catholic Church, which insisted on establishing high schools in many of its residential schools.
All the churches pointed to the underfunding of the residential school system,
although the Catholics argued that, because many of their staff members essentially
donated their labour, school conditions were acceptable. When asked about the adequacy of the per capita grant, the Oblate Plourde said, “Catholic schools are operated
by priests, as you know, as principals with the co-operation of communities of nuns
and some lay brothers. If we did not have this almost free help we could not operateon the present government per capita grant.”132 The Anglicans testified that demands
for residential schools
have steadily increased but the basis of support has lagged far behind.
Government inspectors insist on standards of academic work, of diet andnursing care, and of vocational training which are indeed admirable but very

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 35

costly. We are rebuked because our Farm Instructors are not Agriculture College
graduates and our Cooks have not their diplomas in Household Science. Our
answer is very simple: What can be expected when the Government grant
averages only fifty cents per child per day? With the prices now prevailing theabsurdity of this amount is obvious. It would not provide food and clothing on
the desired standards, but the Church has in addition to these primary needs tooperate a boarding school, with all the necessary costs of salaries, fuel, lighting,equipment and countless other items.133

In November 1946, the Anglicans had called for a 50% increase in the residential
school per capita grant. Even this, the Anglicans said, “would not be sufficient to attainthe standards we desire and to offer the higher salaries which our workers are entitled to. To date, however, no advance has been received and 1946 added heavily to
our debt.” They argued for replacing the per capita system, which saw school income
fluctuate with attendance, with one in which the government paid “the actual cost ofoperation as verified by Government auditors.”134 The government would wait morethan another ten years, until 1957, before introducing such a system.
Like the Anglicans, the United Church pointed to the ongoing underfunding of
the residential school system. Quoting from a negative inspection report on a reserve
day school, Dorey said, “Such a condition is, in our judgment, the result of failure on
the part—not of the officials of the department,—but of the members of the House ofCommons to realize that Indian education is a serious matter and to provide the funds
which are necessary.”135 In particular, Dorey said, the United Church resented
being criticised for failure to provide adequate food and clothing in residential
schools, and for not engaging highly qualified staff in sufficient number,when the failure arises from the lack of grant provided by the government andthe House of Commons,—which had consistently starved the educational
department of the Indian Affairs Branch.

Rather than estimate the amount that would be needed to properly fund theschools, he suggested that the federal government operate a “pilot” school to “establish costs to be paid to all schools.”136
The Women’s Missionary Society (Western Division) of the Presbyterian Church
in Canada, which was responsible for the operation of the two Presbyterian schools,
did not make a presentation to the committee. Instead, Robert Johnston, the chairperson of the Presbyterian Church Board of Missions, presented a message on theirbehalf. He told the committee, “The per capita grant they are receiving at the present
time is not nearly sufficient for what has to be done.” The Women’s Missionary Society
was spending $13,000 more on the two schools that the Presbyterians operated than
the federal government was contributing. Despite this, there was a growing operating
deficit.137 The brief continued:36 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

There is no part of our work that appeals more to the members of our church
than that among the Indians and we believe that it is essential to maintain thepresent high standards as well as to provide the children under our care withadequate and suitable food so that their health will improve. Under the present
grant this is not possible.
We would therefore humbly request that you would earnestly consider anincrease of fifty per cent in the per capita grant.138

Both the Catholic and Anglican briefs defended the half-day system. Speaking
for the Catholics, Plourde acknowledged that it was not possible to “give the Indianchildren both the full day class curriculum and also adequate vocational training at
the same time.” They did feel that “for most Indian children it seems that the half day
system, completed by properly organized and practical vocational training would
be satisfactory.”139
The Anglicans argued that “for the great majority of Indian pupils a wise combination of classroom and practical training is best for the kind of life they will live. If residential schools were operated on the principle of all day in the classroom, the result
would be of doubtful value and the cost enormously increased.” They noted that since
the schools were receiving grants for manual training, the students were no longer“merely doing the chores of the institution.”140
The Anglicans thought that in regard to curriculum, “the specialized nature ofIndian education demands a much greater degree of direction from the Federal
authority and that this is in the interest of the great majority of the pupils.”141 In a similar vein, the United Church called on the federal government to not simply follow
the provincial curriculum, but to develop a curriculum that would meet the needs ofAboriginal children.142
The criticisms raised by First Nations witnesses regarding Indian Act restrictions
against the crossover of Catholic and Protestant children into schools of the opposite
denomination prompted a series of questions from committee members and theircounsel. Norman Lickers asked Plourde if the Indian Act should take into account“those people who believe in the old Indian religion?” Plourde said he found the question puzzling since, as a Christian nation, Canada was committed to having “all its citizens belonging to one or other of the Christian churches. Under such circumstances
I cannot see why we should foster aboriginal beliefs.” Ironically, in coming years,
Catholic representatives would defend this provision on the grounds that it protected
the right of parental choice. In this instance, however, it was making a self-serving
argument that the choice of non-Christian parents was immaterial.143 When George
Dorey of the United Church was asked whether people who followed the “native religion” were denied freedom of religion in regard to the education of their children, hesuggested the whole issue had been “conjured up.” In the case of the people of the Six
Nations who belonged to what he referred to as the “Long House,” he said, “I don’t

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 37

know how far it is aboriginal and I am not as sure as some people are about how muchit is a belief.”144 But, although he questioned the existence of Aboriginal religions, he
did argue that the Indian Act provision was “unsound.” Dorey stated that it was the
position of the United Church thatthe time has come seriously to consider the establishment of Indian education
on a completely non-sectarian basis, making provision at the same time forthe missionaries to be given a limited amount of time each day for religious
instruction, on the same basis as this privilege is granted in a number ofthe provinces.145

Although there were significant differences among the churches in their approaches
to a variety of education issues, there is no question that all four churches made it
clear that the government level of funding was inadequate. The Protestant churches
also made it clear that the inadequacy made it impossible for them to properly feed,
clothe, house, care for, and educate children in residential schools. This testimony
was given publicly, and the minutes of these hearings were publicly available. It isalso worth noting that no one challenged the churches in their assertions that funding
was inadequate.
Much of Indian Affairs Branch Director R. A. Hoey’s 1946 presentation to thecommittee focused on education, particularly the need to dramatically increase theamount spent on education. While there were 16,438 students in 255 federal day
schools and 76 residential schools, there were 28,429 school-aged First Nations children. As Hoey pointed out, this meant there were “approximately 12,000 children forwhom no educational facilities have been provided.” The 12,000 students not receiving any schooling amounted to 42% of the school-aged First Nations population. Mostof these students lived “in the northern sections of the provinces, in the Yukon and in
the Northwest Territories.”146
Hoey told the committee, “I hope you will agree with me when I state that thesefacilities should be provided at once.”147 Subsequent witnesses explained that between
350 and 400 classrooms were needed to meet that goal.148
Indian Affairs not only had to provide schools for the 12,000 existing students without classes, but it also had to meet the needs of a growing First Nations population.
Hoey testified:
Our school population is increasing at the rate of approximately 150 students
per annum. To follow the present policy and provide residential schoolaccommodation for 50 per cent of these and Indian day school accommodation
for the other half, would mean the construction of a residential school which,fully equipped, would cost today approximately $175,000 and five Indian day
schools at an approximate cost of $8,000 each.149

38 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In other words, without a significant annual increase, the number of Aboriginal students not in school would continue to grow.
In his testimony, Bernard Neary, the superintendent of Welfare and Training for
Indian Affairs, made it clear that the quality of education offered at the Indian Affairs
schools was substandard. “We have too many teachers who are merely going throughthe motions, who let the children, as you say, fill in time.” He noted that there was noproper school inspector for British Columbia. When one was hired, that individual
would have to inspect seventy-six day and residential schools that were scattered allover the province. The only way to get to the school at Christie Island, he said, was “bybeing carried in on the backs of Indians.”150 Educational achievement was also limited.
The commissioner for Indian Affairs in British Columbia, D. M. MacKay, told the committee that of the 4,000 First Nations students enrolled in schools in British Columbia,
only 87 had reached Grade Eight.151 MacKay recognized that the half-day system was
one of the barriers to First Nations children’s academic success. When asked what wasneeded to eliminate the half-day system, MacKay said, “If we are going to relieve theIndian children of any of the arduous tasks they are required to perform at the present
time it will be necessary I should say to increase the per capita grant considerably toprovide for more staff.”152
In coming years, in internal documents, various Indian Affairs officials would
express a variety of highly critical views of the role that the churches—particularly
the Roman Catholic Church—played in the operation of the schools. But, as Nearyacknowledged to the committee, the churches were subsidizing the schools throughthe provision of cheap labour. “The actual operation of a residential school properly
equipped and with a civil service staff certainly would cost us a great deal more thanrunning them on a denominational basis.”153 In addition to low-cost staff, the churches
also provided subsidies to the schools. However, the government did not know how
large the overall subsidy was, since the money was paid to individual schools, not to
the government. According to Hoey, churches paid for all costs not covered by the percapita grant, and, he added, “in most cases it is quite substantial.”154
When asked what he thought the future of residential schools and the role ofthe churches in First Nations education would be, British Columbia Indian Affairs
Commissioner MacKay said, “I am satisfied in my own heart and mind that the residential school has reached its peak in Indian education, and that it will be replaced
gradually by the Indian day school. Whether this will mean the elimination of theposition of the church is I think a matter that will be the responsibility of the legislators to decide.”155 According to Hoey, Indian Affairs had not built a new residential
school since he joined the branch in 1936, except to replace some of the ones that hadburned down. He did note that the Roman Catholic Church had, on its own, built anumber of schools in northern Alberta. He said, “I think it would be fair in stating that
we are leaning toward the establishment and operation of Indian day schools rather

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 39

than residential schools. I made that statement having in mind how difficult it would
be to secure a permit for the establishment of a new residential school.”156
Indian Affairs education policy was being developed with little day-to-day input
from Aboriginal people. There were no First Nations people working for the education
and welfare sections of Indian Affairs in Ottawa. According to Neary, the most seniorFirst Nations official in the Welfare and Training section was Joseph Hill, the supervising principal of the Six Nations school system.157 There were no First Nations people
teaching at any of the Indian Affairs schools in British Columbia.158
The federal government’s own evidence highlighted the need for a significant
increase in funding and, like many of the submissions to the joint committee, expressed
a federal preference for day schools instead of residential schools. The need to provide
new classrooms for over 12,000 students, however, meant that Indian Affairs would
be in no hurry to shut down the existing residential schools. To do so would simply
require it to build even more day schools. Ending the half-day system would also
require more teachers and more classrooms. Because so many of the First Nations
children who were not going to school lived in northern and remote regions—and thegovernment held that residential schooling was appropriate for those regions—theprospect also existed for one last extension of the system. This is indeed what happened in the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Québec, and, in a limited fashion, in
northwestern Ontario.

Northern expansion of the system
As R. A. Hoey and D. M. MacKay had intimated in their testimony to the Special
Joint Committee, the residential school system in Canada had reached its peak withlittle prospect for expansion. This was to remain the case for most of southern Canada,
where the thrust of Indian Affairs policy from the 1950s was to assert greater financial
control over the schools with the eventual goal of bringing the system to an end. This
was not the case in northern and remote communities. As Indian Affairs official R. F.
Battle wrote in 1957, “residential school accommodation, as traditionally known to us,
will be needed in northern isolated areas for a number of years to come.”159
The most significant expansion of residential schools in the post-1940 period took
place in the Canadian North. As late as 1948, there were only six residential schools in
the North: two in the Yukon and four in the Northwest Territories. In the late 1950s, thefederal government remade this system. All but one of the old church-run residential
schools were closed by 1960. In the larger population centres, they were replaced byfederal day schools and large residences, usually run by either the Anglican or Catholic
church. In smaller communities, particularly in the eastern Arctic and Arctic Québec,day schools and small hostels (often housing only six students) were constructed. (The40 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

complex history of this expansion, which was overseen by the federal Department ofNorthern Affairs and National Resources, as opposed to the Indian Affairs Branch, isexamined elsewhere in this report.) While this expansion ran counter to the general
Indian Affairs approach of reducing residential schooling during this period, it wascompletely in keeping with a longer Canadian tradition. By this tradition, residential
schools were established in the Canadian West in the 1880s as part of an effort to exert
control over an internal colony in preparation for intensified economic exploitation ofthat region. The same rationale applies to the expansion of residential schooling thattook place in Québec in the 1950s.

QuébecAs late as 1946, there were only two residential schools in Québec: both werelocated at Fort George on James Bay. The two schools had only thirty-seven students
in total.160 Between 1952 and 1963, Indian Affairs founded four residential schools
in Québec, three under the management of the Roman Catholic Church and thefourth operated by the Anglicans. This expansion was part of a broader colonizationof Québec’s mid-North. This is the region north of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa valleys and south of the Hudson Bay and Labrador Sea watersheds. This region includes
Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Haute Mauricie, Saguenay-Lac St. Jean, and the North Shoreof the St. Lawrence River from the Saguenay River to Labrador. Until the 1940s, there
had been little non-Aboriginal settlement or development in the mid-North, and theAboriginal population had supported itself by trapping and traditional economic
activities. The Second World War, however, focused greater interest in developing the
economic resources of the region. To facilitate this development, Indian Affairs began
to play a larger and more direct role in the lives of Aboriginal people in the region. This
included the relocating of some communities, the establishment of reserves, and theopening of residential schools.
Even up until 1948, this region was seen by D. M. MacKay, who had taken over from
R. A. Hoey as director of Indian Affairs, as being on the “fringe of civilization.” MacKay
was skeptical of the benefit of extending residential schooling to the region.
There is, of course, considerable opposition from some of these Indians towards
sending their children (particularly the boys) to residential schools. They claimthat an absence of six or seven years at such a school prevents a boy fromever becoming a good trapper. As you probably know, these Indians can carry
unbelievable loads on their backs while portaging. Their argument is that a boy
must be trained to such a task and the other skills and crafts of bush life from thetime he is 8 or 9 years of age.

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 41

If we are providing schools as an ‘education for life’, their argument is a soundone, as it would seem certain that these Indians will never be anything but
trappers. The fur development projects of this area are designed to provide themwith an economically sound mode of living.

MacKay advised that “great caution” be exercised before expanding residential
schooling in the region.161 Instead of considering education policy in terms of the
future and present needs of those First Nations people who relied on hunting andtrapping to secure their livelihood, officials decided to pursue the expansion of residential schooling into mid-northern Québec. This decision was not out of keepingwith the decision to expand residential schools in the Canadian North. In this case,
the Indian Affairs goal of increasing the number of First Nations students who hadaccess to education trumped its intent to make less use of residential schooling. The
construction of schools at Maliotenam (Sept-Îles), Amos, Pointe Bleue, and La Tuquewas also driven by pressure from local Catholic and Anglican church officials and, insome cases, in response to parental objections to the practice of sending their children to even more distant residential schools.
The first residential school to be founded in Québec in the post-war period wassituated near Sept-Îles on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River. Although francophone settlers had lived along the North Shore and exploited its resources for centuries, in the 1950s, less than 1% of Québec’s population resided either along the shore
or in its hinterland. This relatively small population of European origin in the region
was due to the North Shore’s marginal agricultural utility, the seasonal migration offishermen and forestry workers (whose families lived elsewhere), and the exhaustionof the region’s easily accessible timber. All this changed after the war when the growthof mining, hydroelectricity, and inland forestry brought a population boom to theregion, remaking villages such as Sept-Îles into urban centres.162
As urbanization became a force in the region for the first time, the federal government sought to encourage the North Shore’s Aboriginal population to settle on
reserves featuring newly built homes and schools. As a result, the majority of Innu
First Nation families slowly came to adopt a sedentary lifestyle instead of spending
much of the year hunting and trapping in the bush. In the early 1950s, Indian Affairs
undertook a program of forced removal of all Innu families living at Sept-Îles and at
Moisie, a village located about twenty kilometres to the east, to Maliotenam, a reserve
created in 1949 on a sandy plateau situated between the two rapidly growing towns.
(The reserve is now known as “Innu Takuaikan Uashat mak Mani-Utenam.”) The federal government constructed several dozen homes, a church, and a community centre
at Maliotenam.163 Indian Affairs established this village in the hopes of opening up
to non-Aboriginal settlers the land occupied by the original reserve created in 1906
(Uashat). By the post-war years, it occupied prime real estate in the heart of Sept-Îles.
However, despite the pressure brought to bear by religious and municipal authorities,42 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

as well as by Indian Affairs, only a minority of families from Sept-Îles (Uashat) decided
to join the Innu from Moisie in moving to the new reserve. As a result, in addition to
the new reserve community, the original community of Uashat also still exists in its
Sept-Îles location.164 (The partial relocation has created internal community divisions
that are still felt today, according to some of the Survivors who spoke to the Truth
and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.) In the years immediately following thewar, Napoléon-Alexandre Labrie, the Roman Catholic Bishop of the St. Lawrence Gulf
Diocese, “made several requests for the erection of an Indian residential school atSeven Islands, p.q. This school would provide educational facilities for the Indians
living along the north shore of the St. Lawrence,” including those whose families
traditionally traded at Sept-Îles, Moisie, La Romaine, St. Augustine, Mingan, andNatashquan.165 Indian Affairs decided to target these children for residential education because it was “difficult, if not impossible, to operate schools throughout thewhole academic year.”166 Additional support came from Indian agent J. M. Pauze, whothought a residential school was needed to help control what he saw as the growth oftuberculosis in the community.167
Construction was delayed by difficulties in determining a location for the school.168
Representatives of the Oblate order objected to a proposed site because it was too
close to the newly established Innu village on the Maliotenam Reserve. In a letterto Indian Affairs, J. O. Plourde, the superintendent of the Oblate Indian Welfare andTraining Commission, expressedserious objections to having indian [sic] families as close as it seems yourintention to have them at this new school. The discipline which it is necessary tohave for school children, particularly for older boys and girls, becomes almost
impossible to put in force, if parents, young men and young women are allowed
to talk and see school children at will, as they shall be able to do, if the houses
are erected according to the present plan.169

Plourde’s objections were successful.170
The Maliotenam school opened in September 1952. It functioned as a combined
residential and day school, with 273 students in grades One to Seven. Of these, 168
lived at the school, even though its official capacity was 150.171 By January 1953,
approximately 190 students were boarders and applications for eleven more were
under consideration.172 The number fell to 160 during the 1953–54 academic year,
largely as a result of Indian Affairs’ awareness that the school had been overcrowded
since its opening.173
In another part of northern Québec, the Abitibi and Témiscamingue regions, thepopulation had grown by 143% during the 1930s, due to colonization projects andmining development. This dramatic increase in population placed significant pressure on the Algonquin people, who had traditionally constituted the majority of theregion’s population and who continued to earn their living by hunting and trapping.174

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 43

By 1950, Indian Affairs had decided to purchase a farm near the town of Amos, in
the Abitibi region, to be used as a school.175 In 1955, in the face of such new population pressures, and partially due to the desire to see their children attend school,
207 Algonquins decided to relocate from their camps along the Harricana River.
They moved to Pikogan, a new village founded on lands purchased with band funds,
approximately three kilometres from Amos. The St. Marc de Figuery residential schoolat Amos began accepting students in October 1955.176 Although the local Catholic
bishop had played a central role in establishing the school, the church turned responsibility for the operation of the school over to the Oblate order.177
By the end of December, a total of 148 children lived at the school (66 boys and 82
girls). The school’s personnel included six members of female religious orders, fourmale members, and nine Aboriginal lay people.178 By the beginning of the following
school year, Indian Affairs officials had begun using an enrolment of 210 students
when preparing its budget, even though the branch’s director continued to report thatthe school had “an authorized enrolment of 200 pupils.”179
The schools at Maliotenam and Amos were established in regions with relatively
large Aboriginal populations who had experienced colonization for only a brieftime. The Pointe Bleue school, however, was situated on the shores of Lac St. Jean,an immense body of fresh water whose shores had been settled by Canadians ofEuropean origin during the second half of the nineteenth century. By the time thisschool opened in 1960 on the reserve at Pointe Bleue (Mastheuiatsh), a majority ofInnu had taken up year-round residence there.
In 1949, Indian Superintendent Edgar Arsenault decided to send four Innu children from the reserve to the Roman Catholic residential school at Fort George,much farther north and in a Cree rather than Innu homeland area.180 Arsenault sent
increasing numbers of Innu children north each year: from four children during the
1949–50 school year, this number jumped to nineteen in 1950–51 and thirty-three
in 1953–54.181 Indian Affairs school inspectors and other officials involved in education argued against this continuing influx of students from the South to attend Fort
George, arguing, among other things, that “the area in the Albany basin be served bythis school rather than having the children brought from Pointe Bleue.”182 Despite this,the number of Innu children enrolled at Fort George remained high through to theend of the decade.183
In December 1952, the Oblates called for two additional residential schools in “central Québec,” the first at Pointe Bleue and the second “either at Parent or Oskalaneo.”
The Oblates asserted that these schools were necessary because “the natives areforced, in order to make a living, to work in various lumber camps, away from home
and a number of them spend several months every winter on the traplines.”184
In 1953, Jules D’Astous, the regional supervisor of Indian agencies for Québec,reported to Philip Phelan, Indian Affairs’ Ottawa-based superintendent of education,

44 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

on the Innu children attending the Roman Catholic residential school at Fort George.
“Although we admit that it is practically a nonsense to send these children so faraway[sic], we unfortunately cannot find any better solution at the present time and, therefore, we will recommend that the children from Pointe Bleue go back to Fort George
again at the end of this month.”
He noted:
These children come from families of trappers who spend the whole winterin the bush and from broken-up families. They are definitely candidates for aresidential school and this is why I have told you on many occasions already that
we should have a residential school right there at Pointe Bleue. We have oversixty children from the agency who should be in residence but for some of them
it is just impossible to think of sending them to Fort George.

D’Astous added that the residential school at Pointe Bleue was also necessary because
Maliotenam’s enrolment was over capacity and needed to be reduced.185
By September 1956, the Oblates had requested the construction of a “200-bed residential school building with 8 to 10 classrooms.”186 Indian Affairs approved the construction of the school by November.187 In early January 1957, the Roberval schoolboard accepted that residential school boarders could be placed in its schools.188 The
Pointe Bleue residential school opened on October 7, 1960.189 It was a mixed day andresidential school with 144 students living in residence.190
The lone Anglican residential school that opened in Québec during this period
was located in La Tuque in the upper St. Maurice Valley. Established at the turn of
the twentieth century, La Tuque had grown into a city of nearly 10,000 inhabitants by
1951.191 Although its population was dominated by French-Canadian Catholics, it wasalso home to a small Protestant community. The region’s pulp-and-paper industry
had helped finance ambitious public works projects, making it an attractive home toboth investment and settlement, despite its isolation from other urban centres.192
By early 1957, the Anglican Church and Indian Affairs had agreed to establish a residential school for Aboriginal children in “north-central Quebec.”193 From the beginning, both the Anglican and Indian Affairs hierarchies conceived of the residential
school as, in the words of Henry G. Cook, the superintendent of the Anglican Indian
School Administration, “a hostel for the children of the Mistassini and Waswanipi
bands of north-central Quebec.”194 This decision arose from the belief that children of
Anglican families from Québec should be educated in the province rather than being
forced, as most had been for some time, to travel to Ontario for access to Protestantresidential schools such as the Mohawk Institute in Brantford.195
It was becoming increasingly difficult to get parents to send their children to
Ontario. In November 1959, Hervé Larivière, the superintendent of the Abitibi Indian
Agency, acknowledged that “the Mistassini Indians living on the railroad line werealways reluctant to send their children back to school [in Ontario]. For many years,

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 45

through the assistance of Dr. Rivard and Edward Mark, we managed to get most ofthem back to school. This year ... they refused to send them back.”196
La Tuque was selected because it had a Protestant high school, a technical school,
inexpensive electrical power, proximity to Trois-Rivières, available land, good municipal services, and access to transportation. It was also seen to be a natural centre for
the Aboriginal peoples from whom the government expected to recruit students.197
Church officials and civil servants soon became concerned about the feasibilityof the project, due to both the planned size of the La Tuque school and the numberof Cree children who were to be taught within its walls. By January 1958, Larivière
alerted Indian Affairs’ regional supervisor that the number of children from Mistassini
and Waswanipi would surpass the school’s capacity.198 In a letter sent to the branch’s
Ottawa headquarters the following month, Indian Affairs official A. J. Doucet argued
that the maximum number of students living at the school should be set higher thanthat of other residential schools in Québec. He pointed out that there were no reservesin the region on which the government could establish Anglican day schools.199
The superintendent of education, R. F. Davey, hesitated “to accept this recommendation on the scanty data presented and I cannot accept the suggestion that all of thechildren of these Bands are institutional cases.” Instead of immediately agreeing tobuild a significantly larger school, he concluded that to “send all of the children to aresidential school commits the department to an ever expanding residential school
and the neglect of community development, which past experience has proved hinders rather than helps the social and economic development of the Indian.”200 Despite
Davey’s preference for a relatively small school, the pressure from Indian Affairs field
staff ultimately led to the adoption of a plan in June 1959 for a school with a maximum
capacity of 250.201 In an effort to keep the enrolment down, it was decided that thosestudents from Mistassini and Waswanipi who were already enrolled in schools in
Ontario would continue to attend school in that province.202 In addition, discussions
began in 1958 to open a day school at Mistassini; the school opened in 1963.203 (A federal government hostel was opened at Mistassini in 1971 and operated until 1978.)204
Anglican and government officials ensured the integration of Aboriginal students
from the La Tuque residential school into the high school run by the city’s Protestantschool board. In June 1959, Doucet informed Indian Affairs headquarters of his planfor these students. “I have in mind of including in the local school Grades 5, 6 and 7
and High School. We would keep in our school the first four years, which, without
doubt, will require more than one room per grade.”205 The La Tuque residential school
opened its doors at the beginning of September 1963. By the end of the month, 217
students (116 girls and 101 boys) were enrolled.206 With this, the Québec expansion,
together with the hostel system in Inuit communities of the Arctic Nunavik region of
Québec, was largely complete.

46 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Most of these schools had short lifespans of less than twenty years: Maliotenam(Sept-Îles) closed in 1971, Amos closed in 1973, and La Tuque closed in 1978.207 Aftertransferring to Aboriginal management, the Pointe Bleue school remained in operation until 1991.208

The Mennonite schools in Ontario
The followers of a Protestant movement of the sixteenth century that stressed
adult baptism, who were originally known as the “Anabaptists,” became known as the“Mennonites” (since one of their leaders was Menno Simons). Historically, there weremajor waves of Mennonite migration to what is now Canada: one from Pennsylvania
to Upper Canada after the American War of Independence in the late eighteenth century; and another in the late nineteenth century, in which 18,000 Mennonites migrated
from Russia to the Canadian West. A Conference of Mennonites in Canada was established in 1903. It is now known as the “Mennonite Church Canada.” However, not all
Mennonite congregations are affiliated with this organization and Mennonite congregations have considerable autonomy.209 Canadian Mennonites undertook general
missionary work among Aboriginal people in Canada, but in the field of education,
three Mennonite residential schools were established in northwestern Ontario, starting in the early 1960s. They were an extension of the work of an American Mennonite
mission: the Northern Light Gospel Mission, which was itself an outgrowth of thework that Mennonites from Pennsylvania had been carrying out in Minnesota.210 By
the mid-1960s, it was based out of Red Lake, Ontario, and operated nineteen missionsin Ontario and Minnesota. The mission had ceased operations by 1997. Those congregations that had been affiliated with it continued as members of either the Christian
Anishnabec Fellowship or unaffiliated Mennonite churches.211
The Northern Light Gospel Mission established a private school at the remote northwestern Ontario community of Poplar Hill in the late 1950s. According to an IndianAffairs report from March 1960, five children from the community of McDowell Lakewere boarding at the Poplar Hill Mennonite school.212 At the time, there was no room
for them at any of the Indian Affairs day or residential schools.213 Although IndianAffairs was not prepared to fund the school at the same level as a residential school, it
was prepared to provide $1 a day for each student who was boarding at the school.214 In
1962, the Sioux Lookout residential school was experiencing problems with “truancy
and bad behavior,” resulting in expulsions and transfers of students. It was decided todeny students admission to both the Sioux Lookout and McIntosh schools if they had
irregular attendance patterns, or were considerably older than their grade level.215 At
the same time, the government entered into an agreement with the Northern Light
Gospel Mission to provide residential schooling for thirty students at Poplar Hill.

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 47

Fifteen of the students were to be “of normal age pursuing regular course [sic],” andfifteen were to be “over-aged children pursuing a special course consisting of half timeacademic upgrading and half time vocational training.”216 When the residential program opened in August 1962, seven of the first group of over-aged students were transferred from the Sioux Lookout school.217 Most of the students were between fourteen
and eighteen years of age. The staff members were mostly volunteers, recruited by the
mission. The school’s focus was to provide students with training on the use of equipment that would be available to them in their home communities. The school had
a small sawmill, and the students were involved in constructing many of the schoolbuildings and were taught motor repair. An assessment of the school in 1966 notedthat only two students had dropped out and that sixteen had returned to “the regular school system at their normal age-grade level.” These were seen as signs of theschool’s accomplishment.218
By the mid-1960s, in its correspondence, Indian Affairs was referring to the
Mennonite school as a residential school. In 1966, a decision was made to increaseenrolment and give the school even more of a vocational training focus.219 A 1971
inspection of the school concluded that “Northern Light Gospel Mission are providing an excellent education service to the Indian children in Poplar Hill Development
School. Their educational facilities, residential quarters for the children and theirworkshops are impressive.”220 In 1971, the Northern Youth Program (nyp), a branchof the Northern Light Gospel Mission, was organized, at the request of parents innorthern Ontario communities, to work with students who either had dropped out ofhigh school or did not wish to go out of the region to attend high school.221 By 1972,
the government had entered into an agreement with the nyp to operate a boys’ residential school at Stirland Lake, also in northwestern Ontario.222 A third school was
opened—at the request of local chiefs—at Cristal Lake in 1976. It offered grades Nine,
Ten, and Eleven for girls only.223 Concerns about programs and operations at the three
Mennonite schools led the chiefs of the Pehtabun area to decide to withhold students
from the school in 1979.224 Their concerns were investigated by a representative of
the Northern Nishnawbe Education Council (nnec), who said that although the students had a number of complaints about restrictions at the schools, “they were fairly
satisfied with the treatment they received from the staff members.”225 The nnec wasan organization of individuals concerned with Aboriginal education in northwestern
Ontario. After 1983, it was a party to the agreements between the nyp and the federal
government regarding the Cristal Lake and Stirland Lake schools.226 The Cristal Lake
school closed in 1986, and the Stirland Lake school became co-educational at thattime.227 A controversy over discipline at the Poplar Hill school (described elsewhere inthis report) led to the closure of that school in 1989.228 The Stirland Lake school closed
in 1991.229

48 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

As noted, these expansions, while running counter to the general Indian Affairs
preference for day schools as opposed to residential institutions, were in keeping withthe historical trend of using residential schools as part of the colonization of remoteregions, aimed in large part towards the exploitation of the valuable natural resourcesof those regions. The dominant education policy theme of the period, however, wascontraction of the residential school system, not expansion. To reduce its dependence
on residential schools, Indian Affairs changed the funding formula to allow it to exert
more control over the system, and initiated an extensive program through which the
majority of First Nations students would be educated in provincial schools. Both policies were to bring Indian Affairs and the Roman Catholic officials who ran most of theresidential schools into ongoing conflict.

Exerting control through funding and regulation
The outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 led to a new round of budget cuts
for residential schools. This time, however, instead of cutting the school’s per capita
grants, Indian Affairs reduced the pupilage (the number of students for which a school
was authorized to receive a per capita grant) by 7.76%. In other words, schools that in
the past had been allowed to receive funding for a maximum of 100 students would
now receive a per capita grant for a maximum of only 92.24 students.230 On the surface,
the policy was fairer than one of reducing the per capita grant, since schools would
receive the full grant for those students whose enrolment was authorized. The problem
was that many schools needed their full pupilage to cover their operating costs, whichwere steadily increasing even when the number of pupils was reduced. Although both
the Catholics and the Protestants objected to the reduction, some Catholic officials
believed that the policy was a sign of government favouritism towards the Protestants.
Kamloops school principal Fergus O’Grady said that the reduction was intended tohelp the Protestant schools, since, he thought, they often failed to meet their pupilage.
The Catholic schools, on the other hand, he said, “are away above their authorized
enrolment and should be receiving a larger grant to care for the extra children.”231 He
may have been right. In 1943, only 24% of the Roman Catholic schools had failed torecruit enough students to meet their assigned pupilage, while 65% of the Anglican
schools had failed to meet their pupilage, and 50% of the United Church schools
had failed to meet their pupilage. Both Presbyterian schools had not only met theirpupilage, they had surpassed it.232
Anglican Church representative T. B. R. Westgate did not believe, however, that his
church had received preferential treatment. In 1941, he informed Indian Affairs thatthe reduction in the pupilage had “made it absolutely impossible to undertake manyof the repairs and improvements we heartily desire.”233 The principal of the United

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 49

Church school in Muncey, Ontario (Mount Elgin), wrote in 1944 that “the pupilageof this school is considerably below the economic operating level at the present time,thus creating considerable difficulty in financing and carrying out a proper training
program.”234 In the face of wartime inflation, in 1942, Indian Affairs made a special
payment of $10 a student to all residential schools, which it paid again the following
year and increased to $15 in 1944–45.235
Although the number of students the government was prepared to fund had fallen
by 7. 76%, enrolment fell only by 2.8% (from 9,027 in 1939–40 to 8,774 in 1940–41).
As a result, less money was available to feed, clothe, house, and teach more children.236 The trend continued. According to a brief presented by United Church official
George Dorey, there were 8,294 students in attendance at residential schools acrossCanada in September 1943. The federal government, however, was prepared to fundonly a maximum pupilage of 7,715. The situation was further complicated by the factthat twenty-two schools had not managed to recruit enough students to meet their
reduced pupilage. The total shortfall at these schools was 257. Therefore, Canada waspaying a per capita grant for only 7,458 of the 8,294 students enrolled in residential
schools. The churches were making up the difference in cost.237
The churches highlighted the extent of underfunding by pointing to the level of support given to Indian boarding schools in the United States. There, the per capita grant
for a boarding school with fewer than 200 pupils was $335. The 1941 per capita grant
for the Canadian schools, most of which had fewer than 200 pupils, was $170. In 1943,
a committee of representatives from the church organizations involved in operating
the residential schools in Canada argued that the difference between the Canadianand American per capita rates was “the difference between the Government scale ofexpenditures in regard to salaries, pensions, etc., and the scale of a purely humanitarian enterprise such as the Church, which commands the services of so many men andwomen whose first motive is service.”238 Despite these arguments, the reduction in the
pupilage was not lifted until 1944.239
Rising expenses continued to have an impact on the schools’ ability to care forstudents properly. In seeking an increase in the per capita grant in 1947, George
Dorey wrote:
This is the time of year when we are dealing with our church budgets; and I may
say that we do not contemplate, with any sort of happy feeling, having to put inchurch money to do the Government’s work, and, further, that any request for
an increased grant of church funds for the operation of Indian Schools is goingto create quite a feeling in our Board that the Government is not discharging its
obligation for the educational needs of the Indian people.240

In the post-war years, the government did significantly increase residential school
funding. There was, for example, a 17% increase in the per capita grant, beginning in50 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

October 1947.241 Table 32.1 shows the annual enrolment and spending on residential
schools during this period.
Table 32.1. Indian Affairs funding of residential schools, 1946–47 to 1950–51.

Year

Number of residential
school students

Amount federal
government spent on
residential schools

Amount spent
per student

1946–47

9,304

1,766,509.03

189.87

1947–48

8,986

2,223,632.20

247.461948–49

9,368

2,917,743.80

311.46

1949–50

9,316

3,354,920.20

360.12

1950–51

9,357

3,928,238.38

419.82

Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1947, 216; Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1948, 217; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1949, 199;
Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1950, 68; Canada, Annual Report of the Department
of Indian Affairs, 1951, 17; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1947, 235; Canada,
Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1948, 233; Canada, Annual Report of the Department ofIndian Affairs, 1949, 214; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1950, 85; Canada, Annual
Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1951, 33.

Over a five-year period, residential school funding increased per student by over
121%. After adjusting for inflation, this was still an increase of 66%.242 However, theseincreases were calculated on very low funding bases, and followed years of operational neglect. Many schools continued to struggle for lack of proper funding. In 1949,
Indian Affairs official H. N. Woodsworth argued for an increase in the per capita grant
for the Hobbema, Alberta, school, since the current grant was “not enough to cover
the operating costs of this school.” He added that he thought the grant was “lower thanother similar Residential Schools.”243
Government officials were frustrated by the fact that they could not control how
the per capita grant money was spent. For example, Indian Affairs official J. Coleman
wrote in 1947 that he suspected that some of the Anglican schools funded by theMissionary Society of the Church of England in Canada (mscc) “have become seriously in debt and that the Departmental grants, instead of being used promptly for theschool for which they are paid, are used to pay the more pressing accounts of thoseless favoured institutions.” According to Coleman, the mscc had been slow to pay theAlert Bay, British Columbia, school’s accounts with local merchants. As a result, theprincipal had found it difficult to secure supplies.244
Into the 1950s, the government also had difficulty in controlling who attended theschools. In 1953, for example, Indian Affairs refused to provide a per capita grant for
two students attending the Christie, British Columbia, school because their admission
had not been approved by the department.245 Increased enrolments drove up costs
and diluted the impact of improved funding when enrolment exceeded the pupilage.

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 51

Indian Affairs was also disturbed by ongoing requests to pay for buildings andrepairs for which the branch had not given advance approval. In 1946, R. A. Hoey
reminded principals that it was Indian Affairs policy to “render financial aid towards
the cost of buildings and equipment only when the prior authority of the department
has been obtained.”246
Principals resented government attempts to exert control over the way they ran
their schools. In 1948, Sechelt, British Columbia, school principal H. F. Dunlop
accused Indian Affairs of making “decisions in the most minute matters in opposition
to wishes of the principal and the Agent whose advise [sic] is sought in all mattersrelating to the school.” He pointed to a government denial of a grant of $45 to purchasean electric motor for the manual training shop, which would be used to power equipment supplied by the government. In another case, only half the needed amount wasprovided for plumbing repairs, and, in another, a plan to convert a barn to a gymnasium was “being suspiciously examined as though it were the brain child of a moronic
mind.” To him, Indian Affairs was “tightfisted,” its grants were “inadequate,” and its
approach to decision making was “stultifying.”247
In January 1953, the Indian residential school regulations (Regulations With Respect
to Teaching, Education, Inspection, and Discipline for Indian Residential Schools,
Made and Established by the Superintendent General of Indian Affairs Pursuant toParagraph [a] of Section 114 of the Indian Act) came into force. In many ways, theregulations were simply a restatement of previous policies: they also represented an
attempt by Indian Affairs to exert control over the schools.
The schools were to follow the provincial curriculum and the number of classroom
hours was to be determined by the curriculum. The texts were to be the provincial texts
and there could be no more than a half-hour of religious instruction a day. Students
could not be admitted without Indian Affairs’ approval. Indian Affairs could also order
the removal of a student. Students could not be suspended, expelled, or discharged
without Indian Affairs’ approval. Every case of truancy was to be reported to IndianAffairs, and the principal was to take prompt action to ensure the return of truant students. The only condition under which students could be removed from the school
without Indian Affairs’ approval was when the principal was acting on medical advice.
The principal of every school was required to maintain acceptable standards inrelation to staff, enrolment, nutrition, clothing, accommodation, utilities, classroom
activities, recreation, counselling, relations with parents, and record keeping andaccounting for the funds, stock, and equipment. The principal was to “assume theresponsibilities of parent or guardian with respect to the welfare and discipline of thepupils under his charge.” Although the admission form for residential school application from this period required parents to place their child under the guardianship of
the principal, this requirement had no basis in the Indian Act’s education provisions.
Pupils were required to “conform to the rules for the conduct and behaviour of pupils

52 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

while on or near the school premises or on any premises where any activity of theschool is taking place.”248
In 1954 and again in 1957, the federal government further increased the overalllevel of funding to residential schools. In both cases, it did so by also assuming greater
control over how the money was spent. Starting in September 1954, the federal government “took over responsibility for the employment of teaching staff at all government-owned residential schools.”249 At the same time, the teachers were still under
the day-to-day authority of the school principals—who remained church employees.
In this arrangement, the teachers could also be required to provide a half-hour a dayof religious instruction.250 According to Indian Affairs, the move brought teachers’ pay
more in accord with revised salary rates in effect for other federal public servantsand for teachers employed in schools operated under provincial jurisdiction.
The salary ranges for all classifications and grades were increased, annual
increments for certain classifications were raised, and a change was made in therequirements for certain classifications. It is expected the revision will assist the
Branch to secure certificated and experienced teachers for all positions.251

The move was also in keeping with Indian Affairs’ preference for asserting greater
control over how money was being spent. Since it had assumed the costs of teachers’salaries, Indian Affairs reduced the overall per capita grants to the residential schools
by 5%.252
The move created complications for the Roman Catholic schools, where most of
the teachers were members of religious orders.253 In 1958, the Oblates reached anagreement with the federal government under which religious staff members would
be considered as one body and no specific salary would be assigned to specific individuals. The Oblates also proposed that “the Sisters would continue to work for the
Oblates as before and not directly for the Government as it had been proposed.”254
In 1957, Indian Affairs replaced the per capita system with what was termed a “controlled cost” funding system. The intent of the change, according to Deputy Minister
Laval Fortier, was to strengthen Indian Affairs’ control over the schools and to “remove
the financial difficulties now being encountered by certain schools.” The new method
would “result in a substantial increase in cost, but it must be pointed out that thiswas inevitable in any event,” due to rising costs. The new formula would not apply tothe ten (largely Roman Catholic) church-owned schools, since these schools admitted“non-Indian” (in most cases, Métis) pupils.
Fortier’s description of the reasons for adopting the new funding system constitutea very frank admission of the system’s failure to that date. He wrote that under the percapita system,
1) There is no uniformity in the standards maintained at the residential schools
such as the quality of management and operational staff, quantity and quality

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 53

of food and clothing supplied to pupils and the general upkeep of premises
and facilities.
2)

The Department is not able to exercise any control over the manner in whichthese funds are expended. This applies particularly to items mentioned in
1 above and also to capital expenditures. Under the per capita grant system
there has been no clear definition of authority with regard to building
maintenance, renovations and additions to buildings. In many instances,major projects which fall under the above categories have been undertakenby the church authorities without reference to the Department. In many
instances the work would not pass engineering standards.

3)

The Department has been under constant and continual pressure fromthe heads of religious denominations and individual principals of schools
for increases in the per capita grant rate. Due to the lack of control overthe manner in which the funds are expended, it has been difficult, if not
impossible, to determine a fair and adequate grant for each school.

4)

The per capita grant system is, in effect, a system of making outright
donations to the religious denominations, with the principal having
unlimited control over the manner in which these funds are expended. In
some instances the principals are not good administrators, and it is felt thefunds are not being used in the wisest manner.255

The new funding model retained elements of the per capita system and was initiallydescribed as a “new system of establishing per capita grants.” In the past, the schools
had been expected to pay for a wide range of costs out of a single per capita grant that
had little connection to costs. Under the new system, different budget categories werecreated; they all had funding ceilings that were related to cost and enrolment.256
For example, schools were divided into different classifications, depending on thesize of their enrolment. In turn, a salary ceiling was set for each institution. Similarly,
food and clothing ceilings were developed per student. Initially, food, clothing, andfreight costs were to be based on the previous year’s expenditures. Capital costs andmajor repairs were to become the direct responsibility of the government. The government also took over responsibility for the supply of all major equipment; the purchase of such equipment was to be authorized in advance. Since school farms tended
to operate at a loss, the federal government intended to “dispose gradually of thesefarms,” or at least those that were losing money.257 Schools with more than 250 students
were provided with funding to hire a practical nurse. Transportation costs, including
the cost of returning students to their home communities at holiday times, were to
be covered by the federal government.258 Actual expenditures on telephone, fuel, andlight were to be reimbursed, as were expenditures on household maintenance items
and building repairs up to $1,500 per school per year, but not exceeding $200 for any

54 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

single project.259 Although church officials were receptive to the new model, they worried that the various funding ceilings were being set at levels that were too low.260
In October 1957, the Treasury Board approved the new funding system, retroactive to the beginning of the calendar year. In approving the policy, the Treasury Board
acknowledged with approval the “present policy of restricting the use of the residential
schools in view of the high cost of this type of education.” It encouraged Indian Affairs
to “continue with and intensify its efforts to limit the number of residential schools.”261
The new funding formula was accompanied by the negotiation of a set of agreements between the government and the churches. Those contracts gave the minister
responsible for Indian Affairs “a very substantial degree of control” over the operationof the schools. Such control was needed, it was later argued, because “the standards
in many of the church-operated schools had been scandalously low.”262 However, by
taking over more responsibility for the schools, the government was placing itself ina situation where it could close the schools with less opposition. The details of thecontracts were not finalized until 1961. They required that the schools be operated
according to government-issued “rules, regulations, directives and instructions.” Thecontracts were entered into with the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the Missionary
Society of the Anglican Church of Canada, the Board of Home Missions of the United
Church of Canada, and the Women’s Missionary Society (Western Division) of the
Presbyterian Church in Canada.263
The Oblates viewed the move to the new system as the precursor to a loss of control over the schools. An internal Oblate paper asked if the contract (and the funding
system) was the “thin edge of a wedge” that would eventually push them out of “theeducation of Indian children.” It was argued that the wedge had already been inserted,either when the church sold most of its schools to the government, or when the government began paying teachers’ salaries. Overall, the Oblates were hesitant to sign
the contract, “not so much because of what it contains as because of what it lacks, i.e.
anything which guarantees us a real part to play in the education of Indian children.”At the same time, they recognized that there was an advantage in having a contract“by which the Government promises and obligates itself to do something definite.”264
The change had a real impact on the schools. Residential school funding increased
from $8,718,771 in 1957–58 to $11,405,931 in 1958–59, an increase of 23%.265
The per capita system lingered on at church-owned schools, leading to regularrequests to increase funding. In 1967, the Indian Affairs education director, R. F. Davey,
was supporting an Oblate request to increase the per capita grant to the Christie,
British Columbia, school from $650 a year to $830. Davey pointed out that under the
existing grant, the school could not attract competent teachers or pay its operating
staff a minimum of $1.25 an hour. The situation was further complicated by the factthat in order to comply with a fire marshal’s directive, the school was being obliged toOperating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 55

reduce its enrolment. Davey also pointed out that for similar reasons, Indian Affairs
had increased the grant to the Fort Albany, Ontario, school to $830 a year.266
From 1940 to 1960, when the new contracts were negotiated, residential school
enrolment remained relatively static. It was 8,774 in 1940–41 and was 9,109 in
1959–60.267 However, there had been dramatic growth in enrolment in Indian Affairs
day schools and in provincial government day schools. Enrolment in Indian Affairs
day schools in 1940–41 was 8,651.268 By 1959–60, it was 18,812.269 The most significant
change in enrolment was in a category that had not even existed twenty years earlier:the number of First Nations students enrolled in grades One to Thirteen in provincial,private, and territorial schools. This figure in 1959–60 was 9,006: just 100 fewer than
the number of students attending residential schools.270 These students were the ones
who were being educated under the government’s integration policy. It was throughthe further extension of this policy that the federal government intended to bring residential schooling to an end.

Integration
In its final report, issued in 1949, the Special Joint Committee of the Senate andHouse of Commons Appointed to Examine and Consider The Indian Act made only
two recommendations in regards to education.
Your Committee recommends the revision of those sections of the Act whichpertain to education, in order to prepare Indian children to take their places
as citizens.
Your Committee, therefore, recommends that wherever and whenever possible
Indian children should be educated in association with other children.271

These two recommendations are really one recommendation. The first one defined
the goal, which had remained unchanged since 1883: assimilation. The second laid
the groundwork for the method: what would come to be called “integration.” Under
the integration policy, First Nations students were to be shifted from Indian Affairs
schools to public schools. Since residential schools played only a small role in provincial education systems, the committee was—silently—calling for the end of the residential schools.272
The Special Joint Committee’s recommendations formed the basis of the first section of the 1951 Indian Act provisions dealing with education:
The Governor in Council may authorize the Minister, in accordance with this Act,(a) to establish, operate and maintain schools for Indian children,56 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission(b) to enter into agreements on behalf of His Majesty for the education inaccordance with this Act of Indian children, with(i) the government of a province(ii) the council of the Northwest Territories(iii) the council of the Yukon Territory(iv) a public or separate school board(v) a religious or charitable organization.273

The Roman Catholic Church opposed the provisions that allowed the minister toenter into contracts with provincial and territorial governments and school boards.
It was felt that these measures compromised the provisions in the Act that guaranteed that Roman Catholic students would not be sent to schools operated under
the Protestants.274
From 1951 onwards, the government focus would be on making the fullest use of
the powers authorized in subsection (b): the power to contract out its responsibility for the provision of First Nations and Inuit education. The 1951 Indian Act, thefirst major revision to the Act in decades, contained only nine other sections dealing
with education: four dealt with attendance, truancy, and expulsion; three affirmed
the rights of the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches (still making no mentionof Aboriginal spirituality); one outlined the minister’s authority; and one was a set ofdefinitions. It made only passing reference to residential schools.275
In the past, most First Nations students who went to school either lived at home
and attended an Indian Affairs day school (often operated by a religious organization) or lived in and attended a residential school (almost always operated by a religious organization). However, in the 1950s, a new series of educational categories
were developed. For example, some students who lived in residential schools began
to attend classes in Indian Affairs day schools. Other students might live at home andattend class at the local residential school. Classes were also being taught in IndianAffairs hospitals and in schools that operated only on a seasonal basis. Enrolment
in the new category of “Non-Indian Schools” increased from 1,406 pupils in 1949 to
8,186 in 1959.276
The policy of moving students out of Indian Affairs schools and into public andchurch-run day schools was pursued aggressively. The federal government began
negotiating agreements with local school authorities, usually school boards, to contribute to the construction of what were termed “joint schools.” The federal government
also paid a yearly tuition fee for each First Nations student attending a joint school.277

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 57

In 1949, the British Columbia government adopted legislation that allowed theprovincial ministry of education and local school boards to enter into agreementswith the federal government to educate First Nations children. In that year, IndianAffairs made its first financial contribution to the construction of a provincial school.
Manitoba similarly gave school boards authority to enter into agreements with thefederal government to educate First Nations students in 1954. Alberta legislation,
which passed in 1956 but was made retroactive to 1952, allowed school boards toenter into similar agreements.278
By 1958, there were fifteen such agreements in place, covering fifty-two joint
schools, of which twenty-one were in British Columbia. According to the IndianAffairs annual report, thejoint schools are playing a significant part not only in the broadening
educational programme for Indian students, but also in their social adjustment
in communities in which some of them will likely seek employment. Without
exception the joint schools have produced a mutual understanding and respect
between the Indians and non-Indians.279

Table 32.2 shows the changes in where First Nations students were being educatedduring the 1950s. Over a ten-year period, the total number of students had increased
by 67%. The number of students living in residential schools (and either attending
school in the residential school or a nearby Indian Affairs school) was 9,974. This represents an increase of 606 students over the number of students previously in residential schools (a 6.5% increase). Students living at home and attending Indian Affairs
day schools constituted the largest number of students at the beginning and end of
the period. This group had increased by 5,282 (42%). The largest increase, though,was among those who were being integrated into public and separate schools (often
Catholic schools). The number in this group jumped from 1,406 to 8,186: an increaseof 482.2%.280

58 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Table 32.2. First Nations students in 1949 and 1959, comparing enrolment figures fordifferent types of schools.
Type of school
Indian Day Schools

Enrolment
1949

1959

12,511

17,793

Residential School Boarders Attending Indian Day Schools

283

Seasonal Schools893

Hospital Schools

572

Residential Schools

9,368(a) Boarders Attending Residential Schools

9,691(b) Day Pupils Attending Residential Schools

1,418

Non-Indian Schools

1,406

8,186**

Total

23,285*38,836*Included are an undetermined number of non-Indian pupils.
**Included are 737 pupils who board at residential schools and attend non-Indian schools.
Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1959, 55.

There was a slight decrease in the number of residential schools: sixty-nine in
the 1949–50 school year, and sixty-three in the 1959–60 school year.281 Indian Affairs
began operating a small number of schools on a seasonal basis in the 1955-56 school
year. The initial enrolment was 1,073 students. Five years later, enrolment was down
to 698, and by 1964–65, the last year that Indian Affairs reported on the project, there
were seventy-nine students being taught in such schools. The 1955–56 school year was
also the first year that Indian Affairs reported on the number of students being taught
in Indian Affairs hospitals. In that year, there were 739 pupils. This number peaked thefollowing year at 832. It declined annually until 1964–65, the last year on which IndianAffairs reported. By then, there were 173 students being taught in hospitals.282
In 1960, the number of students attending “non-Indian” schools (9,479) surpassed
the number living in residential schools (9,471).283 This was the second year in a row
that the growth of First Nations enrolment in “non-Indian” schools had exceeded thegrowth in enrolment in Indian Affairs schools.284 The overall policy goal was to restrict
the education being given in Indian Affairs schools to the lower grades. As a result, it
was expected that, during the course of their schooling, at least half of the students
then in Indian Affairs schools would transfer to a “non-Indian” school.285
In 1963, a number of Indian Affairs schools in northern Alberta were transferredto the authority of the provincial Northlands School Division. By that year, IndianAffairs had entered into 157 separate agreements with authorities across the country for the education of First Nations children.286 By 1966, the federal government
had invested $15,581,600 in provincial schools to provide for 15,550 First Nations
pupils.287 Agreements had been reached with the Manitoba and British Columbia

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 59

provincial governments, establishing a province-wide tuition rate (to be paid by thefederal government) for First Nations students attending provincial schools.288 The
federal government also continued to make extensive investments in the construction of provincial schools. In 1966–67, it contributed $4,145,000 towards capital costs
in provincial schools, just under 10% of the $52,000,000 that Indian Affairs budgeted
for education in that year.289 As part of the integration process, Indian Affairs alsobegan closing its own day schools. In 1959, there were 220 one-classroom IndianAffairs schools. A decade later, according to Indian Affairs official R. F. Davey, “mostof the small, inadequate, ungraded schools” had been closed.290 The 1966–67 school
year was marked by two significant developments. First, it was in that year that 95%
of all school-aged First Nations children were attending school. This result had beenachieved largely through integration. Second, it was also the first year in which thenumber of First Nations students attending provincial schools exceeded the number
attending Indian Affairs schools.291
It should be noted that just as Aboriginal people had been granted no input into
the Indian Affairs school system, they had little ability to influence the provincial
schools. People with status under the Indian Act did not get the right to vote in British
Columbia until 1949; in Manitoba, 1952; in Ontario, 1954; in Saskatchewan, 1960; inAlberta, 1965; and in Québec, 1969. They were given the right to vote in Canadianelections in 1960, and the Inuit were given the vote in 1950.292 As late as the mid-1960s,
First Nations people did not have the right to participate in school-board elections—either as voters or candidates—in Ontario and New Brunswick.293
It is obvious from the figures that from 1950 onward, residential schooling played
an increasingly smaller role in First Nations education. This was far from uncontroversial, and was part of a larger set of conflicts between the federal government and thechurches—most particularly, the Roman Catholic Church.

Inter-denominational conflict
By the late 1930s, senior Indian Affairs officials had concluded that the country’s
residential schools were inadequate, inefficient, and ineffective.294 They were convinced that the future lay in the establishment of day schools.295 The 1951 amendments to the Indian Act gave them the authority to enter into contracts to have First
Nations children educated in provincial schools.296 Despite this, the number of First
Nations students living in residences did not begin to decline until the mid-1960s.297
As late as 1970–71, there were 6,000 students living in residence.298 There were numerous reasons for the slowness of the decline in the use of residential schooling. As
noted earlier, one of the key reasons was the lack of classroom alternatives. There
were, however, other factors. Among them was the fact that the churches involved in60 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the operation of the schools, particularly the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches,
considered the schools to be part of their overall missionary work. In carrying out thiswork, the churches viewed each other—and the government—with suspicion andhostility. The result was often the duplication of services in the same region, costly anddivisive conflicts between churches over individual students, and the continuationof substandard schools. The level of hostility between the Catholic Church and thefederal government reached such proportions that at one point, government officials
considered charging a Catholic principal with fraud, while Catholics viewed themselves as participating in a struggle akin to warfare.
A 1947 Anglican Church survey of its residential schools, to determine which ones
might be closed or turned over to the federal government, reveals the degree to which
the church believed itself to be locked into a battle with the Catholics. It also demonstrates the degree to which the church was prepared to tolerate substandard schools
rather than to close them and leave the field open to the Catholics. In assessing thefuture of these schools, the dominant criterion was whether a closure would create
an opening for the Roman Catholic Church. Two of the most northerly schools in the
country, Carcross in the Yukon and Aklavik in the Northwest Territories, were seenas crucial to the Anglicans in light of “vigorous r.c. work” in both territories. It wasthought that the schools at Whitefish Lake and Wabasca, Alberta, could be turned overto the federal government. However, the survey stated, “the two schools appear to bevery necessary in face of the very aggressive and fanantical [sic] type of Romanism in
the area.” The school at Moose Factory had not been able to secure its full pupilage
and was running at a loss. Closing a school that had been built just nine years earlier,
however, “would be a confession that an error was made in erecting this good building
and would seriously injure our prestige in an area in which the r.c. Church is striving
hard to displace us.” The Fort George, Québec, school was “necessary” if the Anglicans
were to maintain their position in the face of “strong r.c. efforts” in the area. The Sioux
Lookout, Ontario, and Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, schools were “vital to our missionary work as the Roman Catholic agents are everywhere active.” While the Alert
Bay school in British Columbia and the Shingwauk school in Ontario were not seen
as vital to Anglican missionary work, the survey reflected them both as successful andcost-efficient. The Elkhorn school in Manitoba and the Chapleau school in Ontario, on
the other hand, were viewed as having outlived their usefulness and could be closed.
In the case of Elkhorn, it was expected that the federal government would offer the
church a new school in northern Manitoba, if it agreed to the closure of Elkhorn. (Anew school was built in the 1950s, not in the North but in Dauphin, Manitoba.)299
The different approaches that the churches took towards the Indian Affairs policy of integration fed the inter-denominational conflict. Unlike the Roman Catholic
Church, the Anglican and United churches came to support the integration policy.
However, an internal Anglican Indian School Administration report was concernedOperating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 61

that, in Alberta at least, the Anglican policy of co-operating with the integration policy was “militating against our Missionary effort.” At Cardston, while the Anglicans
were encouraging students to attend the public schools, the “Romans on the other
hand encourage their pupils to attend high school classes and reside in the residential
school.” Since this allowed them to live on the reserve and close to their homes, it had“led to some Anglican families becoming Roman Catholic.”300
In 1960, United Church minister Earl F. Stotesbury complained to Indian Affairs
about the “very grave harm a policy of the Roman Catholic Church is doing to Indianpeople in its deliberate program of segregation of Indians from other Canadians
because of religion, and so called cultural reason, [sic] and its unfair pressures on
your department and with other denominations to gain its ends.” The Saskatchewan
Conference of the United Church had adopted a motion supporting Indian Affairs’plans “for the integration of Indian children from reserves to town schools” by busing
them from the reserves to the schools. However, the church said that the plans had
been blocked “by the refusal of Roman Catholic Church authorities to allow their students to participate in this plan.” (By 1960, there were no United Church residential
schools in Saskatchewan.)
Stotesbury pointed out that the United Church had agreed to the closing of its residence at Round Lake, Saskatchewan, in expectation that the system of day schools
would be expanded in the region. Instead, the federal government paid for the expansion of the Roman Catholic school at Grayson. When the United Church agreed tothe closure of its school at File Hills, it had expected that the Roman Catholic schoolat Qu’Appelle would also close; instead, it expanded. Stotesbury also said a number of United Church families had converted to Catholicism and had their children
baptized into that religion so that they could attend the Roman Catholic residential
school, which was the school closest to their homes.301 In other cases, he said, United
Church parents had been left with little choice but to send their children to Catholicrun day schools. For his part, Indian Affairs Branch Director H. M. Jones concluded
that Stotesbury’s charges were “unwarranted,” arising from “misinformation which hehad received, from suspicions due to his knowledge of the affiliations of some department officials, and from his deliberate or unfortunate misinterpretation of statementsof Branch officials.” It was, however, reflective of the continued hostility and suspicion
that characterized inter-church relations.302
The churches also viewed Indian Affairs through a highly sectarian lens. Theyclosely monitored the attention that each church received from the government,
watching for any sign of special treatment. When the closure of the United Church’s
aging and poorly maintained Mount Elgin school in Muncey, Ontario, was under consideration in 1943, United Church officials noted “it would scarcely be fair to the interests of the United Church to close this school unless a corresponding reduction weremade in the enrolment at schools operated by other church bodies.”303

62 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

They also paid close attention to the religious affiliation of Indian Affairs officials.
In 1946, Oblate official J. O. Plourde presented Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent with atable showing that sixty-nine of eighty-three Indian Affairs inspectors and agents wereProtestants. Similarly, he said, all the senior Indian Affairs officials in Ottawa (R. A.
Hoey, T. R. L. MacInnes, P. E. Moore, D. J. Allan, and W. J. F. Ford) were also Protestant.
To address this, he recommended that a Catholic, Philip Phelan, be appointed to thevacant position of superintendent of Welfare and Training.304 Phelan got the appointment, and served as chief of the new Training Division (which was later renamed the
Education Division). He retired in 1953.305
The Anglicans kept their own head count. A 1952 assessment by Henry Cook, thehead of the Anglican Indian School Administration, concluded, “The two most influential men in Indian Affairs (from the education angle) are Colonel L. Fortier (Deputy
Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) and Mr. Philip Phelan (Superintendent ofIndian Education). Both men are ardent Roman Catholics and Mr. Phelan is a very
active member of the Knights of Columbus.” Cook did not have automatic faith in theProtestants at Indian Affairs, either. He judged Indian Affairs Branch Director Major
D. M. MacKay, a Protestant, to be “ineffectual,” since he knew “very little of what isgoing on.”306 Six years later, Cook was worrying that the number of Roman Catholic
Indian agents was increasing across the country. He said that he had “been told bymore than one r.c. School Principal that their Church encourages laymen to apply forsuch Civil Service appointments.” He recommended, “More enlightened Anglicans
ought to be encouraged to look upon such positions as a lay ministry.”307 Indian Affairs
attempted to balance the religious affiliations of its employees who dealt with residential schools. When R. F. Davey succeeded Philip Phelan as the head of the Education
Division, it was felt that his assistant “should be a person belonging to the Roman
Catholic Church, in view of the large number of schools operating under the auspicesof that Church.” It was further decided to delay advertising for the position until thegovernment was sure that a qualified Catholic would apply.308
The war for souls was not limited to competitive positioning for school control
and departmental influence. It was also waged on what amounted to a child-by-childbasis. The Indian Act provision that “no Protestant child shall be assigned to a Roman
Catholic school or a school conducted under Roman Catholic auspices, and no Roman
Catholic child shall be assigned to a Protestant school or a school conducted underProtestant auspices” generated tremendous conflict over the years.309 The provision
reinforced the missionaries’ sense of ownership of the Aboriginal people they sought
to convert. Catholics and Protestants regularly accused each other of what amounted
to stealing “their children.” Indian Affairs officials were, as a result, continually being
required to adjudicate such disputes.
In 1940, for example, conflict erupted between the Roman Catholic and Anglican
schools near Cardston, Alberta. The principal of the Anglican school, Canon S. H.

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 63

Middleton, claimed that a girl who had been voluntarily enrolled in his school had
been removed by her parents and enrolled in the Catholic school instead, after he hadrefused the mother’s request to take her out for a visit. Middleton said the girl’s father
was a long-standing Anglican. When it was pointed out that the father had not signed
the school application form, Middleton explained that he had signed it at the mother’s request, “in the same manner that I have signed dozens and dozens in the past,owing to the confidence that has been developed between church and people throughmany years of service.” He said this was legitimate, since in that family, the husband
always carried out the wife’s requests (he eventually called the wife “secretive anduntruthful”).310 Indian Affairs official R. A. Hoey took a more negative view of the affair,saying that Middleton’s practice was not “legal, orthodox, or legitimate.” The agent
was instructed to have new applications sent in for all students whose applications
had been signed by the principal.311 This conflict underscores an additional issue: thelack of control and scrutiny that Indian Affairs exercised over who was admitted tothe schools.
That same year, the Manitoba inspector of Indian agencies, A. G. Hamilton, wasobliged to try to resolve the conflict that arose when a man who had converted from
Catholicism to Presbyterianism attempted to transfer his daughter from the Roman
Catholic Pine Creek school to the Presbyterian school in Birtle, Manitoba. Hamilton
noted at the time, “Unfortunately, there is a great rivalry on this reserve between the
Presbyterian missionary and [the Roman Catholic] Father Comeau with the result thatmany of the Indians do not know from day to day which church they belong to.”312 Three
years later, Hamilton was involved in adjudicating a dispute between the Portage la
Prairie (United Church) and Sandy Bay (Roman Catholic) schools in Manitoba. John
Daniels of the Long Plain Reserve said that he had been born and raised a Protestantand married his wife, a Catholic, in a Protestant ceremony. He said a Catholic priest“bothered him for years to turn Catholic,” and he eventually agreed to be baptized.
However, when he applied to have his son Donald educated, he gave the boy’s religion
as Protestant. Because he did not like the way his son was being treated at the Portagela Prairie residential school, he applied to have him sent to a Roman Catholic school.
After changes in the leadership at the Portage school, he and his wife decided theywanted their son to remain there. Hamilton also had to look into a dispute over thechildren of Archie Meeches of Long Plain. Meeches told Hamilton that he had “noreligion except for the Indian religion,” but his wife had been raised as a Protestant.
In the summer of 1943, at the urging of the local Catholic priest, she and her children
were baptized and an application was made to send the children to a Catholic school.
But, by November, Hamilton wrote, the parents “requested that these forms be forgotten and stated they would prefer to have the children back in the Portage School,”where they would be closer to home.313

64 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In 1945, D. S. Pitts, the principal of the Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario, protested the enrolment of the son of a former student in the Roman Catholic school in
Kenora. Pitts also wanted to draw attention to the “unusual activity of Father LaSallesof St. Mary’s School [the Catholic school], in his efforts to persuade our people toleave us and join their (apparently) overcrowded school.”314 The following year, parents from the Islington Band in northern Ontario sought to send their children to the
Presbyterian school in Kenora. In this case, the father had been baptized a Catholic,but had attended the Presbyterian school and never followed the Catholic faith. His
wife was Catholic, but they had been married in the Anglican Church. Their children
had been baptized as Catholics, but they wanted them to attend the Presbyterianschool because “most of the Islington children were students there.”315
Parental wishes were often overridden in this process. In 1946, Mary Bone, a student at the Sandy Bay residential school, died at the Dyneger Indian Hospital fromtuberculosis. At the end of that year’s summer vacation, her parents and relatives
chose to transfer six children from the Catholic Sandy Bay school to the Presbyterian
Birtle school. The principal at Sandy Bay protested, and the children were ordered
to go back there. After two months of ongoing conflict, the children were returned totheir reserve. In February 1947, the Indian agent visited the parents on the reserve.
Although, he said, he believed they were all prepared to send their children to Sandy
Bay, one of them “would rather send them to Birtle School, as it is much nearer to theReserve, and therefore less expensive to get to in case the children get ill.”316
In 1947, the parents of a girl who had attended the Roman Catholic residential
school at Hobbema, Alberta, for seven years requested that she be transferred to theUnited Church school in Edmonton. The application was denied, even though the
Edmonton school had already accepted the girl. In ruling on the case, B. F. Neary,
the Indian Affairs superintendent of Welfare and Training, wrote that the general government policy was to have children educated in the faith of their father, even after
his death. (Only in British Columbia were the views of a widowed mother the deciding factor.) When parents sought to have their children raised in a faith other thantheir own, the department would require an affidavit from the father, and would delay
reaching a decision for several months. In this case of the girl at the Hobbema school,
the decision to insist the student be returned to the Catholic school—against her
parents’ wishes—was based on the lengthy period of time she had already attended
that school.317
The principal of the Pine Creek school implied that the Mounted Police were practising religious discrimination when they would not force two students to return to his
school in the fall of 1949. The parents had refused to surrender these children to theprincipal at the end of the summer, so he had called the police for help. According to
Principal Bretagne, the “said police found some elusive explanation for not going.”
The principal later discovered that the father had converted to a Protestant faith andOperating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 65

the children had been admitted to the Birtle school.318 The department then orderedthat the children be transferred back to Pine Creek.319
In his testimony to the Special Joint Committee investigating the Indian Act, R. A.
Hoey had noted the difficulty that Indian Affairs officials experienced in administering the provision of the Indian Act that prevented Roman Catholic students frombeing educated at Protestant schools and Protestant students from being educatedat Roman Catholic schools. He told the committee, “My personal opinion, and I holdthis opinion strongly, is that when such disputes arise the religious status of a childshould not be decided by departmental officials, as is now the case, but by an independent officer or officers appointed by the minister.”320 His request to be freed of thisburden of religious arbitration was ignored.
In 1951, the Indian Act was amended to provide that “no child whose parent is a
Protestant shall be assigned to a school conducted under Roman Catholic auspices
and no child whose parent is a Roman Catholic shall be assigned to a school conducted under Protestant auspices, except by written direction of the parent.”321
The option of changing schools on the basis of a written statement was new. The
Anglican Church’s Henry Cook worried at the time that the addition of the phrase
allowing for a written statement would “only add confusion when put into practicein the field.” When he raised his concerns with Walter Harris, the minister responsible for Indian Affairs, he was assured that “where evidence showed that bribery or
persuasion by a religious body had been used to influence the parents, the written
request of the parent would be ignored and the Minister decide where the child would
attend school.” Harris also revealed that at a meeting with Indian leaders about thechanges to the Indian Act, their only comment regarding education was that they “allfavoured Government Day schools over Church operated Residential Schools.”
Despite the minister’s assurances, by 1952, Cook had concluded that the Roman
Catholic principals were taking advantage of the amendment in order to acceleratea campaign to bring Anglican children into Catholic schools: “It is apparent that the
Roman authorities feel that all that is required to allow Church of England pupils into
their schools is a written statement to that effect from one or both of the parents.” Cook
also felt that government officials were consistently ruling in the Catholics’ favour
when they claimed that an Anglican parent wished their child to attend a Catholicschool, but ruling against the Anglicans in similar situations.322
The number of conflicts over children increased in coming years. The Indian agent
in Norway House reported in the fall of 1951 that an Oblate missionary had recruited
fifteen students on the Island Lake Reserve, and had flown them to the Pine Creek
school without first referring their admission to him for approval. He noted that theparents of at least five of the children were members of the United Church, and he had
not seen any documentation indicating that the parents had approved the decision tosend the children to a Roman Catholic school.323 As a result, the school was instructed66 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

to return the children.324 After delaying for three weeks, the principal responded thatthe children had been baptized into the Catholic faith at their parents’ request. The
government eventually accepted the principal’s proposal that the school be allowed
to keep the students until June.325
In January 1952, Indian Affairs was investigating over fifty cases regarding Protestantchildren sent to Catholic schools and Catholic students sent to Protestant schools.326
At the beginning of 1953, Indian Affairs Branch Director D. M. MacKay identified
thirty cases where he felt “eligibility for admission to a residential school was doubtful
on religious grounds.”327 That same year, considerable correspondence was generated
as to whether one young boy, whose deceased father was Roman Catholic and whose
mother was a member of the United Church, could be admitted into the Catholic
McIntosh school in northwestern Ontario.328
The Canadian Catholic Council thought that Indian Affairs was biased against
Catholics in making decisions regarding which school children would attend. In
1954, it claimed that the federal government’s decisions were being made contrary to
the principle of “providing Christian education for both the Catholic and ProtestantIndian children of Canada.” In particular, the council said it could not “approve thepolicy of sending Roman Catholic children to neutral schools. These children should
be sent to Catholic Residential Schools or, if the number of pupils is sufficient, a separate Day School should be provided for them in accordance with Section 121 of the
Indian Act.” They buttressed their argument with a reference to the United Nations
Declaration of Human Rights provision: “Parents have a prior right to choose the kindof education to be given to their children.”329
In other situations, religious officials were not as concerned about parental choice.
During their testimony before the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and House ofCommons, the Catholic witnesses had denied that parents who followed traditional
Aboriginal spiritual practices had any such rights. When Sechelt, British Columbia,
principal William Bernardo was dealing with a band council that was calling for his
replacement, he remarked in frustration that the local First Nation people felt thatthey owned the school and therefore “should be allowed to run it, or a [sic] least to
have a great deal to say in how it should be run.” He added that there was “a growing
feeling that they have a right to self-expression and self-government and must pracice[sic] that right. It looks as if self-gov. for them is going to mean dictatorship for us.” Theprincipal concluded, “I think my best course is to [be] very rough with these people
even if it means another request for a transfer.”330
In 1955, J. A. Davis, an Indian agent in southern Saskatchewan, was presented
with eighteen applications for admission to the Roman Catholic school in Kamsack.
According to departmental records, sixteen of the children were from United Church
families and two from Anglican families.331 On reviewing the applications, Davis notedthat one of the witnesses to the applications seemed to have two different signatures,

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 67

and in one case, he thought the parent’s signature was a forgery.332 When challenged,
the principal explained that when he had visited the reserve, he had had the parent
sign a blank sheet of paper, since he had no application forms with him. On his own,
he then “completed the forms at the school.”333
The controversies continued into the 1960s. In the fall of 1960, Christie, British
Columbia, school principal Father Allan Noonan wrote that there was so little room in
his school that at least six Catholic children were attending public school. He added,“The Indian Department appear [sic] to enjoy seeing our Catholic Indians either in the
Public School or not going to School at all. If we only had some good Catholics in the
Department out here to stick up for us!” Father Noonan had also become embroiled
in a conflict with the principal of the United Church school at Port Alberni. He hadarranged to have two children brought to his school who had attended the United
Church school in the past. Noonan had not yet received government permission toadmit them, but claimed, “I’m keeping these children, whether I get approvals forthem or not.”334
Not all conflicts were between Catholics and Protestants. To keep attendanceup, the United Church school in Edmonton began to take in a significant number ofAnglican students. This led in 1958 to the appointment of an Anglican to the position of school chaplain. The assistant secretary of the United Church Board of Home
Missions, E. E. Joblin, was alarmed by this development, particularly in light of thefact that the latest enrolment figures showed that Anglicans now outnumbered United
Church students at the United Church school. Joblin was “most curious as to how
this has come about,” pointing out that the selection of students was in the hands ofdepartmental officials.335 It was later revealed that the Anglican official in question
had not been made the school chaplain; he had simply been given, with the school
principal’s approval, the right to visit the Anglican students in the school.336 In 1963,
the inter-church bickering was still going on when the Anglican Church raised objections to Anglican students’ being enrolled in the new Mennonite-run Poplar Hill,
Ontario, school.337
All this denominational turf war was happening even as church-run residential
schools in southern Canada were moving towards closure. Yet, in these relatively
remote, more northern, areas, there were still expansion and religious jockeying for
position. The expansion was short-lived; the closing of these schools soon followed
the general pattern of shutting down the system.

Church defiance of government policy
Christie school principal Noonan’s vow that he would keep children in the schoolwith or without government approval underscores the difficulty the government had

68 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissionin asserting its authority in the schools. Acts of defiance were more common thanwhat might be expected. When the federal government sent a dentist to the residential schools in northern Manitoba, the principal of the Norway House school, Joseph
Jones, refused to let him smoke as he worked in the school.338 As a result, the dentist declined to provide service. This led the director of the Indian Affairs branch, H.
McGill, to order that the dentist (a Dr. Church) be allowed to “proceed with his workwithout interference.”339 Jones, who thought that smoking was a fire hazard, said hewould not let the dentist smoke in the school even if he were instructed to do so by
the prime minister.340 George Dorey, the head of the United Church Board of Home
Missions, defended Jones, saying that McGill had exceeded his authority in instructing the principal to let the dentist provide service without interference.341
In 1946, R. A. Hoey complained that the churches were ignoring a 1934 policythat stated that the government would provide funding for improvements to churchowned schools only if the churches had sought approval prior to construction. There
had been, he wrote, “several instances” in which the department had been asked to
pay for the capital cost of church-owned school buildings, in addition to requested
grants for building additions, repairs, and maintenance, and the purchase of equipment and furnishings. Often, these grant requests were made after the work had
already been completed and without first submitting an estimate of costs to IndianAffairs for approval.342 Inspections of the McIntosh, Ontario, school revealed in 1958
that the principal was making unauthorized improvements to the building. These
were repairs that involved, at times, removing supports from load-bearing walls.343
In other examples, administrative staff of Roman Catholic schools disregarded government instructions regarding the way funds should be spent and recorded, even as
the new controlled-cost system was being put in place. A federal government auditor,
H. Oldring, reported with frustration in 1958 that the officials at the Roman Catholicschool in Wabasca, Alberta, were listing employees who were, in fact, being paid by
the government, and similarly reporting expenses that were being paid for by the government. According to Oldring, when the school bursar (financial administrator) was
asked why he did not maintain proper salary records, he said, “They are just a lot of
Government Red Tape.”344 The school’s food and clothing budget had been exceeded,in part because it was being used to feed staff and patients at a nearby hospital. The
school was also sending $600 a year to the Oblate Commission in Ottawa. Such payments were permitted, but they were to be limited to $4 a year per student, meaning
that, based on the size of the school’s enrolment, the school was permitted to forward
only $396 to the Oblate Commission.345 The school bursar had a number of justifications for his actions. In some cases, he had not received direction from Indian Affairs
on how to implement the new funding system; other actions had, in his opinion, been
approved by the auditor; and, in the case of the payment to the Oblates, he was acting
on the instructions of his superiors.346

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 69

When investigating a Fort Frances, Ontario, fuel dealer in 1965 on suspicion ofCustoms Act violations, Ontario Provincial Police officers found evidence of what
appeared to be kickbacks to the local residential school for the right to supply theschool with fuel oil. (In one case, the supplier actually described the payment on acheque stub as a “kick back.”) School official Royal Carrière maintained that themoney was used to purchase equipment for the school.347 Carrière, who had takenover as principal of the school in 1961, was operating the school at a deficit.348 Police
investigations revealed that the fuel contract had not been granted to the lowest bidder.349 Indian Affairs concluded that, over a three-year period, the supplier paid theschool and the Oblate order $2,678.49 to be the sole supplier of fuel to the school.
Rather than pressing charges of fraud against the individuals involved, Indian Affairs
requested that the Oblates, who administered the school, return the money.350 The
Oblates issued a cheque and an apology, and the matter was dropped.351
Carrière left the Fort Frances school in 1965 to become the bursar of the Qu’Appelle,
Saskatchewan, school. His approach to bookkeeping alarmed the federal government’s auditor, who concluded that the accounts were not being properly kept andthat funds were being improperly diverted. Indian Affairs official R. F. Davey worried
that Indian Affairs would soon be “faced with an accumulation of problems which will
be hard to resolve.”352
The federal government had little success in its efforts to control the activities ofBrandon, Manitoba, school principal Oliver Strapp. In the 1950s, Strapp (whose problems with discipline and runaways are discussed elsewhere in this report) successfully controlled and frustrated an Indian Affairs investigation into the operation of theschool. The conflict had its immediate origins in a visit to the school in 1951 by Colonel
Laval Fortier, the deputy minister responsible for Indian Affairs. There, he discoveredthat one boy was being “left in bed as a form of punishment.” Strapp explained thatthe boy was a “mental case and that nothing could be done with him,” but Fortier had
his staff make further inquiries. The inspector of Indian schools in Manitoba, G. H.
Marcoux, concluded that the boy had “no such medical record.” He also noted that theschool had experienced thirteen runaways in the 1950–51 school year.353
Marcoux was then asked to undertake a complete investigation into the school’s
operations. Strapp refused to let any of the staff speak to Marcoux or to the nurse who
had accompanied him, unless he was present. Marcoux agreed to this extraordinary
demand. As Marcoux noted, “This was not very satisfactory as each member of thestaff seem to rely on Strapp for the answers.” It was, he said, “a painful procedure.”
However, he was left with the impression that some of the staff resented the way they
were treated during their off-duty hours. Marcoux threatened to end the investigation
then and there if he could not speak to the students individually. As a compromise, he
was allowed to speak to two students, selected by Strapp, on their own. According to
his notes, Irene Eastman, aged twelve, told him that she did not like the school, that

70 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the food was not good and in short supply, that she worked a half-day in the kitchen
on a daily basis, that she liked her teacher, had little time to play, and did not wish to
return in the following year. Seventeen-year-old Russell Smith told him he did not
get enough food, had little time to play, did not have clothes warm enough for outside work, and that the supervisors were “sometimes rough with boys.” Marcoux concluded that “drastic changes will have to be made in this school if we are to solve therunaway situation.”354
By this point, Strapp felt persecuted. He complained to Philip Phelan, the superintendent of Indian training, that Indian Affairs had instituted numerous investigationsof the school in recent years, each of which left the school “seething with discontent.”
As a result, he would permit no further investigations without the presence of United
Church officials. As to complaints about lack of recreational activities at the school,
he reminded Phelan that he had, on numerous occasions, drawn to the government’s
attention the lack of recreational space and equipment at the school. The broader
problem lay in the fact that children were sent to the school against their parents’wishes and, at the direction of the department, were kept in the school over the summer. This “gives the child a feeling of resentment against the school which becomes
localized in their attitude toward the individual staff members in the school.”355 In thisexample, the principal of a school that was almost completely funded by the federal
government was allowed to dictate the terms under which his school was investigated.
By June of 1953, Phelan was corresponding with the United Church about the possibility of having Strapp replaced.356 In the fall of that year, Marcoux reported that parents from the Fisher River Agency in Manitoba were unwilling to send their children
to the Brandon school because they believed “the food is not good, there is no time forplay, it is all work and the clothing is no good.” Marcoux added that, in his opinion, theparents were correct. He felt Strapp’s involvement in outside activities (which were
not described), lack of direct contact with daily activities of the school, and inability
to keep a permanent staff reflected an attitude that the students were “not worth it.”357
Despite the government’s increasing displeasure with Strapp, it was not until 1955
that the United Church agreed to move Strapp out of the school. However, he wasto continue as a residential school principal. Originally, the church wished to transfer him to the Morley, Alberta, school, which was in a state of crisis.358 In the end,
Strapp was transferred to the Edmonton school. Although Indian Affairs had someconcerns over the qualifications of Strapp’s successor at Brandon (former Morley
principal G. R. Inglis), it made no formal objection to Strapp’s appointment to the
Edmonton school.359
Once in Edmonton, Strapp became immersed in conflicts with staff, students, andIndian Affairs. In 1956, R. F. Davey, the superintendent of education for Indian Affairs,
reported that there was a growing body of complaints about Strapp, who was seen to
be “concerned first with such matters as the operation of the farm, the condition of theOperating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 71

Principal’s residence, the cost of operation of the school, etc., rather than placing firstin his thoughts the welfare and feelings of the pupils.” As an example, R. F. Battle, theregional supervisor of Indian agencies in Alberta, pointed to Strapp’s decision to insist
that all the boys wear bib overalls. The teenagers in particular objected to the clothing
and were not swayed by the fact that they were cheaper than trousers.360
Strapp had his supporters. United Church Board of Home Missions official
M. C. Macdonald defended Strapp, saying that “there is no one of the principals
who writes this office with more concern about the welfare of the school than Mr.
Strapp.” Macdonald did recognize that Strapp’s abrupt manner could convey “awrong impression.”361

The struggle of high school integration
It was over the provision of high school education that the conflict between the
Catholic orders and the federal government was most apparent. In the opinion of federal government officials, high school education, which included vocational training,
could be offered in the most economically efficient manner in provincial schools.
These schools, with their larger student base, could afford to invest in a wide rangeof equipment, offer a broader assortment of courses, and recruit specialist teachers.
Educating Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students together was also seen as beingsocially beneficial. In short, Indian Affairs officials believed that their approach wassuperior in economic, social, and educational terms. Conveniently, it also conformed
to two of their goals: limiting the federal involvement in First Nations education to
paying for it, and hastening the assimilation of Aboriginal people. Catholic church
leaders argued that residential schooling was required because, in too many cases,
Aboriginal home life was too unsettled to provide a setting for students to do homework. The Catholics argued that residential schooling was preferable for three reasons: 1) teachers at public schools were not prepared to deal with Aboriginal students;
2) students at public schools often expressed racist attitudes towards Aboriginal students; and 3) Aboriginal students felt acute embarrassment over their impoverishedconditions, particularly in terms of the quality of the clothing they wore and the foodthey ate. As a result of these factors, the students dropped out in high numbers.362(These criticisms were also voiced by Protestant church leaders; generally, however,they did not use them as a rationale for the provision of high school at Protestant residential schools.) These Roman Catholic arguments conformed to their own goals ofmaintaining control of the education of First Nations children with Catholic parents.
In 1942, Roman Catholic Archbishop W. M. Duke of Vancouver sought federal
government support for a grade extension to add junior high to the Mission, British
Columbia, school. Indian Affairs official R. A. Hoey was not receptive to the proposal,

72 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

saying the federal government lacked both the money and the material for such an
expansion. He also said that the department was planning to make residential school
education “more practical and vocational in character.” This was in part because the“success achieved by Indians who have taken what we usually term a straight academic course has been on the whole rather disappointing. Those who have returnedto the reserves have returned, not to give leadership, but to become agitators in a very
radical and destructive sense.”363 The Catholic push for high school training in 1942
was a new development. As recently as 1940, G. Forbes, the principal of the Catholic
Christie school in British Columbia, wrote that he saw nothing wrong with the limited
number of residential students in the upper grades. Some of the Protestant schools, hesaid, tried to make a name for themselves by ensuring that they had students in thesegrades. But the students came to see themselves as “superior to their Indian relatives
and were accepted neither by the Indians nor the Whites.” In Forbes’s mind, offering
these grades would “lead not to the nunnery but to the brothel.”364
The reality was that in the early 1940s, Indian Affairs had neither the commitment
nor the capacity to provide First Nations students with high school education. With
the residential school building program suspended indefinitely due to war conditions,and the residential school population increasing by approximately 300 students a year,
R. A. Hoey wrote in 1940 that Indian Affairs’ “first duty [was] to pupils ranging between
7 and 16.” If additional funds were made available, it might be possible to extend theschooling of some of the “brighter pupils at residential schools,” he wrote.365 As thenumber of students of high school age increased, Indian Affairs expected, particularly
after 1949, that they would be educated in public schools.
The Roman Catholics took the initiative in 1946, when the new principal of the
Spanish, Ontario, school was able to convince Indian Affairs to provide an extra$125 per student, which allowed for the hiring of an extra teacher.366 The highschool program started in 1946 with eight boys and eleven girls. The following year,
it had twenty-seven boys and twenty-nine girls. When the school closed in 1958,
seventy-seven students had graduated.367 The effectiveness of the high school program at the Spanish school was limited by the lack of qualified teachers. By 1955, one
priest concluded:
The scholastic standing of the boys is terrible and cannot but lower our
reputation as good teachers. Many of the boys who “graduated” last June would
more than likely not have passed an honest examination in grade eight or nine.
When these “graduates” try to go on for further studies, as some of them do,eye-brows are raised when they are discovered to be so poor, and esteem for ourscholastic standards is lowered.368

In 1956, the school’s dean of studies described the teaching situation at the schoolas “pitiful.”369

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 73

In 1953, Indian Affairs reacted with some concern when the Roman Catholicschool in Kenora announced its intention of offering Grade Ten. The regional inspector of schools, H. G. Mingay, wrote to the principal that “it will be quite an order for
you to undertake the Grade Ten work.” He also felt obliged to remind him that “theteacher must be a qualified teacher, preferably with an Ontario license.”370 The following year, in reviewing a number of applications for teaching positions at the sameschool, Mingay noted that “some of the good sisters are not qualified and it seems tome that the church should be urged to secure qualified teachers for these positions.”371
Two years later, Mingay wrote in his inspection report on the school that the teaching was “of a lower standard than the Provincial Public Schools and some of our own
Residential Schools. This is due to several things: the classes are too large, an overflow
class for beginners had been opened, three of the teachers have no training and havenot completed the ordinary High School Course.”372
As late as 1957, across Canada, there were only 988 First Nations students in grades
Ten through Thirteen (and only seven of those students were in Grade Thirteen). Only
309 of these students were attending Indian Affairs schools.373 It was becoming apparent that integration was a stressful and unpleasant experience for many students.
There were reports from various jurisdictions that First Nations students did not feel
welcome in public schools. The Saskatchewan supervisor of Indian agencies, J. A.
Davis, raised a number of concerns over the problems faced by First Nations children
who were being integrated into Kamsack public schools in 1956. Although the schoolboard and staff were welcoming and accommodating, Davis felt that the children
were often embarrassed by their clothing and their lunches. “The principal states thatthe children simply refuse to show their lunches in front of the non-Indians, and so
fabricated reasons for going down town during the noon hour, where they eat.” Also,
he said, poor academic showing “gives cause for frequent spells of discouragement”
among the children.374
By the mid-1950s, the Canadian Catholic Conference (ccc) was proposing theestablishment of central high schools for First Nations students in Ontario, Manitoba,
Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. Such schools were needed, the ccc
said, because “a large segment of boys and girls, having no desire to carry on theirsecondary education with the whites, leave school upon completion of grade eight.”
It was also felt that those who succeeded in integrated schools did not return totheir home communities. In the opinion of the ccc, “it would be wrong to deprive
such native communities of their natural leaders by luring their best students into
white communities.”375
In northern Alberta, Roman Catholic Bishop Henri Routhier came into conflictwith Indian Affairs officials on a number of occasions. In 1961, he accused an Indian
agent of telling a woman that the Joussard, Alberta, residential school was “for babies
and dumbbells.” According to Routhier, the agent had recommended that the woman

74 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

send her daughter to a public school or a “white Catholic Separate School.” Routhierfelt that these comments reflected an Indian Affairs policy intended to undermine
Catholic residential schools.376 In 1963, Indian Affairs employee Walter Hlady told thedelegates to an education conference in Edmonton that one of the major problems
facing Aboriginal students was “the virtual impossibility of studying at home. Homes
are small and overcrowded with large families on the average. There is no traditionof fostering study in the home. This is overcome in the residential school situation by
supervised study.”377 According to Routhier, Indian Affairs director H. M. Jones had
called Hlady the following morning, “blaming him sternly for certain declarations that
he had made in his talk.” Routhier believed that Indian Affairs official R. F. Davey, who
had been at the meeting, had reported Hlady’s comment to Jones. The department,
he feared, “has become a sort of Gestapo which severely controls all declarations of
its employees.”378
The Catholics were not the only ones to raise concerns about the actual impact ofintegration at the high school level. In May 1961, Eric Barrington, the principal of the
Anglican Sioux Lookout school, warned Indian Affairs,
Many of our children who will be attending the integrated classes next term, orshould be, have indicated to me that they are not going to return to school as
they do not like the idea of going to school with the other children. With manyof these youngsters I do not feel there will be any great problem, however there
are families who are quite put out by the thought of their children attending theschool in Sioux.379

By December of that year, Harry Hives, the Anglican Bishop of Keewatin, had concluded that Barrington’s predictions had come true. The students who were now
attending public school had “been thrust into a departmental experiment in thenature of ‘guinea-pigs.’” Lacking anyone to turn to in the school, many had become
discipline problems and had been expelled. Hives wrote, “These are not bad youngsters. But we have treated them badly.” He recommended that children be carefully
selected and prepared for integration into the public schools. Those “who could not
accept the rigor of Integration in Schools ought to have been enabled to return to theschool situation with which they were familiar”— the residential school.380
Indian Affairs Branch Director H. M. Jones maintained thatthe policy of the Department on high school education for Indian students is thatthey should receive their instruction in association with non-Indian students inprovincial and private schools where they may benefit by the broad programsof study of urban schools and the socialization which results from their many
contacts with the non-Indian way of life.

Jones did recognize that, due to the growing number of First Nations students enteringhigh school, it was becoming difficult to find space for them, and, in some cases, publicOperating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 75

school boards were limiting “the enrolment of Indian pupils.” As a result, by 1958, highschool instruction was being provided at the Roman Catholic residential schools in
Kenora, Fort Alexander, Qu’Appelle, Cardston, Crowfoot, Hobbema, and Kamloops.
Jones stressed, “The establishment of a segregated high school for a region may be
unavoidable but it should not be allowed to displace desegregated education.”381
Some of this expansion was unauthorized by Indian Affairs. When, in 1957, theOblate order proposed adding grades Nine and Ten to the McIntosh school in northwestern Ontario, Indian Affairs opposed the idea, preferring instead to transfer the
students to an existing school in Kenora.382 However, the department’s recommendation to transfer the students was ignored, much to the astonishment of the local
Indian agent.383
In a paper on high school education for First Nations students in Alberta, theOblates stressed that integration “must be accomplished slowly enough that the transition causes no dislocation in the thinking of the individual Indian student, or in the
livelihood pattern with which he must acquaint himself.” The brief said that the three
Roman Catholic residential schools offering high school in Alberta were an incentive for elementary students, and constituted a base for adult education on reserves.
They recommended that the existing three high schools be expanded and that threeother schools be established at St. Paul-Bonnyville (Blue Quills), Lesser Slave Lake (atthe Joussard school), and Fort Vermilion (at the Fort Vermilion school). As well, they
proposed the establishment of a central Roman Catholic high school in Edmonton.384
An undated Indian Affairs document from the 1960s outlines the main points of an
Oblate brief and the government’s rebuttals. Where the Oblates stated that integration
should take place at an unhurried pace to avoid dislocation, the government argued
that dislocation was already in process, and defined integration as “the broad objective of having the Indian reach a social, educational and economic status which does
not set him apart as an under-privileged group in Canada.” Where the Oblates stressed
the need to maintain leadership on reserves to develop local economies, the federal
position was that few reserves were likely to become economically self-sufficient.
The government argued that most reserves did not have the economic or populationbase to support a range of professionals, other than a few teachers, nurses, and doctors. What the Oblates referred to as “on-reserve education,” the federal government
called “segregated education.” The Oblates saw the schools as contributing to local
development; the federal government argued that they provided substandard education. The government pointed to the problems faced by students transferring fromresidential schools in Kenora in Ontario, Kamloops in British Columbia, and Clunyin Alberta in keeping up with the other students in public schools for Grade Twelve.
The Oblates held that residential schools helped students’ social ties, while the federal government noted that students attending day schools were in daily contact
with their parents.385 Indian Affairs officials also questioned whether a good-quality

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education could be delivered by a large number of small residential high schools. In
1960, the Catholic school at Cardston on the Blood Reserve had forty-nine high school
students, the Cluny school had thirty-five, and the Hobbema school had sixty. There
were difficulties in attracting specialist teachers, particularly vocational teachers, tothese schools.386
The Oblates won a number of victories in their ongoing struggle with Indian Affairs.
The order became interested in establishing a school in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1958
as the number of First Nations students entering high school increased. Until then, theolder students from The Pas, Pine Creek, and Sandy Bay residential schools were all
sent to Fort Alexander for high school. The Oblates had become aware that a buildingthat had been used as a convalescent home for veterans in Winnipeg was for sale.
They proposed that the building be turned into a residential high school.387 Although
the department wished to see it used simply as a residence, in 1960, it agreed to allow
it to be operated as a high school, under the name of Assiniboia School.388
The Roman Catholic Church was able to organize Aboriginal support for its campaign to retain residential schools and for the provision of high school grades at theseschools. In August 1959, 100 members of the Catholic Indian League of Alberta met
in Hobbema. They called for the creation of a central trades school and an increase invocational training throughout the province. According to a news report, “It was generally felt that the so-called integration policy which consists of sending Indian students to non-Indian schools was premature and results generally in aggravating thebarrier between the two elements.” The preference was for “all-Indian schools on the
Indian reservations.”389 In 1961, the “Roman Catholic Indian People of the BlackfootReserve” submitted a brief to Indian Affairs, stating that they wished to retain the
Cluny boarding school, as it was necessary for “the pupils who need study periods topass their grades, as well as for the orphans, or for the children of broken homes, or for
those who are too poor to be on Day School, or are too far away. We think our houses
are not fit for study for our higher grade students.” They said that parents who worked
for part of the year off the reserve were dependent on the boarding school. They also
said that they did not feel that the students would be wanted by the white communities and schools.390
Indian Affairs officials tended to view First Nations support of residential schooling as being directed by local Oblate leaders. When, for example, Chief Shot On Both
Sides presented a petition to the Blood Band Council, calling for the establishmentof a Roman Catholic high school on the reserve, the Indian Affairs official present at
the meeting, K. R. Brown, asked who had prepared the petition. Shot On Both Sides
replied that “it had been prepared by Reverend Father Laverne.” After band member
Mike Mountain Horse, who described himself as being of neither of the major denominations on the reserve, spoke against the resolution, debate at the council meeting

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 77

broke down along religious lines. At that point, Brown ended discussions, stating that
it was not proper to discuss religious matters at a council meeting.391
Teachers, including Aboriginal teachers, also supported the Catholic position. In
a 1963 article for the Roman Catholic publication The Indian Record, Clive Linklater,
the president of the Alberta Indian Teachers’ Association (and a teacher at the Blue
Quills school), wrote that First Nations people viewed integration as “the abolition of
all Indian schools, the doing away of all Indian Reserves, the extinguishing of Indianculture, and the abrogation of Treaties and Treaty rights.” He pointed out that for
many Indians, schools on reserves were a Treaty right. Integration too often involved
closing reserve schools and transferring students to public schools. “If it is the mixingof Indian and White children in the classrooms that is so vitally important and necessary, the Indians wonder why the movement is all one way—away from the Reserves.”
Instead of integration, which Linklater said implied a segregation that did not exist, heproposed a policy of “inter-sociation,” which would promote “the intermingling andclose association of Indian and White people.”392 Linklater was correct: Indian Affairs
never sought to integrate non-Aboriginal children into Indian Affairs schools. This
was a matter of frustration for the Saskatchewan government, which had unsuccessfully sought the entry of Métis and white children to Indian Affairs schools in northern Saskatchewan.393
Integration also came under attack from the non-Aboriginal community. In 1965,
residents of Joussard, Alberta, complained of the threat that integration posed to thewhite, French-speaking community. One letter spoke of the impact of Métis children on the local school: “The discipline in the school was made more difficult tomaintain. Juvenile delinquency increased with breaking and entering, theft, broken
windows, destruction of personal and Public property.” In the author’s opinion, integrating 150 First Nations students with fifty-five Métis and forty-five white children
was “not integration—this is racial discrimination against the white children.” In theletter writer’s opinion, real integration required a one-to-one ratio of Aboriginal tonon-Aboriginal students.394
In the mid-1960s, Indian Affairs decided to phase out the high school programat the Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, school. In justifying the decision, the government
pointed to a study it had carried out of the residential high school program. Of theforty-eight students who entered Grade Nine in 1959, twenty-three continued on
to Grade Twelve; of the sixty-eight who entered Grade Nine in 1960, only thirteenentered Grade Twelve, a dropout rate of 81%. Of the 102 students who entered Grade
Twelve over the six-year period, 22 graduated. The study found similar patterns at four
Roman Catholic high schools in Alberta. Joussard had fourteen students enter Grade
Nine in September 1960, but only four enter Grade Twelve in September 1963. The
Hobbema school had twenty-seven enrol in Grade Nine in September 1960, but only
four enrol in Grade Twelve in September 1963. At the Cardston school, the numbers

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were twenty-nine (1960) and eleven (1963), respectively; and at Cluny, they weretwenty-five (1960) and eleven (1963), respectively. The conclusion was that “the residential school is ill-equipped to provide Indian students with the academic skills theyrequire at the high school level.”395
Both in Saskatchewan and Alberta, the Catholics organized strong public campaigns to defend these schools. Qu’Appelle principal Leonard Charron urged students
and their parents to lobby the government to reverse its decision, promising that it
would lead to the government’s offering them “a wider choice of courses—commercial, technical, as well as the present academic course.”396 Indian Affairs official J. G.
McGilp noted that in any other school system, Charron would have been asked toresign for so publicly opposing the policy of the organization that was paying him.
Since Charron could not be fired, McGilp wondered if it would be possible to simply
put him in charge of the residence.397
The Indian Affairs position, as expressed by R. F. Davey, was that, “as is the casewith students elsewhere,” First Nations students who lacked “the motivation for theacademic course might better be guided into vocational courses.” And, since thefederal government was providing funding to provincial governments to make suchtraining available to First Nations students, Davey said, Indian Affairs would “find it
difficult to recommend the duplication of these services in residential schools.” Even if
it were possible, it was not desirable, since “in segregated classes the Indian student isdenied the social experience which can be derived from his daily contact with non-Indian students.”398
The following school year, eleven students were living in the Qu’Appelle residential
school but attending Grade Twelve at the Fort Qu’Appelle Composite High School—
approximately seven kilometres away from the residential school.399
In 1966 in Alberta, the Catholic Indian League opposed an Indian Affairs decision
to purchase places for First Nations students in the newly constructed Strathmore
high school. Parents said they wished to see their children educated at the Cluny
residential school, which, they noted, had room for an additional thirty students.
Cluny principal Adrian Charron gave the media a list of school problems, which suggested that Indian Affairs had essentially abandoned the school.400 Two years later, in
September 1968, E. J. Dosdall of Indian Affairs informed Charron that the federal government had approved the admission of only twenty-seven of the sixty-eight student
residents at the school. To save further costs, Dosdall recommended that Charron
send the remaining children home.401 The department was contemplating closing theresidence that term, since most of the twenty-seven students could be placed eitherwith foster families on the reserve or at the Catholic residential school at Cardston.
According to one Indian Affairs official, the local band council had “expressed no realdisagreement with our proposed plan.” There was, however, “latent parental hostility”
that could end up in the media if the school was closed too quickly.402 That hostility

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 79

manifested itself at a parents’ meeting on December 1, 1968. Parents said that they did
not feel they had been given any choice in determining which schools their children
would attend, since it was Indian Affairs that informed them which schools accepted
Indian children. The parents said that a residential school was needed because of
the poor road conditions, poor housing, and absence of employment on the reserve.
“Most work available to Indians is off reserve and it is necessary to place their children
in residence if they are to go and seek good, well paying jobs.” One parent spoke ofhow his daughter refused to return to public school because she had been called a“squaw.” According to the parent, “Nothing has been done to correct the white children’s behavior towards the Indian children.”403 Despite these concerns, the Cluny
school was closed at the end of 1968.404
A circular from the Oblate House in Vancouver made it clear how embattled the
Catholics felt during this period. Oblates throughout British Columbia were informedthat “Biafra and Vietnam are not the only places where war is being waged. Father Al
Noonan, Gerry Kelly and Tom Lobsinger are engaged in a battle to defend the Indianpeople’s right to the mode and manner of their children’s education, especially withregard to the Hostel or Students’ Residence.”405 Of particular concern to the Oblates
in British Columbia was the government’s decision to reduce the number of students
being sent to residences.406 The Kamloops residence, for example, could accommodate
398 students, but only 238 children had been approved for admission by the federal
government. The Oblates organized a number of meetings with First Nations chiefs at
which they pointed to the reduction in the number of children sent to the Kamloops,
Williams Lake, and Cranbrook residences. At the meetings, the chiefs expressed concern that they were not being consulted over which students were being sent to theresidences, saying that they were the people best placed to determine which children
were being neglected.407 After one meeting, the Kamloops Indian residence director,
Allan Noonan, wrote to the Oblate publicity director, saying, “The Indians sure backthese schools 100% in this area. If we can get the Indians to fight for what they feel isright, maybe the Department will listen to them.”408
The issues that had been raised in opposition to high school integration would not
go away. But, after 1969, when the federal government took over responsibility forthe administration of the residences, the challenge would no longer come from thechurches, but from the Aboriginal political organizations.

The federal takeover of 1969
The funding formula that the federal government adopted in 1957 allowed it toexert greater control over how government funds were spent at residential schools.
Under the new system, the government established the amounts that were to be spent80 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

on salaries at government-owned schools, and negotiated contracts that also gave it
considerable control over the operation of the schools. In the process, the government
was unintentionally laying the groundwork for a Canadian labour board decisionthat would declare that virtually all school employees were, in essence, government
employees. This ruling led to a restructuring of the government–church relationshipin 1969.
The labour board’s decision was triggered by a 1965 Canadian Union of Public
Employees (cupe) organizing drive at a number of residential schools.409 Initially, thecampaign, which focused on the non-teaching staff members, prompted the federal
government to examine the working conditions at the schools. (Teaching staff had
been government employees since the government took over the direct payment of
their salaries in 1954.) The study revealed the following in the case of the non-clerical
domestic staff:• There were usually no written contracts governing the hiring of employees by the
religious organizations that administered the schools.
• Most employees were hired for ten months of the year.
• There were no standard daily hours of work.
• There were paid vacations, transportation to remote locations, pension plans,
reduced accommodation rates, payment of health premiums and unemployment
insurance benefits, and special allowances for employees in remote locations.
• The pay and benefits were lower than those provided by the federal government
for people it employed in other sections of the civil service who were performing
similar duties. It was estimated that if the school employees were to be compensated at rates similar to government employees, costs would rise by $750,000.410
In its public statements, the federal government took the position that these“domestic employees” at the schools were employed by the churches.411 However,a confidential government legal opinion had concluded that because the contracts
between the churches and the government gave the government considerable powers
over how the schools were to be operated, then the churches were essentially “agentsof the Crown.” According to the legal opinion, this meant that the domestic staff members at the schools were Crown employees.412
Despite having this advice, the government continued to maintain that domestic
staff members were church employees. In February 1966, a question was asked in
Parliament as to whether the Canada Labour Code applied to the residential schools
and residences, and whether wages were paid that were less than the federal minimum of $1.25 an hour. Arthur Laing, the minister responsible for Indian Affairs, said
that the application of the provisions of the labour code to school employees was
being considered. He said that all staff members, other than teachers, were church

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 81

employees. However, he said that the principals had been informed that the minimum wage at the schools was $1.25 an hour.413
The cupe organizing campaign operated on the premise that the individual schools
were the employers. In such a case, the worker and the employer were subject to theprovisions of the federal Industrial Disputes Investigation Act (idia)—an Act that did
not apply to direct government employees (Crown employees).414 It was under theprovisions of this Act that the union applied for the right to represent employees at
the Fort Frances, Ontario, school. In the fall of 1966, the Canada Labour Relations
Board rejected the cupe application. The board ruled that the school staff members
were effectively Crown employees and, as such, were not subject to the provisions of
the idia.415 The labour board’s decision did not mean the staff members could not be
unionized: it just delayed the prospect. In 1968, the Public Service Alliance of Canada
claimed the right to represent the staff under the provisions of the newly adopted federal Public Service Staff Relations Act.416
The transfer of responsibility for employees from the churches to the federal government would amount to a transfer of administration of the schools as well.417 It
would also void the existing contracts between the churches and the government.418
It would take three years of negotiations before the implications of the labour board
decision were fully resolved.
The government and the churches were left with two options.
1)

Return to the per capita grant system. This system, which gave the churches
greater flexibility as to how the grant was spent, would allow the churches toargue that the school staff members were employed by the churches, not by
the government.

2)

Accept the labour ruling that the school staff members, including theprincipals, worked for the federal government. This would amount to an
acceptance of a federal government takeover of the schools.

When government and church officials met to consider these options, United
Church officials opposed the first option, since it would “tend to surrender all theground gained in the past nine years, in terms of maintaining standards of childcare and control of expenditures.” According to a United Church document, “theProtestant representatives at least were unwilling to consider seriously a return to theformer system.”419
It was generally recognized that the second option would lead to a significant
improvement in the pay, working conditions, and benefits of the school employees.
Church representatives feared that without the power to hire and fire employees, theywould lose control of the schools. They also feared that “the Christian atmosphereof the residences might suffer.”420 Both the United and Anglican churches indicatedthat they were considering withdrawing from residential schooling.421 Although they

82 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

did not do so immediately, their involvement declined rapidly after 1969. The Roman
Catholic Church, however, remained firmly committed to residential schooling.
Indian Affairs official R. F. Davey concluded that while the “prospect of adding 1400
more staff to the establishment is frightening,” it would be easier to close the schools
in the future if the staff members were government employees.422
Assistant Deputy Minister R. F. Battle noted that bringing the school principals into
the public service would be a complicated matter, since many of them were membersof religious orders. He thought it would be possible to exempt their hiring from federal regulations. Once hired, the principals would continue to take direction from thechurch on all matters of spiritual philosophy, but “in all other matters relating to theoperation of the school, the principals would take direction from the Department.”
This, from Battle’s perspective, was a helpful development, since “at the present time,some principals feel under no obligation to support government policy.”423
Eventually, agreements were reached with the churches that provided for thetransfer of staff to the civil service while allowing the churches to continue to appoint
the residence administrator. This, however, required an exemption from the PublicService Commission—an exemption that the commission was originally unwilling toprovide. While the government favoured the takeover, it recognized that it could not
immediately staff and operate the more than fifty institutions that were affected by
the decision. In the short term, it wanted the church officials to stay on as administrators.424 The Public Service Commission eventually agreed to exempt approximately
200 administrators and child-care supervisors from all provisions of the Public Service
Employment Act (psea) for a two-year period.425 It was recognized that the churches
might choose to end their involvement with the residences, but Deputy Minister J. A.
MacDonald believed that such a move “would not cause the serious administrative
problem that would occur if the churches were to pull out now.”426 Under the arrangement, the residence administrators remained church employees.427 They would havethe authority to nominate the child-care workers, who would have to be approvedby the department. All other staff members were to be appointed according to thepsea.428 By this time, it was estimated that the takeover costs would be in the range of$2 million.429
The question of whether school staff members were government employees cameto a head at the same time that Indian Affairs was contemplating the separation ofadministrative responsibility for residences from responsibility for classrooms. By
the late 1960s, there were at least four different types of residential schools in southern Canada.
1)

Traditional residential schools. These provided boarding facilities andclassroom instruction for all the students enrolled in the school.

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 83

2)

Hostels. These provided boarding facilities for students who attended class ina provincial school. They had no classrooms.

3)

Combined residential and day schools. These were residential schools that
also provided classroom instruction for students who did not live in theresidence, but attended class as day students.

4)

Combined hostel, residential school, and day schools. These institutions
had three different categories of student: a) those who lived in the residence
and attended classes at a provincial school; b) those who did not live in theresidence, but attended class as day students; and c) those who both lived in
the residence and attended class in the school.

In addition to the development of these different categories, there were several
significant trends. In some cases, residential schools were being transformed into
residences as their classrooms were being closed; in other cases, residential schools
were reducing the number of students in residence and increasing the number of day
students they taught in their classes. By 1968, there were twelve hostels (in southern
Canada), and Indian Affairs had plans to eliminate classrooms from fifteen residential schools. In light of these trends, R. F. Battle proposed that all residential schools
be separated into two, distinct, administrative units: day schools and residences. The
former school principal would become the administrator of the residence, and theschool would be administered essentially as a federal day school with a trained educator (usually the former senior teacher) as the principal.430 The change was introducedin September 1968. Initially, it applied only in cases where the residences and theclassrooms were in separate buildings.431 As of August of that year, residential schools
described themselves as “student residences,” rather than “residential schools.”432
The transfer of the schools and residences from the churches to the federal government involved 8,000 students, 56 residences, and 1,600 employees, and went into
effect in April 1969.433 Even as the transfer was being carried out, the government
continued to close schools (by then, called “residences”). At the end of the 1968–69
school year, the government closed three Anglican schools (Cardston, Alberta; OldSun, Alberta; Carcross, Yukon), two Catholic schools (McIntosh, Ontario; Kamsack,Saskatchewan), and one United Church school (Morley, Alberta).434 According to theIndian Affairs annual report for 1968–69, the department was responsible for sixty residences. Two years later, the number was down to forty-five.435
Members of religious orders did not readily accept that their residences were under
new administration. A 1970 report on the Assumption residence at Hay Lakes, Alberta,
commented that the seven Sisters of Providence who worked at the residence constituted “an organization within the official organization.” They were described as a “powerful, cohesive group which is almost independent of the other employees. According
to their religious vows, the Sisters are under the direction of the Sister Superior.” Under84 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the government’s job classifications, the sister superior was the school matron. As
such, she was not the supervisor of the school’s child-care workers. However, the twosisters who were classified as child-care workers did view her as their superior.
Other members of the order also did not appear to feel bound by Indian Affairs regulations. The seamstress, another member of the Sisters of Providence, was reported
by instructors at a child-care workshop to “resort to methods of discipline which cannot be regarded as most beneficial to the children—such as slapping a child who mislaid a pair of mitts, or pulling up by the hair and publicly shaming a child who soiled
himself inadvertently.”436
The government plan to wind up residential schooling in Canada would soon hit a
new and unexpected roadblock: opposition from Aboriginal parents and Aboriginalorganizations. The intensification of the government’s integration policy took effectjust three months before the release of the federal White Paper. This set the stage fora controversy that placed Aboriginal control of Aboriginal education squarely on thepolitical agenda.

Confrontation at Blue Quills
On July 14, 1970, a group of twenty-five First Nations people began a sit-in at theBlue Quills school near the Saddle Lake Reserve in Alberta. They were protesting a plan
to turn the school into a residence and send the students to a public school almost fivekilometres away in St. Paul, Alberta. Fearing their children would face racial discrimination in St. Paul, parents wished to see the school transferred to a private society thatwould operate it both as a school and a residence. The federal government had been
open to such a transfer if the First Nations organization was structured as a provincial
school division. The First Nations rejected this, saying that a transfer of First Nations
education to the provincial authority was a violation of Treaty rights.
The Blue Quills conflict was the result of long-standing local dissatisfaction withthe administration of the school, and a broader First Nations dissatisfaction with thepolicy of integration. It was felt that First Nations students had not benefited from thepolicy. Most reserve homes were small and crowded, leaving students with little spaceor privacy to study at home. Since the school buses left the school at the time students were dismissed from class, there was little opportunity for students to stay andstudy in the school. Many parents could not afford to properly dress their children,
particularly in winter. As a result, during cold weather, they kept their children home.
Aboriginal children were also embarrassed by the poor quality of their clothing. Many
felt that the reception that they received from the non-Aboriginal students and staff ofthese integrated schools was hostile and even racist in nature.437

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 85

The dissatisfaction was intensified by the heightened political activity that had
been sparked by the White Paper of 1969 and the federal government takeover of theresidences in that year. The sit-in at Blue Quills led to an outcome that neither the federal government nor the churches had been prepared for: the takeover of a residential
school by First Nations people. This set the direction for a trend that would characterize and extend the final years of the residential school system.
In 1966, Indian Affairs had alienated the parents of Blue Quills students, and school
administrators, when it ruled that the residence could take in only 112 students in the
1966–67 school year. The decision was intended to reduce crowding at the school.438
However, it was announced after the school had already accepted 160 students forthe residence. The reduction, which had been made without any consultation withparents, was protested by members of the Saddle Lake Agency, who signed a petition
saying the school could hold 176 students.439 In the end, 157 students were admitted
to the residence.440
By the end of 1966, Indian Affairs had decided to turn Blue Quills into a “hostel
for senior students.” Over a five-year period, the teaching staff was to be reduced
from seven to zero. Indian Affairs official Roy L. Piepenburg advised the department
to move slowly and undertake ongoing consultation if it wished to avoid a confrontation.441 In 1967, Indian Affairs entered into discussions with the board of St. Paul
Regional High School to ensure that there would be space for 100 First Nations students in the regional composite high school being planned for St. Paul.442
There was also growing concern over the high rate at which First Nations students
from the region were dropping out of school. In 1965, there were only fourteen students from the Saddle Lake Reserve in Grade Nine. In a 1967 Alberta government
report on Saddle Lake, Morton Newman observed:
The Indian parents and students claim that the administration is the major
cause for children leaving school before completing Grade 12. They claim thatthe priest in charge of Bluequills [sic] is much too strict; the children havelittle opportunity to mingle with the opposite sex and are prohibited fromparticipating in sports together in the afternoons. In addition, they object tothe priest’s more permissive attitude to some of the girls and the perceived
reasons for this. Some of these girls have been permitted to visit their parents
more than the one weekend per month that is the rule of the school, and somehave received gifts of extra money and clothing from the priest. The two femaleinterviewers [who were carrying out research for the study on which Newman’sreport was based] spoke to five of the teenage girls who have left school and they
all stated that advances made to them by the priest had been the main reason
for their leaving. (Subsequent inquiries made by researchers received sufficientcorroboration from the Indian Affairs Branch for the statement to be included asconsiderations in this report. It has also been learned that the priest in question
has since been transferred to a reserve in Saskatchewan. Although the people86 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

were in favor of the transfer, they felt that this type of action was only a short-run
measure because the system itself remained unchanged.)443

The Saddle Lake Local of the Catholic Indian League petitioned in 1966 to have Blue
Quills principal H. P. Lyonnais replaced. According to the local, Lyonnais had “beenthere too long, he looks very tired and sick, and it looks like this position, after theseyears, is too heavy for his health.”444 Later that year, it was announced that Lyonnais
was to be transferred to the position of principal of the Onion Lake, Saskatchewan,
school. His replacement was Onion Lake principal M. Michaud.445 It appears this plan
was abandoned and Principal Lyonnais was instead replaced by S. R. Gagnon.446
In the mid-1950s, Indian Affairs had begun establishing school committees onreserves to “exercise control over certain aspects of school affairs and the expenditure of school funds, and to stimulate an interest in school work amongst parents.”
The Indian Affairs annual report for 1956–57 noted, “The minutes of the meetings ofthese newly-formed committees indicate a mature interest in education and a desireon the part of the members to create in parents a greater appreciation of the educational opportunities available for their children.”447 Frequent agenda items for the
Saddle Lake School Committee back then had been sports equipment, the quality ofbus service, and lunch supplies.448 But, by the beginning of 1969, the committee wasdiscussing dropout rates, apprenticeship, and truancy.449 At the September 9, 1969,
meeting, committee members spoke of their concerns about the lack of qualificationsof some of the staff at the Blue Quills school. It was decided to hold a special committee meeting later in the month with band council members to discuss problems at theschool with school officials.450
At that meeting, the discussion focused on residence issues, as opposed to teaching staff. Committee members wanted to know why more Aboriginal people were not
employed at the school, why so many young people were employed as supervisors,
and what could be done to assist students who left the community to study at urban
centres. It was reported that Aboriginal people held only four out of thirty service andmaintenance jobs at the school. When one committee member asked if students would
be more willing to co-operate with Aboriginal supervisors, Principal Gagnon said that
one Aboriginal supervisor had found “he couldn’t discipline the children as it would
be resented by the parents.” Stanley Redcrow told the meeting that when he had beena study supervisor, “at first the children thought they could do as they pleased but after
several evenings, he spoke to them in their own language and pointed out to them thatthe time was for their benefit and they would suffer if they did not make good use of
their opportunity.” After that, he said, he had no further discipline troubles.451
It appears that the parents had yet to be informed of the 1966 decision to close
the school. In October 1969, a three-day meeting of representatives of all the schoolcommittees in the Saddle Lake/Athabaska District was held in St. Paul, Alberta. Oneof the committee members spoke of how there was a “story going the rounds that theOperating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 87classrooms at Blue Quills may be cut down due to new Regional High School, St. Paul.”
An Indian Affairs official at the meeting telephoned his supervisor in Edmonton andreceived confirmation that the plan was “to close the classrooms at Blue Quills School
and use the building for a student residence.” The information was then relayed to themeeting. Although a resolution favouring the use of Blue Quills as a residence wasadopted, subsequent discussion revealed unhappiness with the administration of theschool and a desire to see some schooling continue at Blue Quills.452
Parents also expressed a concern that student discontent was increasing. One
member of the committee raised concerns about the way a number of female students had been treated by the school staff at a meeting. She said the girls had told herthat “they were lectured, not given a chance to speak on their complaints.” According
to the meeting minutes, one committee member said the students needed a chance
to air their views: “Former students rebelled against treatment when principal did notlisten to problems. Once more students are rebellious against school organization.”
There were also concerns raised about the difficulty that former students had in getting jobs at the residence and the need for remedial classes at the school.453
The issue became inflamed when Indian Affairs officials suggested in meetings thatthe closing of the Blue Quills school had been undertaken at the request of Aboriginal
people.454 At a special meeting of the Saddle Lake Band Council on December 7, 1969,
Stanley Redcrow said that although the school committee had passed a motion supporting the closing of the Blue Quills classrooms, it would be wrong to say that thecommittee had requested “that the Blue Quills school be phased out.” One of the band
members, Jonas Cardinal, opposed closing the school and sending more students to
St. Paul. He told the meeting, “Children attending school by bus leave home in themorning, get to town, then take off for the rest of the day, appearing in time to catchthe bus in the evening. I see where this type of schooling is not good for my children.”He said that his own son had been skipping school in that fashion, but when he wastransferred to Blue Quills, he began attending class regularly. Motions were adopted
unanimously that Blue Quills continue to operate as both a school and a residence,and that “all domestic staff of Blue Quills School should be comprised of Indian people.” As well, it was proposed and unanimously adopted that “the administration ofBlue Quills School be turned over to the Indian people.”455
In the midst of these developments, the government published its 1969 White
Paper. As noted earlier, Harold Cardinal of the Indian Association of Alberta (iaa)played a major role in formulating the First Nations critique of that document, particularly the emphasis on transferring services to the province. Cardinal had attended
residential school himself, and his 1969 book The Unjust Society painted a negative
picture of the schools.
The priest-teachers were seldom qualified educators. Their goals didn’t requirethat they be. All they wanted of their Indian charge was to pound a little English

88 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

into his head, just enough to enable him to decipher religious materials, andto give him enough simple arithmetic to enable him to count the animals on
the church farm. They didn’t really care if they broke his spirit as long as they
got the right responses at mass. If an Indian completed grade eight before hereached the age of sixteen, which wasn’t often, he was given menial jobs on thefarm attached to the residential school. Ostensibly he was learning the skillsof farming or animal husbandry, to enable him to follow that vocation when
he graduated.456

Cardinal and the iaa would play an advisory role in the events of 1970.
Indian Affairs was also growing concerned over the school’s administration.
Complaints had been made that Principal Gagnon had slapped a boy in the face.
There appeared to be a lack of control of the students on weekends, with many students leaving without their parents’ consent. Two of the female child-care workers
had difficulty exerting control over the students. According to Indian Affairs official
V. G. Boultbee, they were young and unable to speak English fluently, so the students
could not understand them. Boultbee recommended that an investigation be carriedout into discipline at the school, but it is not clear if any such inquiry was ever held.
Boultbee also reported that the feeling among “the Indian people, the Indian students and some of the staff at the District Office, is that both Sister Mageau and Father
Gagon [sic] have taken a very negative attitude towards Indians in the last year.” In
Boultbee’s opinion, Principal Gagnon felt thatIndian people were not very capable or reliable in general. He made some
exceptions—these being three native people working at the School. When wetalked about Indian people taking over the operation of the School, he felt it
would take Indian people five years to learn how to operate the School and ifthey were to take it over immediately, they would not last two months.457

When the Saddle Lake/Athabaska District school committees met again in April
1970, representatives from communities where students had been integrated into
provincial schools spoke of their dissatisfaction with the level of services being provided in the provincial system. The meeting approved a resolution supporting an
Aboriginal takeover of the Blue Quills school.458 The resolution was sent by telegram
immediately to Indian Affairs Minister Jean Chrétien, who responded by asking for
more information.459
That same month, a constitution for an organization intended to operate the Blue
Quills school was debated and adopted. This organization came to be known as the“Blue Quills Native Education Association” (later, the “Blue Quills Native Education
Council,” or bqnec).460
The Blue Quills Native Education Council represented First Nations people fromthe surrounding reserves. It proposed to take over the school on August 1, 1970, andOperating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 89

offer grades Four through Nine. In outlining its position, the council framed the issue
as one of Red Paper policies versus White Paper policies. Key council positions were:a)

The right of Indian communities to determine their educational ends has tobe respected.

b) Special organizational structures developed by Indian groups have to berespected and recognized by the federal and provincial governments.
c)Federal enabling policies have to be instituted which will allow Indiangroups to assume responsibility for sizeable amounts of money for providing
educational services.

d) Provisions must be made whereby certain essential educational positions in
the Public Service of Canada will be abolished and the funds designated forsalaries turned over to Indian groups.
e)Independent Indian education groups will be allowed a strong measure ofautonomy and carry on consultations with federal and provincial agencies asneeds arise.

f)

Broad adult training programmes provided for education board members
and institutional workers, such funds to be included in annual budgets.

g)

A minimum of interference from the federal Department of Indian Affairs
and Northern Development, except that Indian groups be held accountable
for the educational funds in their possession.

It was the council’s intent to “follow the Alberta Department of Education curriculum with innovations. These would include Native culture, i.e. languages, legends,
handicrafts; also remedial classes in English language, reading and writing.”461
The federal government was prepared to turn the school over to an Aboriginalorganization, provided that the reserve became, in effect, a provincial school district,and that the school operated under provincial school regulations. This was rejected as
being continued implementation of White Paper policy to transfer responsibility forFirst Nations people to provincial governments.462
Oblate Provincial G.-M. Latour assured Redcrow, who was the head of the Blue
Quills Native Education Association, that the Oblates were “not opposed to your decision to take over the administration of the Blue Quills Residence.” He did say that, if
requested, the Oblates would provide the school with a chaplain.463
The Saddle Lake/Athabasca District school committees invited H. B. Robinson,
the deputy minister of Indian Affairs, to attend a meeting at Blue Quills on July 14,
1970, to discuss the future of the school.464 Assistant Deputy Minister J. B. Bergevinheaded up the delegation of Indian Affairs officials dispatched to the meeting. He had
been advised by the school committees’ co-chair, Alice Makokis, not to come if he did90 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

not have authority to act on the minister’s behalf.465 The federal officials met in themorning with Harold Cardinal. After that meeting, they believed that “Mr. Cardinalmight be prepared to consider independent school districts under the Alberta SchoolAct.” However, in the afternoon, when they met at the Blue Quills school with representatives from the bands involved in the bqnec, Cardinal made his position clear:“Education must remain a federal responsibility.”466
The meeting ended with Bergevin’s being told that the group at Blue Quills wished
to meet with either the minister or the deputy minister within one week to receive
an answer on the future of the Blue Quills school and about the possibility of IndianAffairs taking over responsibility for schools that had been transferred to the Alberta
Northlands provincial school division.467 With that, the sit-in commenced. Cardinal
told the media that First Nations education “was prepaid when we signed the Treaties.”
The protesters said they would not abandon the sit-in until Indian Affairs Minister
Jean Chrétien met with them.468
It was estimated that over 1,000 people participated in the sit-in, with rarely fewer
than 200 people at the school on any given day. Some stayed in the tents and teepees
that dotted the school ground. Volunteer cooks prepared free meals that included
Saskatoon berries and rhubarb that had been collected by people participating in the
sit-in, fish that had been caught by students, and even venison brought in by an education committee-authorized hunting party.469
The Oblates and Sisters of Charity left the school after the sit-in began. The July 15
entry in the Grey Nuns’ Daily Chronicles for the Blue Quills School reads, “Last day ofwork in our mission of Blue Quills.” The July 20 entry says, “This is a last trip to Blue
Quills to ensure one last time everything is in order. We find that the Indians haveinvaded the school, it is no longer possible to remain there. With tears in our eyes, we
say a final farewell.”470
In addition to the sit-in, pickets were organized outside the Indian Affairs
regional offices in Edmonton.471 As a part of the sit-in, the First Nations Education
Committee organized a seminar on education at the school.472 The sit-in was supported by the National Indian Brotherhood, Alberta Aboriginal leaders, Conservativeand New Democratic Party members of Parliament, and even former Saddle Lake
Reserve teachers.473
The sit-in came to an end after a delegation of First Nations representatives travelled to Ottawa to meet with Chrétien. On July 31, 1970, seventeen days after the sit-inbegan, the minister announced that the school would be transferred to the bqnec andthat the federal government would continue to finance the school’s operations.474 The
target date for the transfer of the residence was January 1, 1971, and, for the school,
July 1, 1971. Chrétien also agreed to “give immediate and serious considerations [sic]to the Council’s request for additional funds to hold board meetings and cover training programs and legal services for the current year.”475

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 91

The bqnec took effective control immediately. Roland Harpe, who had been working as a teacher in Indian residential schools since the early 1960s, was appointed
school administrator. An Indian Affairs official who attended a meeting between thebqnec and staff observed that it had been “very smoothly handled,” with the needfor co-operation being the key to the approach that the committee wished to take.476
On February 5, 1971, authority for the school residence was officially transferred tothe bqnec.477
The 1971–72 school year commenced with an historic ribbon-cutting ceremonyas the bqnec took over full operation of the school as well as the residence. Council
chairperson Stanley Redcrow told the students, parents, and officials present that
this was “the first time in the history of our region that Indians are officially opening
their own school, to be administered by their own people.” Lloyd Cardinal, an Elderfrom Saddle Lake, gave a blessing in Cree, and Harold Jackson, the chief of the Saddle
Lake Reserve, cut the ribbon. Eugene Steinhauer, the executive director of the Alberta
Native Communications Society, said, “I was a student in this school thirty years ago,at which time we were not allowed to speak our native tongue. I shall now speak toyou in Cree, and later in a foreign language.” Alice Makokis said, “In the past, when
the children boarded school buses at the end of the summer holidays, there would betears and sad faces.” But, she said, “Today I was very happy to see there were no tears
or sad faces.”478

Indian control of Indian education
In the wake of the Blue Quills victory, the National Indian Brotherhood (nib) created an education working group that in late 1972 released a major position paper
entitled Indian Control of Indian Education. The paper asserted the Aboriginal right todirect the education of our children. Based on two education principles
recognized in Canadian society: Parental Responsibility and Local Controlof Education, Indian parents seek participation and partnership with theFederal Government, whose legal responsibility for Indian education is set by
the treaties and the Indian Act. While we assert that only Indian people candevelop a suitable philosophy of education based on Indian values adapted tomodern living, we also strongly maintain that it is the financial responsibilityof the Federal Government to provide education of all types and all levels to all
status Indian people, whether living on or off reserves. It will be essential to therealization of this objective that representatives of the Indian people, in close
cooperation with officials of the Department of Indian Affairs, establish theneeds and priorities of local communities in relation to the funds which may beavailable through government sources.479

92 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

This paper became a foundational document for Aboriginal education policy in the
coming years. In February 1973, Indian Affairs Minister Jean Chrétien responded to
the nib paper, saying that he agreed
completely with the paper’s basic position of Indian parental responsibility
and local control in education in partnership with the Federal Government.
With the new authorities for transferring control of education to Band Councils,
officials of my Department are ready to work out procedures for effective transfer
including Band training if required.480

The authorities Chrétien was referring to had been provided for by the Treasury
Board in its approval of a submission to permit the federal government to enter into
agreements with band councils to manage “in-school education programs including
attendance and social counselling services.”481 These included “employment of teachers, educational assistance programs, educational allowances, seasonal transportation, student residences, and all other services normally considered to be part of thein-school program.”482
This was an important victory—amounting to a complete repudiation of the White
Paper position. It came at a time, however, when the majority of First Nations children were already attending provincial, private, or territorial schools. According to
the 1973–74 Indian Affairs annual report, there were 32,563 First Nations students in
Indian Affairs schools and 42,022 in provincial schools.483 By that time, Indian Affairs
had ceased to report the number of students living in residences. However, in 1970–
71, the number of students in residence was 6,000. An additional 6,000 students were
living in private boarding homes and group homes during the school year, and “themajority of these students are provided with room and board, and clothing and educational allowances.”484 Residential schooling from 1970 onward constituted a small
and declining element in First Nations education. Despite this, in certain regions, particularly Saskatchewan, the schools played a significant role in the campaign that First
Nations people waged to gain control over education. Federal government attempts
to close the schools were frustrated by First Nations organizations and people whosought to keep the schools open—under conditions of Aboriginal control.
There are several reasons why Aboriginal organizations supported the continued
existence of residential institutions that many had long opposed in the past. There
was no single Aboriginal position on residential schooling. As the review of the 1946
to 1948 Special Joint Committee testimony indicated, a significant number of the
Aboriginal witnesses supported the continued existence of residential schools, particularly if they were located on reserves (allowing for regular contact between parents
and children). The level of support is increased when the number includes those who
opposed residential schooling in general, but recognized that it had a role to play inthe housing and education of orphans and children in care.

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 93

The debates over the effectiveness of the federal government’s integration policy
had highlighted both the direct and institutional racism that students were subjected
to in public schools. The high levels of poverty and poor housing conditions on many
reserves also created problems that made it difficult for many parents to support theirchildren financially and provide them an environment in which they could study.
Residential schools in such a situation became part of a family-survival strategy.
There was also a legitimate concern that the federal government would close residential schools without ensuring that there were proper, adequately funded, community
supports and community schools in place. There was an expectation that Aboriginalcontrol would bring an end to many of the long-resented social and educational policies associated with residential schooling. Instead of having institutions dedicated toeradicating Aboriginal culture, Aboriginal communities wanted the new focus to be
on protecting and strengthening their cultures.
The conflict at Blue Quills was only one of a number of campaigns that First Nationsorganized in an effort to take control of residential schools slated for closure. Not all
were successful. By the end of the 1960s, for example, most of the students at the
Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, came from either northern Québec or northwestern Ontario. At the beginning of 1970, only twenty-five of the ninety-six students inthe school came from southern Ontario, the region the school was originally intended
to serve. With the planned opening of more reserve schools in Québec and northwestern Ontario in the fall of 1970, the Mohawk Institute enrolment was expected todrop to twenty-five. As a result, Indian Affairs decided to close the school in June 1970.
Such closures often saw a portion of the enrolment shifted from residential schools
to the authority of provincial child-welfare agencies. Indian Affairs official Donald
Cassie explained that students from southern Ontario would be cared for “throughlocal child welfare agencies or provided with boarding arrangements.”485 However, inMarch 1970, the Six Nations Council announced that it had not been properly consulted over the closure of the school. The council argued that “the Institute could stillserve a very useful purpose. Many of the successful members of Six Nations passed
through the Institute.” In the future, the residence could serve “the orphaned andunderprivileged children from the Six Nations.”486
The council proposed that sixty-four children from the Six Nations who werealready being cared for through provincial child-welfare agencies be transferred to the
Mohawk Institute to bring its enrolment back to 101 students. The federal government
opposed such a move, not because it would see so many students institutionalized,
but because, in the words of the director of the education branch, George Cromb, it“would be reversing the Department’s policy of moving from federally operated services to provincially operated services for Indian residents.”487 The Mohawk Institute—which dated back to the 1830s—was closed on June 30, 1970, and the building wastransferred to the Six Nations.488

94 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Events followed a different trajectory in Saskatchewan from that in Ontario. In
February 1970, David Ahenakew, chief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indians,
protested the proposed closing of the Onion Lake and Grayson residences. He said
the decisions were being made with no consideration for the “feeling of the Indianpeople who are directly or indirectly affected by the paternalistic and inhuman move.”
The closure of these institutions, he wrote, “is not the wish of the Indian people
affected.”489 In response, D. K. F. Wattie, the head of Indian Affairs’ Guidance Services
Division, visited the reserves that would be affected by the closing of the Marieval
residence (formerly the Cowessess school at Grayson). In his report, he wrote, “TheIndian people I spoke to were unanimous in their belief that there is a continuing needfor the Marieval residence to accommodate children with poor home conditions.” Thedepartment estimated that there were about twenty students in that category. On
the closing of the school, the plan had been either to send them to the Qu’Appelle
residence or to place them in foster homes. The people with whom Wattie spokeraised two concerns about this plan. First, it would remove children from contact
with their home community. Although the children came from families with problems, Wattie was told that “each child has strong bonds of attachment to one or moreparent, grandparent, relative or guardian.” Second, it was believed that foster parents
were interested only in making money from fostering the children. Based on what heacknowledged to be only his first impression, he wrote that the foster home program“appears to be totally inadequate to the people’s needs; placement is effected withouta court order and supervision of homes seems to be non-existent.” He pointed outthat there were 120 children in foster homes in the Yorkton District. With that workload, the recently appointed child-welfare officer would be lucky to visit each home
once a year. Since, he wrote, First Nations parents made little distinction between foster homes and boarding homes, there was considerable community resistance to theconcept of boarding children out.490
The campaign to keep the Marieval residence open was successful. In June 1975, it
was still in operation. It had fifty-two children in residence, fifty of whom were there
because of problems in their homes.491 Its existence was always precarious. In 1978,
Sol Sanderson, the first vice-president of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indians,
wrote to Indian Affairs, opposing the proposed closure of the Grayson (Marieval),
Duck Lake, and Lestock (Muskowekwan, also spelled as Muscowequan) residences.
He pointed out that “all areas in the province are experiencing a serious shortage ofspace, both for education services and for placement of children.”492
First Nations organizations were not simply stopping the closure of the residences.
As at Blue Quills, they began to take control of the institutions. In the face of First
Nations pressure in November 1970, the Indian Affairs Education Branch proposedtransferring the administration of federal hostels to First Nations. It was argued:

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 95

Because residences are substitute homes for Indian students, it is important thatin some form or another the Indian people are involved directly in the planningand operation of the residence program.... To increase Indian control andresponsibility in this area it is proposed that residence services be contracted
to Indian groups. The proposal is made in the belief that Indian people areprepared to assume direct responsibility for the operation of the residence
services and to meet the Department’s standards.493

In January 1971, the government was willing to “consider proposals from an Indian
parent group regarding the transfer of management control of an individual residence
to the group where a continuing need for the residence is foreseen.” The Prince Albert,
Gordon’s, Qu’Appelle, Lestock, Duck Lake, and Beauval residences in Saskatchewan
all were high on the Indian Affairs list of schools where such a need was anticipated.494
By the mid-1970s, there was a process in place by which control of the residences was
being transferred from the federal government to the bands. One of the first post-Blue
Quills takeovers was at the Qu’Appelle school.495 The Qu’Appelle Indian Residential
School Council was established in 1972 to “operate and direct the Qu’Appelle Indian
Residential School.”496 The council negotiated to take over the Qu’Appelle residence
as of April 1973 and the school at a later date.497 In the resulting contract, the federal
government included the standards that it expected to be maintained at the school,requiring the board toprovide for the students living in the residence nutrition conforming to thestandards laid down by the Medical Services Bureau of the Department of
National Health and Welfare and the Provincial Department of Health and shallpermit inspection of the residence by officers of the Departments at intervals
determined by the Ministers of National Health and Welfare and the Provincial
Department of Health and shall carry into effect their recommendations as towhat standard of nutrition, accommodation and child care shall be provided by
the Board to those students in the residence.498

In addition, the board was to “ensure adequate fire protection in the residence,shall permit the Dominion Fire Marshall to inspect the residence at intervals determined by him and shall carry out his recommendations as to what fire protection
measures are to be taken in the residence.”499
Historically, the schools under church administration had failed to meet—due inlarge measure to government underfunding—many of these standards that the government now insisted upon for the First Nations authorities.
In addition, the contract stipulated:
The hiring, disciplining and dismissal of all persons employed by the Board in or
in connection with the residence and the number of persons to be so employed
shall be solely under the control and within the discretion of the Board with the96 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

promise that decisions on such matters will be taken in consultation with theresidence administrator.500

The transfer of the Qu’Appelle residence, the oldest in Saskatchewan, was followedby that of the Prince Albert residence, the largest in the province. The Prince Albert
District Chiefs Council (padcc) adopted a resolution in 1972 that the Prince AlbertStudent Residence should be transferred to a board of directors made up of representatives of the Chiefs of the Prince Albert Area and the Federation of Saskatchewan
Indians.501 At the time, Indian Affairs suggested that alternative approaches be studied, including having it “staffed exclusively by local Indian people.” However, thedepartment was prepared to co-operate with the Chiefs of the Prince Albert Area ifthey wished to take over the residence.502 By the end of that year, the organization
had established a board that would assume eventual control over the residence.503
The Anglican Church sought to slow the pace of change. The Indian Council of the
Anglican Diocese of Saskatchewan, which claimed to represent 7,500 Anglican First
Nations people, suggested that the transfer be carried out over a period of years,
during which Aboriginal people would be hired at the school to work under the direction of the current administration. The Anglicans also opposed any severing of thelink between the school and the church. They argued that “many parents would nolonger allow their children to go to the Residence” if the residence was not connectedto the church.504 In January 1973, an agreement was reached for a gradual transfer of
responsibility. Under this agreement, Indian Affairs would retain considerable financial control over the residence.505
In May 1973, the Prince Albert Student Residence Board called on Indian Affairs to
add two primary school classrooms at the residence because “students in the primaryclasses often have difficulty in integrated classes.”506 This was the first step in a processthat led to the board’s having authority over a residence and a school system. In April
1974, at the prompting of the board of directors, Indian Affairs agreed to the establishment of Kindergarten and grades One, Two, and Three at the residence.507 That year,
the residence was also renamed as the Prince Albert Indian Student Residence.508 In
1985, the padcc expanded the residence’s educational capacity by leasing the Queen
Elizabeth school from the Prince Albert School Division.509 The residence was transferred to the padcc and renamed the Prince Albert Indian Student Education Centre(paisec) in 1985.510 It was developed into a substantial facility: eighteen buildings on
16.6 hectares of land.511
There were similar developments at other residences. In 1981, representatives of
local First Nations established the Muskowekwan Indian Student Residence as a nonprofit corporation to operate the residence at Lestock. An Aboriginal board of directors assumed control of the Marieval Indian Student Residence in 1981. After 1987, theresidence was operated by the Cowessess First Nation as the Cowessess Community
Education Centre. In 1982, the Duck Lake residence came under the control of theOperating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 97

Saskatoon District Chiefs. In 1984, control of the Qu’Appelle residence was transferredfrom the Qu’Appelle Indian Residential School Council to the Star Blanket Band. The
Meadow Lake Tribal Council took control of the Beauval Indian Residence in 1985.512
Not all First Nations took the same approach, though; in 1974, the Onion Lake Band
Council approved a resolution asking that the Onion Lake residence be replaced withfour group homes.513
The First Nations agencies that administered residences sought to reinforce rather
than eliminate Aboriginal cultural identity. The first item on the Qu’Appelle Student
Residence committee’s list of objectives was to “help the students in all areas so they
become good citizens.” The first listed objective of the academic program was to “foster pride in Indian culture.” The second was to “improve the students [sic] self-image as
an individual within a mixed society.”514 The first item in the paisec mission statement
under the Student Development heading was to “foster pride in the Indian ancestry of
the student,” and the second point was to “provide and improve the student’s self-image as an individual within a multi-cultural society.”515
After the transfer of authority at Blue Quills, First Nations people were hired assupervisors, security guards, cooks, laundry staff, janitors, engineers, and maintenance workers.516 Initially, the school offered grades Four to Nine, but, over time,
lower grades were dropped as communities built their own elementary schools, andhigher grades were added at Blue Quills. A Cree-language program was developed for
all grades. In 1975, Blue Quills also began offering post-secondary education, startingwith a teacher-training program. In later years, programs in liberal arts and public
administration, and vocational training, were added.517
Aboriginal people began to assume positions of responsibility at government-run
and church-operated, as well as at First Nations-run, residences. In 1972, James
Neacappo was appointed senior administrator of the Anglican residence in Fort
George.518 The government renewed the provision that exempted residence administrators and child-care workers from the civil service in 1973. This was intended to giveFirst Nations people a chance to get these jobs “in the least possible time,” according
to Oblate Yvon Levaque.519 In September 1973, Alexander Aleck took over from H. F.
Dunlop as the administrator of the Mission residence. Aleck had attended the Mission
school and later taught at it.520 Nathan Matthew, a former Kamloops student, took over
responsibility for the Kamloops residence in 1973.521 In April 1973, James Roberts was
hired as the administrator trainee for the Prince Albert Student Residence.522 Roberts
had grown up in the residence and had worked there for the previous five years.523 He
became the residence administrator on November 1, 1973.524 That same fall, Howard
Bighead was the head child-care worker at the Prince Albert residence.525
Aboriginal people in British Columbia considered taking over residences but,with short-lived exceptions, chose not to do so. The detailed minutes of a meetingof representatives of the British Columbia residential school advisory boards in 1971

98 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

provide an overview of the range of attitudes towards the residences, and the prospectof band, as opposed to church or government, administration. For many people, theresidences were preferable to integration. Chief Vincent Harris of Seabird Island said
that, in his experience, “provincial school boards do not want to hear Indians speak.”He asked how “they were going to control the provincial system when they integrate
into white schools. The white people do not want Indians coming in to tell them what
to do when they are managing the schools.”
John Andrews, the former administrator of the Alberni school, warned, “He who
played [sic] the piper called the tunes.” By this, he meant that the government would
likely retain considerable control over the residences. He pointed out that in the past,
the churches had been, in effect, agents for Indian Affairs. “Now we are told that the
Residences and schools shall be taken over and operated by various Indian groups but
operating still in much the same way as the churches were before, as agents for the
Department.” As Andrews predicted, funding levels would severely compromise theeffectiveness of First Nations-controlled residences.
Although closing residences meant that some children would return to their homes,
there were worries about what would happen to orphans and students who had beenplaced in school for social-welfare reasons. Mrs. G. Guerin spoke of “how very difficult it is to find homes for Indian children. There are many orphans and children withproblems who really need the residences. Where would these children be placed if theresidences were to be phased out?”
There was also disagreement as to how effective the residential schools had been.
According to the meeting minutes, Larry Seymour of Chemainus Bay said that when
he looked at his community, he could see no improvements as a result of the education that had been provided. He saw “the unsuccessful attempts of various dedicatedand sincere people trying to better the conditions of the Indians of his community. He
sees no changes in his community and no changes result from the present system inthis institution and in institutions similar to it throughout the province.” In his opinion, “The whole system has been one big failure, one big flop.” He could see no reason
why First Nations should not take over residences, since “they have failed completely.
We couldn’t do any worse.” Bob Hall said that since 90% of the students had not madeit through the residential school system, “something must be wrong.” He said thatchurch leaders did not have “the capacity to administer the Indian people.” Therefore,
he said, “Indian people should take over the administration of their own residences.”
A Mrs. Andrews of Seabird Island took issue with criticisms of residential schools.
She had gone to the Mission school and felt that the school had helped her and herclassmates succeed and build good homes. “Some are holding down good executive
jobs, some are teachers and others are carpenters and mechanics, etc. The Indianscannot say this residence has failed their people. If it were not for the Oblates picking
up the pieces on the reserves, they would not be around now.” Gilbert Joe said that

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 99

if the First Nations took over the Sechelt residence, they would wish to keep Father
Dunlop as administrator. The federal response at the meeting was that if “an Indiangroup controlled a residence, the Department would give them the money as agreed
upon to run the residence. The Indians could then, in turn, contract with any organization, church or otherwise for their services.”526
In 1974, the West Coast District Council of Indian Chiefs took over the administration of the Christie Residence, then located in Tofino, British Columbia.527 By 1975, itappears, Indian Affairs had resumed administration of the residence.528 By the endof the 1970s, most of the British Columbia residences had closed. Efforts to close
the schools were often coupled with investments in building foster homes to take inchildren from the residences and in training foster parents. Delays in the construction of these homes led Indian Affairs to postpone for one year the planned closureof the Lytton residence.529 The last British Columbia school to close was the Mission
school (opened in 1862 and closed in 1984), which had also been the first to open in
the region.530
The churches remained involved in the life of the residences, with Indian Affairs
entering into contracts with the Anglicans and Oblates to provide a variety of services,
including chaplaincy at the residences.531 Oblate John Tritschler was the chaplain at
the Mission residence from 1976 to 1984.532 By 1987, the Oblates had largely withdrawn
from educational work with First Nations people in British Columbia, due in part toa “shortage of Oblate personnel.”533 For their part, the Anglicans were still providing
chaplaincy at the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school into the 1990s.534

The schools under First Nations administration
The transfer of residential schools to Aboriginal control brought about significant
changes and improvements to the residences. In 1990, Gerry Stonechild, the directorof the Qu’Appelle residence, was asked to describe how conditions at the school hadchanged from the days when he had attended there in the 1940s.
It’s the same building on the outside, but the happiest kids in the world. Onceagain, super athletics. Our kids just came back from winning the district inbasketball. I just had three kids come back from Saskatoon with gold medals,
silver medals in track and field. Our volleyball teams are doing fantastic. Kids arehitting eighty, ninety averages.535

Stonechild’s comments are clearly those of an enthusiast, but the hiring of
Aboriginal administrators and Aboriginal staff did make an important difference tolife in the residences. Eddy Jules, a former student at the Kamloops residence, felt that
Nathan Matthew made dramatic changes to the institution after becoming administrator in 1974.

100 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In three days he changed that place just like you would snap your fingers. We
were having waffles and boiled eggs, bacon and eggs, you name it. We thought
we had just died and went to heaven. Milk was real milk, you know. It was wild,
it was totally wild, he was a godsend. To this day I have so much respect forthat man.536

At the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school, the revised education program under
Aboriginal administration would eventually boast a Cree-language program thatcovered all the grades offered in the school, a part-time counsellor, a resource room
teacher, and a part-time cultural coordinator.537
The problems that soon emerged were not in the area of programming. They had to
do with the operation and maintenance of the schools and residences themselves. As
noted in the terms of the transfer to Aboriginal control, the residences were expected
to meet a standard of care and maintenance established by Indian Affairs. In discussing the transfer of residences with British Columbia First Nations, Indian Affairs
required that groups that took over residences had to adhere to:Food Services Standards which are reflected in Canada’s Food Guide. National
Health and Welfare people make regular inspections of Residences and reporton these.
Fire-Safety Precautions—Dominion Fire Marshall is responsible here.
Standards of Child Care—reflected in some of Child Welfare Acts in the Province[sic].
Administrative Standards—which provide standards in administrative pursuits. 538

It bears repeating that the government itself had failed to follow those same standards when the schools were under its management. The First Nations’ ability to meetsuch standards would also clearly depend on the adequacy of government funding.
A consultant’s study done at the end of the 1980s concluded that the residences “arein need of major renovations, replacements and building and fire code upgrading.
Contemporary accommodation, access, and safety standards are not being met in allcases.” It was estimated that an investment of $6.7 million was needed to address thebuilding deficiencies that existed in 1988.539 Because Indian Affairs had intended toclose the system from the 1960s onwards, the government limited its investment toemergency maintenance. If the buildings had been properly maintained, there may
have been more band takeovers in the 1970s.
Temporary solutions often became permanent. The ten trailers that had been
moved onto the Prince Albert residence property to serve as temporary classrooms inthe mid-1970s were still in operation in 1988. By the late 1980s, there was uncertainty
as to the facility’s future. As a result, Indian Affairs was unwilling to invest in permanent buildings.540

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 101

At the root of the problem lay the funding formula—or lack thereof. In a brief tothe federal minister of Indian Affairs in 1986, the board of the Marieval Community
Education Centre stated that the federal government had not provided adequate
funding since the centre had taken control of responsibility for education.541 The
Prince Albert administration believed that Indian Affairs funding had failed to keep
up with the cost of food and clothing, a problem that was accentuated by the fact that,over the year, the percentage of older students enrolled at the facility increased.542
Funding for staffing was also a problem. In 1979, Duck Lake Chief Andy Michel said
that reductions in staff had meant that some residence workers had to work double
shifts.543 According to a 1990 consultant’s study, “present resourcing practices provide
little in the way of equity, rationality, predictability or flexibility.” In general, funding
was fixed at the time of transfer, with little increase in the cost per student in following
years. The residences had little bargaining power and, in effect, competed with one
another for scarce funding.544
All these problems were intensified by the fact that social conditions caused these
institutions to be transformed into child-welfare institutions.
In 1974, Prince Albert board chairperson Allan Felix worried that parents were being
allowed to escape their responsibilities by sending “their children to the residence atthe least sign of difficulty.” He said that one of the main purposes of the residence wasto assist children who, “for a good reason,” could not stay in their homes. Neither the
residence nor the staff, however, was “equipped to deal with problem children.”545
Indian Affairs official R. Martin noted in 1976 that although the residences had
been established and funded to provide a home for students while they were attending school, it was becoming apparent that they were being used to house children
with special needs. There was no adequate pre-placement appraisal, little or no counselling with parents, no casework treatment, and no planning for after-care needs.546
The trend continued into the 1980s. As Table 32.3 indicates, in 1987, overthree-quarters of the admissions to the Prince Albert residence were for “social”
reasons.
Table 32.3. Reasons for admission to Prince Albert Indian Student Education Centre,
September 1987.
Major Reason

Number of Students

Percentage of Enrolment

Education

64

19.7

Social

249

76.6

9

2.8

Discipline
Medical

3

Total

325*

.9
100

Source: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E4965-1, volume 1,“Reasons for Admission to P.A.I.S.E.C.: After Discharge – Summary – September 15, 1987.” [PAR-000059-0001]* Source incorrectly provides sum of 326.

102 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Of the 249 students admitted for social reasons, 79 were admitted in a category
described as “severe.” This amounts to just under one-quarter of the total enrolment.
The “severe admission” breakdown is presented in Table 32.4.547
Table 32.4. “Severe” admission categories and number of students enrolled, Prince
Albert Indian Student Education Centre, September 1987.
Category

Number of Students

Percentage of Enrolment

Substance Abuse in Family

7

2.2

Substance Abuse – Parents

22

6.8

Substance Abuse – Child

3.9

Not Accepted by Step-Parents

9

2.8

Rejected by Natural Family

13

4

Physical or Social Abuse

18

5.6

Family Violence

1.3

Neglect

6

1.8

Total

79

24.1

Source: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E4965-1, volume 1,
Reasons for Admission to P.A.I.S.E.C.: After Discharge – Summary – September 15, 1987. [PAR-000059-0001]

Children coming from such conditions put significant pressure on the residences. According to a paisec report, the care that students in the “severe” category
required included:• one-to-one counselling• individual therapy• psychological assessments• group therapy• family therapy/counsellingAt the time, the dormitory staff-to-student ratio at Prince Albert was twenty-four toone. According to one report, even if the dormitory staff was doubled, the residence
would still “be scratching the surface,” since the “children with more serious problems
should be working with a higher ratio of staff.”548 A year later, the staff-to-student ratio
remained unchanged.
Enrolment, however, had increased to 466, due in part to the adoption of Bill C-31.
That piece of legislation allowed Aboriginal people who had been enfranchised without
their consent to regain Indian Act status.549 Although that was a positive development
for the individuals and families who were affected, it contributed further to the strains
on capacity at the school. There was a growing sense that the schools were being used
to fill the gaps in other vital services that were missing in Indigenous communities.

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 103

Shutting the system down
From 1969 onwards, the overall number of residences declined. In 1970, IndianAffairs put the number of residences (not including those in the Northwest Territories)
at fifty-six.550 By 1980, only sixteen residences were still in operation. By 1990, there
were eleven, and by 1999, there were none (see tables 32.5 and 32.6).
Table 32.5. Student residences in operation in 1980 in southern Canada.
Province

Schools

Alberta

Cardston (formerly the Roman Catholic school)
Blue Quills

British Columbia

Williams Lake
Mission
Christie

Manitoba

DauphinOntario

Poplar Hill
Stirland Lake

QuébecPointe Bleue

Saskatchewan

BeauvalDuck Lake
Gordon’sMarieval (Grayson)
Muskowekwan (Lestock)
Prince Albert
Qu’Appelle

Source: Indian Residential Schools of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement 2011, provided byIndian and Northern Affairs Canada, 29 September 2011.

Table 32.6. Student residences in operation in 1990 in southern Canada.
Province

Schools

AlbertaBlue Quills

Ontario

Poplar Hill
Stirland Lake

QuébecPointe Bleue

Saskatchewan

BeauvalDuck Lake
Gordon’sMarieval (Grayson)
Muskowekwan (Lestock)
Prince Albert
Qu’Appelle

Source: Indian Residential Schools of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement 2011, provided byIndian and Northern Affairs Canada, 29 September 2011.

104 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In 1987, Indian Affairs informed the Blue Quills administration that it would notprovide funding for the high school program after June 1988. The decision was driven,at least in part, by the desire of other local First Nations to develop their own highschool programs. Indian Affairs continued to fund post-secondary programs at Blue
Quills.551 The high school program and associated residence closed in June 1988. That
year, seventy-six Grade Twelve students graduated from the school: the largest graduating class in the high school’s twelve-year history.552
The decision to close the Dauphin, Manitoba, residence in 1988 drew a protest
from the Manitoba West Region Tribal Council, which was disturbed by the loss of
local employment and the need to relocate the students.553
Indian Affairs had scheduled the Pointe Bleue school for closure in 1979.554
However, in March of that year, the Pointe Bleue Band Council decided that the residence would remain open, because a report that had been prepared on its possible
uses had “statistically proven [that] Indian students who go through the Residence
have better results and the failure rate is the lowest of all the surrounding reserves.”555
The better performance of the residence’s students likely had to do with the
makeup of the institution’s staff. Since the beginning of the decade, the Pointe Bleue
residence had come to be administered by an increased number of Aboriginal staff.
During the 1972–73 academic year, for example, twenty-four of its forty-six employees
were Aboriginal.556 The residence remained open under Innu management throughthe 1990–91 school year, ultimately closing due to federal refusal to fund its upkeep.557
In 1971, Indian Affairs official D. Wattie had said the department was concernedthat by passing control of the residences over to First Nations, it would become moredifficult to phase out what the department viewed to be “non-essential” residences.
He expressed concern that First Nations employees might “put pressure to havethe residence continued. This is only natural.”558 This certainly was the case for theseven residences in southern Canada that were still in operation in 1994. All were in
Saskatchewan. With the exception of the Gordon’s residence, all were band-operated.
Most of the residences had been constructed in the 1920s and 1930s, although portions of some residences were older, and additions and outbuildings had been built
since then. The condition of the residences in the 1990s ranged from “fair to good.”
In September 1993, there were 1,037 students enrolled in the seven Saskatchewan
residences. The First Nations-controlled administration accepted students using thefollowing criteria: Treaty right, the right to attend a band-operated school, parental
choice, and the student’s right to the best available option.
By 1993, the operation of Indian residential schools had become a major formof economic activity on the reserves where they were situated. They employed 360
people in residence or education positions. Of those positions, 220 were held by First
Nations people.

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000 • 105

The problems the government faced in attempting to wind down the system completely were exemplified in a statement attributed to Andy Michael (likely Andy
Michel) of the St. Michael’s (Duck Lake) Residence. According to an Indian Affairs
memorandum, he had said that “you got us into the residences kicking and screaming; you will now have to drag us out kicking and screaming.” The closures were protracted, but Indian Affairs had concluded that the schools constituted a liability and it
wished to be rid of them.559
By the 1990s, a growing number of former students were speaking out about theabuse they had undergone in residential schools. Police investigations that would
eventually lead to a number of convictions were underway. The groundwork was also
being prepared for eventual civil cases. Both these developments are discussed in following chapters. Concerns over future liability appear to have reinforced the government’s determination to close the schools. The 1993 conviction of William Starr, theformer administrator of the Gordon’s residence, on ten counts of sexually assaulting
students in the residence underscored the issue.560 An internal Indian Affairs document discussed the case in the context of plans to close all the residences. After noting that the Gordon’s residence was a government-operated facility, the author wrote,“Although considerable action has been taken to educate staff and children in all
residences, the fact remains that as the operator and manager of the Gordons [sic]Residence diand is responsible and liable.”561 Starr had left the school in 1984, but
the Gordon’s school had continuing problems with staff members’ administration ofharsh and abusive discipline well into the 1990s. This is discussed in detail in otherchapters of this report.562
The Beauval residence continued to operate until 1995.563 The Duck Lake and theGordon’s residences both closed in 1996.564 The Lestock (Muskowekwan), Grayson(Marieval), and Prince Albert residences all closed in 1997.565
First Nations groups worried that the government had failed to put in place adequate resources to deal with the social as well as educational needs of the children
who had been living in these institutions. Montreal Lake Director of Education Julia
Johnston noted that the band was using the Prince Albert residence “as a resource
for families who are experiencing family violence and abuses.” She said that considerable work needed to be done before students returned to the community from theschool.566 The Lac La Ronge Band warned that its child and family service agency had
at least thirty-three students who were “severely dysfunctional,” requiring twentyfour-hour supervision. It requested that the Prince Albert residence stay open until
those students could be safely accommodated back in the community.567 In March
1997, when the closure of the Prince Albert Indian Student Education Centre wasbeing planned, it was estimated that approximately 140 of the students in the institution would be in need of some form of child welfare after the closure of the facility.568
After it closed in June 1997, the Prince Albert facility became the home of the Prince

106 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Albert Grand Council Child Care Education Centre. The centre’s program concentrated on students whose needs were not being met in their communities. The initialenrolment was sixty-six.569
In the face of a government plan to close the Qu’Appelle residence, the Star Blanket
Cree Nation proposed that the sixty-year-old building be replaced by a new structure. Operated as an “elite school,” it would offer grades Seven to Twelve on a residential basis. The band’s proposal argued that “Indian children fail when transferred
to off-reserve schools.”570 The federal government rejected the proposal and the last
students left the school in June 1998. On March 23, 1999, the building was destroyed.
Vern Bellegarde, the former chief administrator of the school, was present when
the building was destroyed. He told reporters, “My grandfather, John Bellegarde, wasat the school in 1903 when it burned down. My father, Joseph Bellegarde, was there in1932 when it burned down again. I didn’t get to see it burned down but.…”
Michael Starr, who had attended the school as a day student in the 1970s, called it
an “emotional day.” He said, “Some of the history is gone … in a lot of ways the people who have been hurt by the residential schools have had some of that pain taken
away by knocking it down. At the same time there were a lot of good memories inthe school.”571
Indian Affairs officials had lost faith in residential schooling by early 1940. The
1948 report of the Special Joint Committee of Parliament had called for the end of all
separate First Nations education institutions. The 1951 Indian Act gave government
officials the instruments they needed to provide education to First Nations students
through contracts with provincial schools. Yet, it took nearly sixty years for IndianAffairs to bring the system to an end.
The schools survived for so long due to the overall lack of on-reserve classroom
space for First Nations students, the continuing church support for residential schooling, the growing number of First Nations students, and, most fundamentally, the First
Nations opposition to the wholesale transfer of their children to provincial schools.
During this period, the half-day system ended, educational qualifications improved—
and funding and government control increased. These increases followed decadesof financial neglect. Although the increases could improve the daily operation of theschools, many of the institutions continued to deteriorate.

In 1952, an Indian Affairs inspector compared the Anglican school in Cardston, Alberta, to Dotheboys Hall, a fictional boarding
school in Charles Dickens’s novel Nicholas Nickleby. According to the inspector, “All children from Grade III up perform farmand domestic duties daily outside of classroom instruction time, and each child in Grade III–VIII spends two half days of school
instruction time at these same chores.”
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P2004-09-145.

The school laundry at the Brandon, Manitoba, school, 1946.
National Film Board of Canada, Photothèque, Library and Archives Canada, PA-048572.

Clockwise from top left, classroom life at schools in Chesterfield Inlet, Northwest Territories; Lac La Ronge, Saskatchewan; Prince
Albert, Saskatchewan; and Mission, British Columbia.
Diocese of Churchill-Hudson Bay, CHB 07 03018; Bud Glunz, National Film Board of Canada, Photothèque, Library and Archives Canada, PA-134110; General
Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P7556-46; Mission Community Archives, MCA-248-10.

For the churches, Aboriginal languages remained part of the missionary tool kit in a broader campaign to win not only Aboriginal
children but also their parents to Christianity and away from traditional beliefs. At the Fort George Roman Catholic school in
Québec, religious instruction was given in both English and Aboriginal languages.
Deschâtelets Archives.

A depiction of the martyrdom of Father Jean Brébeuf from Les missionnaires au pays des indiens (The Missionaries in IndianCountry), one of the books in use in residential schools in Québec in the 1960s.

In 1953, J. E. Andrews, the principal of the Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario, wrote that “we must face realistically the factthat the only hope for the Canadian Indian is eventual assimilation into the white race.”
The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, G-3807-fc-2.

Dave Crowchild and Teddy Yellowfly at a railway station, waiting to board the train to Ottawa to appear before the Joint
Committee on the Indian Act in 1947. When he appeared before the committee, Yellowfly stressed that Aboriginal people “verydefinitely have a religion of their own.”
Glenbow Museum, NA-4212-42.

The Maliotenam school at Sept-Îles, Québec, was the first of a number of new residential schools constructed in that province
after the end of the Second World War.
Library and Archives Canada, PA-212963.

The girls’ physical education class at the La Tuque, Québec, residential school.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P8471-4.

The Poplar Hill school in northwestern Ontario was one of three schools operated by the Northern Light Gospel Mission.
Residential Schools Program, Nishnawbe Aski Nation and The Shingwauk Project, Algoma University.

The Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, school came under the administration of the Saskatoon District Chiefs in 1982. It remained inoperation until 1996.
Deschâtelets Archives.

In 1940, R. A. Hoey, the superintendent of Welfare and Training for Indian Affairs, recommended that the Roman Catholic schoolin Brocket, Alberta, be closed. It remained in operation until 1961.
Glenbow Museum, NA-5203-1.

Even though the school had trouble recruiting students, the Anglican Church was reluctant to close its Moose Factory, Ontario,
institution. The church feared that the school’s closure would be an admission of failure that would injure the church’s
reputation and enhance the position of Roman Catholic missionaries.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P75-103-S8-121.

In the mid-1960s, Indian Affairs decided to phase out the high school program at the Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, school.
Library and Archives Canada, PA-185531.

Harry Strom, Premier of Alberta; Harold Cardinal, President of the Indian Association of Alberta; and Jean Chrétien, Minister ofIndian Affairs. Cardinal and Chrétien came into conflict in 1969 over the government’s White Paper on Indian policy and in 1970,
when parents sought to take over the Blue Quills, Alberta, school.
Edmonton Journal, December 18, 1970, Provincial Archives of Alberta, J547.

Students from the Morley, Alberta, school. Throughout their history, the schools were not funded or staffed to function as
child-welfare institutions in a manner that would allow them to provide the appropriate level of personal and emotional carechildren need.
United Church of Canada Archives, 93-049P798.

Girls at the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school. A 1967 study of nine residential schools in Saskatchewan concluded that 59.1% of
the students enrolled were there for what were termed “welfare reasons” and 40.9% for “education reasons.”
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, M2008-10-P14.

The need to travel off-reserve in order to find work forced many parents to place their children in the Sandy Bay, Manitoba, school.
St. Boniface Historical Society Archives, Oblates of Mary Immaculate of Manitoba fonds, delegation, SHSB22623.

Students at the Beauval, Saskatchewan, school. A 1967 report on nine schools in Saskatchewan was critical of the schools’
regimentation and lack of privacy. In most of the schools in Saskatchewan, the students lived in large dormitories, some ofwhich had up to fifty students. They ate in large dining halls, and had little in the way of personal storage space. There was noplace where a child could be alone
Deschâtelets Archives.

A 1948 building inspection of the File Hills, Saskatchewan, school reported that the plumbing was in poor shape, the septic tank
was not functioning properly, the generator did not supply enough electricity to light the school adequately, the boilers were old,
the water supply was insufficient, and only two of the seven toilets were functional. The report concluded that the building should
be demolished.
United Church of Canada Archives, 93-049P1124.

A 1965 inspection of the Assiniboia school in Winnipeg, Manitoba, described the boys’ dressing room, located in the school
basement, as “totally inadequate, grossly over-crowded, depressing and damp.” The boys’ toilet room had too few urinals, and theshower room was poorly ventilated and provided students with no privacy.
Provincial Archives of Manitoba, SIS 69-69 40.

Shortly after taking over as principal of the Anglican school in Wabasca, Alberta, Eric Barrington reported in 1961 that the waterat the school had, “to put it mildly, a flavour all its own, the colour is that of medium strong coffee, is very hard and discolours
all receptacles it has the misfortune to touch.”
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P75-103-S7-270.

In 1940, the Chapleau, Ontario, school was just one of a number of residential schools with an inadequate water supply.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P7538-1099.

Overcrowding was thought to have contributed to an outbreak of tuberculosis cases at the Cross Lake, Manitoba, school in thespring of 1943.
St. Boniface Historical Society Archives, Fonds, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Keewatin – Le Pas, N5228.

Young girls brushing their teeth at the Anglican school in Fort George, Québec. Dental care at the school was compromised bybureaucratic battling: Indian Affairs paid for toothbrushes, but the federal Health Department was responsible for supplying
tooth cleanser.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P75-103-S7-301.

CHAPTER 33

The educational record: 1940–2000

In 1964, Kay Cronin, the author of a very admiring history of the Oblates in British
Columbia and herself an honorary Oblate, presented a dismal report to a meeting of Oblate residential school principals in Ottawa on the work of the residential schools. For the previous five years, she had been working in Vancouver with
Aboriginal students who had come into the city in search of additional training andeducation. She noted that when she had been researching her book on the Oblates,
she had seen little to fault about the residential school system. But, once she started
working with former students,
all the platitudes I had been mouthing about the need for these sweet, sensitive
youngsters to be rescued from the bad influences of broken homes, the reserve
system, the evils of our materialistic white society and its godless public school
system, were shot to smithereens, and I had to start re-thinking about Indian
education all over again.

Her work with former students had led her to conclude that the schools had notadequately prepared them for the education they wished to pursue in the city. They
had little training in how to handle money or look for a job. Although most First
Nations students struggled with these issues to some degree, she felt that “these problems were most marked in the products of the residential school system.”1 Cronin presented the principals with a set of proposals for how the schools could be improved.
The time for church-led reform, however, was past. Within five years, the federal
government would take complete control over the schools and commence the process of closing the system. The shortcomings that Cronin pointed to were only part ofthe overall failure of the residential schools as a system of education.
Until the late 1950s, the residential schools constituted a complete educational andresidential system. Students both lived and were educated in the same institution.
Under the integration policy of the 1950s, the unified nature of residential schoolingbegan to change in a number of ways. In some cases, students lived in residences (usually called “hostels”) and were educated in day schools. By 1959, there were 283 First
Nations students living in such residences and attending Indian Affairs schools, and108 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

737 attending non-Indian Affairs day schools. (Because Indian Affairs had transferredauthority for First Nations education in the Northwest Territories to Northern Affairs,
none of the Indian Affairs statistics after 1954–55 include figures from the Northwest
Territories.)2 In that year, there were 9,691 First Nations students living and studying
in residential schools. By 1965, there were 9,875 students living in residential schoolsor hostels, but only 6,717 of them were attending school in a residential school.3 The
rest were going to day school, usually a public school. Since the 1965–66 Indian Affairs
annual report was the last one to contain separate reports that allow one to distinguishbetween the number of students living and those living and studying in the same institution, it becomes difficult from that date onward to report on the academic achievement of residential school students. The 1968 decision to formally divide all remaining
residential schools into separate institutions—a residence and a day school—meant
that, from an administrative and record-keeping perspective, all First Nations students were day school students.4 During the 1950s, an increasing number of reservebased residential schools began educating day students who lived with their parentson the reserve. In other words, from the 1960s onwards, residential schools were notnecessarily complete educational and residential institutions. Increasing numbers ofresidents were attending classes in other schools, and a growing number of students
attending classes at the residential school were living at home. All these developments
make it increasingly difficult to generalize about the effectiveness of residential school
education after 1960, although it should be recognized that after 1969, the number ofstudents receiving a residential school education began to decline rapidly.

Slow progress
The 1940s and 1950s, however, were a period of peak residential school enrolment,with detailed national figures on academic accomplishment. Based on that information, it is apparent that from an academic perspective, the system was a failure. Overa twenty-year period (1940–41 to 1959–60), 41.3% of each year’s residential school
Grade One enrolment was not promoted to Grade Two. (See Table 33.1 for details.)

The educational record: 1940–2000 • 109

Table 33.1. Numbers of residential students in Grade One advancing/not advancing toGrade Two, 1940–41 to 1959–60.
Year

Number ofStudents in
Grade One

Number ofStudents in
Grade Two the
Following Year

Number of
Grade One
Students Held
Back

Percentage ofGrade One Class
Held Back

1940–41

2,923

1,404

1,519

52

1941–42

2,754

1,423

1,331

48.3

1942–43

2,806

1,436

1,370

48.8

1943–44

2,592

1,286

1,306

50.4

1944–45

2,820

1,366

1,454

51.6

1945–46

2,951

1,530

1,421

48.2

1946–47

2,657

1,413

1,244

46.8

1947–48

2,563

1,443

1,120

43.7

1948–49

2,779

1,345

1,434

51.6

1949–50

2,770

1,469

1,301

47

1950–51

2,619

1,487

1,132

43.2

1951–52

2,762

1,545

1,217

44.1

1952–53

2,709

1,768

941

34.7

1953–542,626

1,643,

983

37.4

1954–55

2,633

1,540

1,093

41.5

1955–56

2,594

1,640

954

36.8

1956–57

1,828

1,514

314

17.2

1957–58

1,552

1,405

147

9.5

1958–59

1,553

1,347

206

13.3

1959–60

1,372

1,252

120

8.7

Total/Average

49,86329,256

20,607

41.3

Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1941, 189; Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1942, 154; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1943,
168; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1944, 177; Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1945, 190; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1946,
231; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1947, 236; Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1948, 234; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1949, 234,
215; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1950, 86–87; Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1951, 34–35; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1952,
74–75; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1953, 82–83; Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1954, 88–89; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1955,
78–79; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1956, 76–77; Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1956–57, 88–89; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1958,
90–91; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1959, 94; Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1960, 94; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1961, 103.

110 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

This means that for much of this period, nearly 50% of each Grade One class wasmade up of pupils who were repeating the grade, and most students spent two years
in Grade One. This was generally due to the large percentage of students who enteredschool unable to speak French or English. For example, in 1952, 29 of the 181 students in residence at the Brandon school were reported as being able to speak nomore than one or two words of English. These students likely would have been in
the early grades.5 As late as the mid-1960s, an Aboriginal language constituted themother tongue of 3,839 out of 5,075 (75%) new students at Indian Affairs schools (thisincluded both day and residential schools).6
Grade progress improved only slightly in later years, as can be seen in Table 33.2.
The second column shows the number of residential students in Grade Two in eachschool year from 1941–42 to 1957–58. (This comparison uses Grade Two rather than
Grade One as the starting point because of the very high number of Grade One students who were repeating the grade. It should also be recognized, though, that thegrades Two and Six enrolments also include students who are repeating the year.) The
third column shows the number of residential school students who had advanced to
Grade Six four years later. Over a seventeen-year period, on average, only 53% of theGrade Two enrolment was in Grade Six four years later. As can be seen from the table,
this barrier remained constant for the entire period. The only conclusion from this isthat approximately half of each year’s enrolment ever got to Grade Six.
Table 33.2. Number of residential students in Grade Two advancing to Grade Six, 1941–42
to 1957–58.
Year of GradeTwo Enrolment

Number of Residential
School Students
in Grade Two

Number of Residential
School Students
in Grade Six
Four Years Later

Percentage of Grade Two
Enrolment
in Grade Six
Four Years Later

1941–42

1,404

705

50.2

1942–43

1,423

721

50.7

1943–44

1,436

684

47.6

1944–45

1,286

706

54.9

1945–46

1,366

735

53.8

1946–47

1,530

675

44.1

1947–48

1,413

736

52.1

1948–49

1,443

775

53.7

1949–50

1,345

916

68.1

1950–51

1,469

864

58.8

1951–52

1,487

824

55.4

1952–53

1,545

893

57.8

1953–54

1,768

839

47.45

The educational record: 1940–2000 • 111
Year of GradeTwo Enrolment

Number of Residential
School Students
in Grade Two

Number of Residential
School Students
in Grade Six
Four Years Later

Percentage of Grade Two
Enrolment
in Grade Six
Four Years Later

1954–55

1,643

910

55.4

1955–56

1,540

806

52.3

1956–57

1,640

865

52.7

1957–58

1,514

787

52

1958-59

1,405

681

48.5

Total/Average

26,657

14,12253

Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1942, 154; Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1943, 168; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1944,
177; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1945, 190; Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1946, 231; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1947,
236; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1948, 234; Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1949, 215; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1950,
86–87; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1951, 34–35; Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1952, 74–75; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1953,
82–83; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1954, 88–89; Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1955, 78–79; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1956,
76–77; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1956–57, 88–89; Canada, Annual Report of
the Department of Indian Affairs, 1958, 91; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1959, 94;
Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1960, 94; Canada, Annual Report of the Department
of Indian Affairs, 1961, 102; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1962, 73; Canada,
Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1963, 62.

Since almost half the students were not advancing to Grade Six, it is not surprising
to discover that few were in high school. A 1956 study of First Nations education in
Canada concluded that 61% of the total First Nations enrolment (day and residential
schools) of 28,174 were in grades One to Three, while only 136 students (less than0.5%) were in Grade Twelve.7
In the 1950s, Indian Affairs adopted a policy that encouraged regular promotion
through the grades. A 1954 handbook for Indian Affairs teachers in Alberta provides
the following guidance for promotions:
In general, pupils with a consistent ‘E’ [below 50%] standing should be required
to remain a second year in the present grade. No pupil should remain more thanfour years in Division (Grades I–III). Any pupil who attains his eleventh birthday
in Grade III should be promoted to Grade IV at the end of the following June. No
pupil, after Grade II, should remain more than two years in any grade.8

Despite this policy, many children advanced only slowly through the grades. A
1958 report on the age and grade of all First Nations students (which did not separate
day school students from residential school students) concluded that of 33,320 First
Nations students, 468 (1.4%) were under the normal age—when compared with thegeneral school population—for the grade they were registered in; 14,623 (43.9%) were112 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

at the normal age for the grade they were in; and 18,299 (54.9%) were over the normal
age for the grade in which they were registered.9
Other studies (which included both day and residential school students) could
find only marginal improvements in the 1960s. For example, where, in 1956, only
2.74% of the First Nations student enrolment was in high school, a decade later, thefigure had grown to 5%. Although this represented a doubling of the percentage, thegrade distribution for First Nations students remained troubling. Table 33.3 shows thegrade distribution for First Nations students in 1956 and 1966, and provides the 1965
grade distribution for the general Canadian population for comparison. In mid-1960s,
three-quarters of the First Nations enrolment was in the primary grades, comparedwith 60% for the general population. As the table makes clear, as late as 1966: 1) a
considerable percentage of First Nations students were not progressing through elementary school; 2) most First Nations students were leaving school once they reachedthe legal age to leave school; and 3) non-Aboriginal students were six and a half times
more likely to advance to high school than Aboriginal students.10
Table 33.3. Grade distribution, First Nations students for 1956 and 1966, and 1965 grade
distribution total provincial school enrolment.
Year and Student Group

Percentage of Enrolment in Grade Levels
One–Six

Seven–Nine

Ten–Twelve

1956 First Nations enrolment

85.16

12.10

2.74

1966 First Nations enrolment

77.55

17.45

5.00

1965 Provincial enrolment*

58.31

23.88

17.81

* This represents all pupils regardless of race in provincial schools across Canada.
Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1965–66, 61.

By the 1960s, the federal government was still publishing data on the academic
progress of First Nations students, but it was no longer describing whether students
were graduates of day schools or residential schools. By that date, many students
would have attended a variety of different schools—Indian Affairs day schools, residential schools, and public schools—during their educational career. But there was
no avoiding the fact that most students were not succeeding. While it was possible tospeak of individual successes, the overall outcomes were far from successful. For the
1967–68 school year, Indian Affairs reported that there were only 180 First Nations students attending Canadian universities.11 When the Canadian Welfare Council’s highly
critical report on residential schools was published in 1967 (often referred to as the“Caldwell Report,” after its primary author, George Caldwell), it was met with a hostile response from the Oblate residential school principals of British Columbia. Oneof their objections to the report was its lack of information on the successful Indians“who have been educated by the system which Mr. Caldwell seems most anxious
to destroy.”12

The educational record: 1940–2000 • 113

In responding, Caldwell said he had undertaken a survey of former students. “Incontrast to the extremely positive views expressed by the principals of what such a survey would reveal, the responses were quite negative.” So negative were the responses,
in fact, that the report limited itself to reporting on the responses from students who
had attended school during the 1960s, when, in Caldwell’s opinion, “the system
was better financed and staffed.” To include the comments of the students who had
attended prior to 1960 would, Caldwell thought, “have amounted to an exposé which
would have set back the progress made in the 1960’s [sic] in the schools.”13
During a period when the schools had total control over the students and thenational economy was prospering, residential schools—and Indian Affairs schools ingeneral—were failing to provide Aboriginal children with the education they needed
to allow them to advance through the school system at the same rate as non-Aboriginal
children. There is no single cause for this failure. Contributing factors, however, would
include poorly qualified staff, poor student treatment, conflict between the government and the churches over the purpose of education, inappropriate curriculum, andinadequate supplies, not to mention the emotional factors associated with lonelinessand displacement from home and family, and the more extreme effects of trauma on
the ability to learn, for those experiencing abuses of different kinds.

Improving staff qualifications
Throughout his career as deputy minister of Indian Affairs, Duncan Campbell Scott
had regularly committed the department to making “a determined effort to secure
the services of better qualified academic and vocational instructors for the boarding
schools.”14 The Great Depression led to cuts in funding, and by the end of the 1930s,
many teachers still lacked proper qualifications.15 During the Second World War,when all Canadian schools were having problems recruiting and retaining qualified
teachers, it is not surprising to learn that residential schools also faced serious challenges in finding these staff members.16 Matters did not improve significantly in the
post-war period. Not only were residential schools competing with provincial publicschools, but they also could not match the salaries and benefits at Indian Affairs day
schools. In 1947, for example, Indian Affairs approved a salary schedule for day schooland Indian Affairs hospital teachers.17 The teachers at day schools were also eligible
for federal pension benefits. The increase in pay and benefits led, according to IndianAffairs, to a “considerable improvement” in “the standard of the teachers employedin Indian day schools.”18 Teachers at residential schools, however, continued to be
recruited and paid by the churches with money from the per capita grant.
In 1948, the principal of the Birtle, Manitoba, school was looking for an experienced
teacher for the junior classroom, but found “they are so scarce and our salaries are not114 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

as attractive as most public schools.” A well-qualified young woman had contacted
the school in search of a job, but decided to go to work for the Swan River schoolboard, since it offered her a better salary.19 Salary levels also varied considerably fromschool to school. Indian Affairs official J. Coleman observed that the salaries paid
at the Anglican school in Alert Bay, British Columbia, in 1947 were about half thosebeing paid at the United Church school at Alberni.20
Many of the Catholic schools survived on what amounted to volunteer labour. In
1948, Sechelt, British Columbia, principal H. F. Dunlop informed Ottawa,If this school kept out of the red during the past year it was largely due to the factthat four Oblates, working here full time, received in salaries from Jan 1947 to Jan
1948 the grand total of $1800. This works out to $35 per month for each man andthis includes my salary as Principal. Surely your office boy receives double thatamount. It would seem, then, for the crime of making the school books balanceat considerable expense to the Oblate Fathers we have been penalized.21

As late as 1960, the nuns at the Christie Island school in British Columbia were being
paid $50 a month—a fact that made Principal A. Noonan “feel like a heel.”22
Increasingly, the Catholic schools were not able to find enough qualified teachers from within the religious orders. When forced to hire teachers from outside theorders, they faced the same problems as the Protestants. In 1949, a provincial inspector reported that over the previous eight years, there had been ten teachers at the
Roman Catholic school in Kenora, Ontario. Although two had stayed for five years, theaverage stay was 2.2 years. The inspector noted this “constant changing of teachers
makes it impossible for the teachers to take any extended interest in the pupils.” Healso noted that this was the nineteenth consecutive year in which the Catholic school
had not proposed any children for the Grade Eight entrance examination. He went
on: “Your school will never have the prestige among the Indians that its work entitles
it to unless you can arrange to have a staff of qualified teachers left at the school longenough to exercise their influence upon and mould the characters and ideals of thechildren.”23 Bernard Neary, the superintendent of Indian education, received a copyof the letter and commented that, having “succeeded in our Indian Day Schools ingreatly reducing the number of non-certified teachers,” it was time that “similar efforts
be made in residential schools.”24
Little could be done to improve the recruiting and retention of qualified teachers aslong as the schools had to hire staff with funds from the inadequate per capita grant.
The decision by Indian Affairs in 1954 to take over “responsibility for the employment of teaching staff at all government-owned residential schools” was a significant
advance on this front.25 In 1955, there were 241 residential school teachers employedby Indian Affairs. Of these, according to Indian Affairs, 60% (145) held at least a firstclass teacher’s certificate. Seventeen per cent (41) held a second-class certificate andThe educational record: 1940–2000 • 115

23% (55) had no teacher’s certificate.26 Five years later, 87% of teachers in residential
schools had recognized teaching qualifications.27
Even as they sought to improve the number of professionally qualified teachers,
Indian Affairs officials came to recognize that the training that teachers received at
normal schools (teacher-training institutes were known as “normal schools”) did notprepare them to teach First Nations students. In 1942, Indian Affairs acknowledgedthat “it may be necessary in the future to provide special courses of study for Indian
day and residential school teachers.” Given the difficulties in recruiting that IndianAffairs was experiencing during the war, it was felt that “it would be exceedingly difficult to persuade teachers to undertake additional training at any time in the immediate future.”28 At the end of the war, Indian Affairs began publishing The Indian School
Bulletin as a resource for teachers. By the 1950s, Indian Affairs was holding summer
courses for Indian Affairs teachers. In order to qualify for salary increases, teachers
had to complete two summer sessions.29 Teachers could qualify for a leave of absence
without pay if they wished to pursue professional training. In 1958, fourteen teachers
were on such leave.30
Trained or untrained, teachers were difficult to retain: at the end of the 1959–60
school year, 24.5% of all the teachers at the Indian Affairs schools (both day and residential) had resigned.31 In 1965, the staff turnover rate was 29.3%. Indian Affairs
attributed much of the turnover to low pay and the increased salaries being offered toqualified teachers elsewhere.32 In 1969, Indian Affairs had to report it was still paying
its teachers less than they could make in provincial schools. “As a result, there areabout the same number of unqualified teachers, some 140, in federal schools [residential and non-residential] now, as ten years ago.”33
The educational impact of the schools was also diluted by the fact that very few of theprincipals were trained teachers. Almost all of them were members of the clergy of thedenomination that operated the schools. To the churches and the government, theirskills as farmers and managers were as important as their knowledge of education.
Throughout a career that saw him serve as the principal of three schools, Oliver Strapp
was highly regarded for his handling of business affairs. Senior Indian Affairs official
R. A. Hoey described Strapp as “a good man and a man with a very practical turn ofmind.” Under Strapp’s direction, Hoey said, the farm at Mount Elgin was a “model of
efficiency” and had one of the “best pure bred Holstein dairy herds in southwestern
Ontario.” The hog and poultry operations were also highly praised.34 One of the firstassessments of Strapp’s work in Brandon, Manitoba, was positive: A. G. Hamilton said
that the school was clean, and discipline was no longer a problem.35
By the mid-1950s, however, Indian Affairs had come to place less value on theseskills. In 1956, R. F. Davey, the superintendent of education for Indian Affairs, reported
that there was a growing body of complaints about Strapp, who was by then the principal of the Edmonton school. There, he was seen to be “concerned first with such

116 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

matters as the operation of the farm, the condition of the Principal’s residence, thecost of operation of the school, etc., rather than placing first in his thoughts the welfare
and feelings of the pupils.”36 (Other controversial aspects of Strapp’s administration
are discussed elsewhere in this report.)
To address this issue throughout the system, in 1956, Indian Affairs created the position of senior teacher at each school. This individual was “to perform certain administrative duties required by the Branch and delegated to the senior teacher by theprincipal, to supervise classroom instruction in the school and to assist the principal
in the development of an improved school program.” For salary purposes, the seniorteachers were classified as principals.37 By 1958, there were fifty-five senior teachers.
Most of them had teaching as well as administrative responsibilities. However, at thelarger schools in Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan, they spent most of
their time on “supervisory duties.”38
Indian Affairs’ efforts to improve education often ran counter to church priorities, which put more weight on the schools as missionary endeavours than as educational institutions. Into the 1940s, for example, most of the teachers in the Roman
Catholic schools—and these constituted the majority of the schools—were membersof female religious orders. Male teachers generally were employed in Catholic schools
only when there were a significant number of male students over the age of fourteen.39 Many of the women teaching in these schools did not have formal training asteachers. According to R. F. Davey, then acting superintendent of education for IndianAffairs, in September 1953, there were 198 teachers working at Roman Catholic residential schools across Canada. Of these, seventy-nine had no teaching certificates. Of
this group:• five held college degrees• six had completed some work at university level• twenty-one had completed high school• thirty-seven had completed only part of high school• ten had received no high school training at all
Of the 119 who had teaching certificates, Davey wrote, there were 6 with qualifications that were better than the equivalent of a First Class Certificate, 52 with First Classcertificates, and 61 with Second Class certificates.40
Qualifications did not necessarily account for everything. The Catholics were awareof the extent of Indian Affairs’ concerns about the lack of qualified teachers in theirschools. In 1946, Mission, British Columbia, principal A. H. Fleury, anticipating criticism over the fact that the school’s teachers lacked provincial certificates, pointed outthat in his recent evaluation, provincial school inspector H. H. MacKenzie had written:
The outstanding feature of the educational programme for these Indian children
is the excellence of the teaching service rendered by the three Sisters of St. Ann

The educational record: 1940–2000 • 117

on this staff. As an inspector of Public Schools, elementary, junior and seniorhigh, I must confess that it would be difficult to conceive of a finer, more allround training, and all that the word “training” connotes, than that given by
the Sisters.41

Other assessments were less positive. A 1945 assessment of teachers at theErmineskin school in Hobbema, Alberta, described one teacher as having “little experience” and “meagre” qualifications, while his methods were “very elementary.”42
Although another teacher had shown improvement, she was in need of “higher
academic qualifications” and her teaching procedures were “very simple.”43 A third
teacher was “inexperienced,” while “her training and poor scholastic background does
not make for very efficient classroom work.” The teacher’s method gave little consideration to student differences and provided no opportunity for individual expression.44
The annual report from the following year (1948) indicated that four of the
Hobbema staff members were continuing with their Grade Ten studies. Anotherteacher, who had no normal school training, had a Grade Eleven standing and hadtaught previously in Manitoba.45 An inspector’s report from the fall of 1948 observedthat the students did not have sufficient supplies; there was a lack of curriculum, possibly due to lack of qualified teachers; and the principal gave insufficient attention towhat was going on in the classrooms. The inspector was impressed by the fact that theteacher of the beginners’ class spoke Cree and used this ability to “bring the children
along rapidly.”46
The superintendent of Indian agencies, H. N. Woodsworth, commented in 1949, “Asthere are no qualified teachers employed at the Ermineskin Indian Residential School,
this institution cannot truly be called a school.” The school’s principal had recently
informed Woodsworth that, due to a lack of finances, “no qualified teacher can be
employed in the immediate future.”47 By the fall of that year, two qualified teachers
had been hired to teach at the day school affiliated with the residential school. They
were to be paid as civil servants.48 Ten years later, a 1959 inspection of the Ermineskinschool revealed significant change. It concluded that the teachers “are well qualified
and are providing suitable instruction.” The physical education and industrial arts
teachers, however, did not have teaching certificates.49
In 1960, Indian Affairs official L. C. Hunter drew attention to the fact that few of
the teachers at the Roman Catholic residential schools in northern Alberta had theappropriate qualifications.
For example, at Desmarais, we have three unqualified teachers on a fiveteacher staff. Only one teacher on this staff is qualified in Alberta. We haverecommended an increase of one teacher due to the heavy pupil enrolment. At
Assumption, out of a staff of four teachers, we have two who are unqualified,
one qualified teacher who is beyond retirement age and one who holds Alberta
qualifications; at Joussard we have two unqualified teachers, one has been

118 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

qualified elsewhere, and two who hold Alberta qualifications; at Sturgeon Lake
we have three unqualified teachers out of a total teaching staff of 4 teachers.50

In Alberta, the Sisters of Charity of Providence provided staff for the Crowfoot,Assumption, Joussard, Fort Vermilion, and Desmarais residential schools. Although
all the teachers at the Crowfoot school were properly qualified in 1962, only half theteachers at the Joussard and Fort Vermilion schools were qualified, and only one-thirdof the teachers at the Assumption and Desmarais schools were qualified.51
Some Roman Catholic staff had exceptional academic qualification. In 1966, E.
O. Drouin, the principal of the Roman Catholic school in Cardston, Alberta, boasted
that out of the twenty-one people on his staff, ten had university degrees. The factthat Drouin had left his position as a university professor to come to work at the residential school was, in his opinion, proof that he not only liked, but “definitely love[d]the Indians.”52
Some Catholic schools received praise for other attributes. After visiting the residential schools in the Edmonton, Peigan, and Blood Indian agencies in Alberta
in 1957, an inspector was “struck by the superiority of the r.c. Indian Residential
Schools.” He was particularly impressed by the Roman Catholic school at Cardston.
The Indian Affairs inspector for Alberta, R. F. Battle, concurred, noting that “this situation has arisen more from Father Lafrance’s [the principal] initiative and ingenuity[rather] than our good administration.” He said that this initiative was even reflectedin the handling of ongoing maintenance issues. “Invariably if there is any screaming
to be done about situations which could be readily resolved on a local basis, it comesfrom schools operated under Protestant auspices.”53
The campaign to improve teacher qualifications was complicated by the denominational nature of the school system: teachers not only had to be academically qualified, but they also had to be of the appropriate faith. In 1965, G. K. Gooderham, theregional superintendent of schools, noted that it appeared to him that after extensive advertising for an industrial arts teacher, the principals at the Roman Catholicschools in Cluny and Cardston would have a “choice between a non-Catholic industrial arts teacher and none at all if we are lucky enough to find any.”54 It appears that
recruiting was not successful. In November of that year, Cluny principal M. McMahon
wrote to R. F. Davey to complain, “We are still awaiting the hiring of a shop teacher
and the arrival of $700.00 worth of text-books for the present academic year.”55 In April
1966, the industrial arts teacher position remained unfilled.56 Because of difficulties
in recruiting Catholic teachers in Canada, a day school on the Saddle Lake Reserve
recruited two teachers from the Philippines in the 1960s.57
In 1956, Catholic Mission school principal Father Ryan was attempting to recruit
a nun to teach Grade Twelve. Kamloops principal J. P. Mulvihill was uncertain that
he would be able to recruit a member of a female religious order and would likely beobliged to hire a lay teacher. This would have an impact on the overall Oblate order,

The educational record: 1940–2000 • 119

since it was normal practice to turn a portion of the salaries budgeted for individual
members of religious staff over to the order as a whole. In this case, Mulvihill notedthat if he was obliged to hire a lay teacher (who would have to be paid a full-time salary), the Oblate order “wont [sic] get any surplus from Mission this year.”58 In the end,
Ryan was obliged to hire a lay teacher for $3,200 a year, causing Oblate Provincial L. K.
Poupore to worry that, for the Oblates, “the outlook is not very optimistic.”59
The fact that so many of the Roman Catholic teachers came from Québec or Europe
meant that there was one additional complication to the issue of teacher qualifications.
There are numerous reports to the effect that even in the post-war period, teachers at
Catholic schools in Alberta were more comfortable in French than in English. Oblate
Gerald F. Kelly, whose career in the residential schools of British Columbia started in
1945, recalled that once when he visited the Hobbema school in Alberta, the “Oblates
there spoke French except in the classroom. Likewise, the Sisters spoke French apartfrom the classroom. After the evening meal I was visiting the outdoor rink and all thechildren, players as well as spectators, were conversing in Indian.” He added, “TheEnglish language got limited attention.”60 Harold Cardinal, who attended the Joussard,
Alberta, school, described the same experience but in much harsher language:
The curriculum stank, and the teachers were misfits and second raters. Evenin my own elementary school days, in grade eight I found myself taking overthe class because my teacher, a misfit, has-been or never-was sent out by his
superiors from Quebec to teach savages in a wilderness school because heutterly failed in civilization, couldn’t speak English well enough to make himself
understood. Naturally, he knew no Cree. When we protested such inequities wewere silenced as “ungrateful little savages who don’t appreciate what is being
done for you.”61

In 1946, it was the view of a group of Alberta government school superintendents
who had experience with Indian Affairs schools that the quality of instruction at what
they termed “mission schools” was “not up to standard,” in part because “qualified
teachers are seldom employed.” They also noted that the teachers did not always follow the provincial curriculum. As a result, the instruction did “not begin to approach
the standards that we set for our public schools.” According to a report based on themeeting of the superintendents:
The library facilities for the mission schools were reported to be inadequate inpractically every case. Most of the literature supplied is religious in nature andfar above the comprehension of the pupils. Superintendents reported that they
had frequently recommended suitable books, but that these recommendations
were seldom, if ever carried out. Several of those present were of the opinion
that the books for the Indian schools were chosen in Ottawa by persons without
teaching experience who were not conversant with conditions in Indian schools.

120 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In making recommendations on what would constitute a suitable course of study,
the superintendents stressed, “The Indian is artistic and is fond of handwork but heloathes anything pertaining to the abstract. He is fond of nature, athletics and games.”
It was recommended that “every effort should be made to provide trained teacherswith suitable backgrounds.” In addition, staff “should be imbued with missionary
spirit. They should have a satisfactory academic background and adequate training
in pedagogy.” It was further recommended that “they receive special courses in theteaching of Indian children from experienced and competent instructors.”62
Protestant church officials resisted Indian Affairs’ attempts to improve the qualityof teaching in the schools. By the early 1940s, for example, Indian Affairs and Anglican
Church officials had very different views as to the quality of education being provided
at the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school. School principal R. W. Frayling had been
appointed in 1930, largely on the basis of his business experience: he was neither aclergyman nor a teacher. In 1941, he was seventy years old. He had lost considerable
support in the Aboriginal community when eleven-year-old Andrew Gordon froze
to death in 1939 while attempting to run away from the school. The local memberof Parliament, G. H. Castleden, told Indian Affairs that in his opinion, not only was
Frayling too old for his position, but, in addition, one of his assistants, who had thirty
years’ experience, was also too old. An inspection carried out at the end of the 1940–41
school year concluded that progress in the boys’ classroom had suffered from the factthat there had been three different teachers that year. The last teacher was thought tohave done a good job, but he had just enlisted in the military. The girls’ room teacher
was thought to lack “the enthusiasm required to bring the pupils to their maximum
effort.” She had been at the school for twenty-nine years. It was thought that her methods were routine and her students unmotivated. Another inspector had reported
that representatives of the Gordon’s Reserve thought grades Seven and Eight should
be added to the grade levels currently being provided, along with more vocational
training. However, when R. A. Hoey asked Anglican Bishop E. H. Knowles to consider appointing a new principal, he was told that, in the opinion of people Knowles
respected, the “Gordon’s school was considered second to none in the Indian schoolsof the Dominion.” A frustrated Hoey recommended that his superiors at Indian Affairs
ask Knowles to request Frayling’s resignation.63 However, Frayling was still principal in1944 when members of the Gordon’s Reserve petitioned the Anglican Church to have
him replaced.64 The church finally asked Frayling to resign in the summer of 1944.65 Six
staff members then resigned to show their support for him.66 By the end of October,the school staff consisted only of Frayling and three other staff members.67 He left
office at the end of November 1944. It was not until December that the Ottawa office ofIndian Affairs received notice of the appointment of his successor, Rev. J. H. Corkhill.68

The educational record: 1940–2000 • 121

Curriculum: Startling errors of omission and commission
Since the 1920s, Indian Affairs had required residential schools to adopt provincial curricula.69 The department also asked provincial governments to have theirschool inspectors inspect Indian Affairs schools.70 The wisdom of this practice had
been questioned during the hearings of the Special Joint Committee of the Senate
and House of Commons inquiry into the Indian Act in the 1940s. Andrew Moore, thesecondary school inspector for the Province of Manitoba, told the committee members that Indian Affairs should take full responsibility for all aspects of First Nations
education, including curriculum.71 Provincial education departments, including theone he worked for, were “not organized or not interested in Indian schools.”72 He also
thought that Indian Affairs should inspect its own schools rather than contracting the
job to provincial school inspectors. “It was an extra job for them and I should say inat least fifty per cent of the cases they were not particularly interested in Indian education. They were competent to find out about the three r’s and so on, but they were
not trying to give the leadership that they would normally give in their own fields.”73
In the case of Manitoba schools, he said, “Our inspection officials are loaded to theroof without any extra time for Indian schools, as a rule; and they are just handed
to them.”74
Moore’s comments were completely out of step with the Indian Affairs intention
to transfer more responsibility for First Nations education to provincial governments,
and were ignored. Instead, Indian Affairs claimed to allow for a few deviations fromprovincial curriculum in “areas in which the native population has achieved a significant degree of integration.” In “less advanced areas,” teachers were expected toplace greater emphasis on functional language, arithmetic, and activities,
personal and community hygiene, and the development of good citizenship.
Examples of adaptations of the curriculum include the special attention given
to anti-tuberculosis measures by Indian schools in British Columbia, and thepractical course in beaver-trapping and conservation which is offered to older
boys at Moose Fort Residential School in Ontario.75

It was not until 1959 that Indian Affairs instructed the schools to provide students
with education on the Treaties between First Nations and the Canadian government.
The instruction was expected to cover only the specific Treaty that applied in theregion where the school was located, as opposed to providing a general history of theTreaties.76 If there was no applicable Treaty, it appears that nothing was taught. For
example, the Indian commissioner for British Columbia stated that since “virtually no
Indians in the Yukon Agency received treaty,” there was no need to include the studyof Treaties in the Indian Affairs schools in the Yukon.77 In the minds of officials, there
was no thought that all Canadians should be taught about Treaties.

122 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

There was a gap between policy pronouncement and reality: some schools were notable to teach the provincial curriculum, due to lack of proper supplies. In November
1943, the principal of the Mission school complained to the British Columbia Indian
commissioner about Indian Affairs’ failure to provide requested textbooks. The principal noted that the school inspector had insisted that the school have the books, yet
the department had not provided sufficient quantities of some books and no copies
of other books. The delay was “a constant source of discouragement and difficulty to
our teachers.”78 A teacher at the Brandon school in Manitoba, M. E. McNeill, voiceda similar complaint in December 1948. Books that she had ordered a year earlier,and had reordered in June and in the fall, had yet to arrive. “We have 59 pupils at
the present time in Grs I & II, so would appreciate it very much if this order could
be filled.”79 John House, the principal of the Gleichen, Alberta, school, complainedin 1947 that although the schools were supposed to follow the provincial curriculum,
Indian Affairs often provided inappropriate textbooks. He claimed that Indian Affairs
had “some publishers down east who are on the patronage list and from them it purchases Ontario or any other school books which it hopes will fill the bill and shootsthem along.” For fifteen years, he said, inspectors and principals had been complaining about the practice, to no avail.80
The decision to ignore Andrew Moore’s advice and leave curriculum to provincial
education departments meant that Aboriginal students were subjected to an education that demeaned their history, ignored their current situation, and did not evenrecognize them or their families as citizens. This was one of the reasons for the growing Aboriginal hostility to the Indian Affairs integration policy. An examination of thetreatment of Aboriginal people in provincially approved textbooks reveals just how
serious and deep-rooted a problem this was. In response to a 1956 recommendationthat textbooks be developed that were relevant to Aboriginal students, Indian Affairs
official R. F. Davey commented, “The preparation of school texts is an extremely difficult matter.” It was his opinion that “there are other needs which can be met more easily and should be undertaken first.” He gave a similar response to a recommendation
to provide more instruction in “Indian arts and crafts.” He said that previous efforts to
do so had met with “very limited success.”81
The Québec history curriculum provides an example of the way in which Aboriginal
people were not even considered to be part of the potential student body. Québec did
not have a provincial department of education until 1964.82 Prior to that time, education in the province was essentially directed by two committees: one Protestant,
one Catholic. In 1959, the Programme d’Études des Écoles Élémentaires of the Catholiccommittee (the Comité Catholique du Conseil de l’Instruction Publique) proclaimed
that the main purpose of teaching history was to “reveal to the child the action of
Divine Providence.” History classes were expected to emphasize “the purity of ourFrench-Canadian origins, the religious, moral, heroic and idealistic character of ourThe educational record: 1940–2000 • 123

ancestors,” along with the role that God had played “in the survival of our nationality.”83 It was a curriculum that did not even contemplate the existence of Aboriginal
children as students.
By the mid-1960s, a number of critical analyses of the portrayal of Aboriginal
people in textbooks began to be published. In 1964, Norma Sluman had conducteda review of the treatment of Aboriginal people in five textbooks used in Manitoba.
She concluded that although there had been significant improvement over the past
decade, “there is still much to be done. There are startling errors of omission, as well as
commission.”84 That same year, an Indian and Métis Conference brief to the Manitoba
government argued that “the treatment accorded to our aboriginal people in our history text books is still unsatisfactory.” Aboriginal religions were disparaged, their positive contributions to Canadian society were ignored, their mistreatment at the handsof colonists was glossed over, and their social problems were misrepresented.85
The third volume of the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Education in the Provinceof Quebec (commonly referred to as the “Parent Report”) appeared in 1966. It recommended that Canadian history textbooks used in the province be edited to present
an image of Aboriginal peoples that corresponded more closely to reality by rejecting
the then-widespread portrayals of First Nations as being cruel savages bent on thedestruction of good-natured colonists.86 A 1968 study on the way Ontario textbooks
dealt with Aboriginal people reached the following conclusions.
The original social and political organization of the various Indian groups is notadequately covered, and there is almost no material on religion, values, ethics
or esthetics. Nowhere is there a really complete description of even one Indianculture. The omission of any factual material on the situation of the Canadian
Indian today is equally serious. It is just as bad to leave out the facts as it would
be to misrepresent them.87

Indian Affairs’ attempts to improve the situation were largely ineffective. In 1960,
George Davidson, the deputy minister responsible for Indian Affairs, wrote to allprovincial education ministers to alert them of public concern over “misleading andbiased statements on the history of the Indian people in Canada presented to Canadianschool children through the text books.” Davidson acknowledged that Indian Affairs
itself had undertaken no independent research into the topic. He did note, however,that the recently published elementary school textbook by Aileen Garland, Canada
Our Country, contained a number of misleading statements. It underestimated thenumber of First Nations people by 50%, it suggested that they were exempt from allgame laws, and, the deputy minister thought, some passages in the book might lead
readers to think that the Treaty payments were more generous than they actually were
(Davidson, himself, described them as being token in nature).88
Growing concern over misrepresentation of Aboriginal people in textbooks
led Indian Affairs in January 1968 to ask the teachers in Indian Affairs schools to124 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

report their concerns with the textbooks they were using. Only 50 of 1,600 teachers
responded to the request. A number of textbooks were singled out for their portrayalsof Aboriginal people as being variously lazy, gluttonous, irreligious, savage, drunkards, cruel, uncouth, ignorant, and superstitious. Objections were made to the useof the word squaw to describe Aboriginal women and the word redskins to describe
Aboriginal people. According to a summary of the responses,
Teachers were more concerned by the omission of accurate up-to-date material
on Indian people than they were about the negative point of view presented.
It would appear that in Ontario the recommended texts were relatively freeof discriminatory references but many were found in books entered forsupplementary reading. The history books in general use in Quebec would
appear to require a complete review.89

After reviewing the results, R. F. Davey—who, in 1956, had argued that revising textbooks was not a high priority—wrote in 1968,
The immediate task of each [Indian Affairs] school superintendent is to ensurethat all books containing discriminatory, biased and prejudiced statements
about the Indian people be removed from our schools immediately. If suchaction involves basic textbooks or readers, the Department of Education should
be advised of the problem and requested to suggest acceptable replacements.90

The problem was that by relinquishing curriculum to the provinces, Indian Affairs
had done little to develop such replacements. A year after giving his instruction that
objectionable books be removed immediately, Davey had to acknowledge that there
were “increasing complaints” about textbooks
in respect to either the disparaging comment [sic] about the Indians, the lackof adequate recognition of the contribution that the Indian has made in thedevelopment of this country, the disparity between the material and illustrationsin the texts and the Indian environment, and the absence from the school
curricula generally of an Indian cultural component.91

Negative assessments of textbooks continued to be published into the 1970s.
In 1971, a study was prepared for the Ontario Human Rights Commission of social
studies textbooks authorized for use in Ontario. The study was given, with considerable justification, the alarming title Teaching Prejudice.92 It looked at the treatment ofa variety of groups in Canadian society, including Aboriginal people. The five mostcommon words used to describe First Nations people were: “savage(s),” “friendly,”“fierce,” “hostile,” and “skilful.” For comparison, the five most common words used todescribe Christians were: “devoted,” “zealous,” “martyr,” “great,” and “famous.”93 The
authors observed that detailed descriptions of the execution of the Jesuit missionaries
Jean Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant were not placed in the context of punishmentsthat were regularly inflicted on those convicted of heresy, witchcraft, or treachery inThe educational record: 1940–2000 • 125

European societies at the same time. Europeans who married Aboriginal women, thetextbooks said, often “lowered themselves to the level of savages and became as ferocious as the Red-Skins.” According to one text, “The Indians were still savages when
the white man arrived, but the Agricultural Indians and the Pacific Coast Indians wereperhaps closer to civilized life than the others.”94
A review of the illustrations in the texts concluded that Aboriginal people were often“portrayed as primitive and unskilled; not infrequently they were shown as aggressive and hostile as well.”95 Not only were Aboriginal people poorly treated by history
courses, but also their continuing existence was all but ignored. The authors observed:
Although the course of study allows for the discussion of the Indian today inthree separate grade levels, the only texts that dealt with this subject at all werein grade 7 geography, and even these contained only scattered and cursory
references. Not one made any serious attempt to discuss the present status of theCanadian Indian, or the legal and ethical questions, especially those pertaining
to treaty rights, which face Canadians.96

The Shocking Truth about Indians in Textbooks!, released by the Manitoba Indian
Brotherhood in the mid-1970s, found the social studies texts and resources used by
Manitoba students in grades Four, Five, and Six to be, in general, biased and inadequate. Their main failure was “to treat the Native as an impediment to be removed sothat the goals of European ‘progress’ can be realized. After dealing with this conflict,the authors ignore the later history of Indian people.”97 The words “savage,” “hostile,”“howling,” and “warlike” continued to be frequently used in describing Aboriginal
people, while Aboriginal women were still, in some books, referred to as “squaws.”98
Several staff handbooks published from the 1940s onwards provide insight into the
expectations that the schools had for their students during this period. The staff handbook for the Presbyterian school in Kenora in the 1940s stated it was expected thatupon leaving the school, most students would “return to the Indian Reserves fromwhich they had come.” The number who would continue on to high school represented “only a very small proportion of our total enrolment.” Employment opportunities for most boys would be limited to “fishing, guiding tourists, cutting cordwood
and trapping.” And, although a few of the girls might find work during the summers intourist camps, “for most of them marriage is the only decent course open as soon as
they leave school.” Given this future, staff members were told that “the best preparation we can give them is to teach them the Christian way of life.”99
Staff members were also told to rid themselves “of any false ideas of ‘civilising’ theIndian. The word is often used wrongly. We believe that civilising is the process ofteaching our way of life. We believe this, probably, because our own way of life is the
only one we know anything about.” The handbook noted, “Both parents and pupils
have seen much, right in our schools, which does little to exemplify our teaching. In

126 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Kenora the Indian is not welcomed by more than a few of the ‘better people’. He isallowed to feel at home only among drunks and prostitutes.”100
The handbook maintained, “Before he had ever seen or heard a white man, theIndian was civilised; but his state of civilisation differed from our own.” Contact
with Europeans had, it was argued, served to undermine and degrade that civilization, which, the handbook stated, was characterized by a high standard of ethicalbehaviour, community responsibility, good health, and an abundant food supply.101
The crude, stereotypical language appears almost verbatim in the staff handbook at
the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school in the 1950s. For example, the Presbyterian bookin Kenora informed staff, “Life in the wilderness has made the Ojibway shy of strangers. In the woods, the slightest sound was his signal to take cover. He and his children
will still do this, even in foreign surroundings. His mind reacts in the same way as his
body.”102 The Anglican book from Saskatchewan explained, “Life in the wilderness has
made the Cree shy of strangers. For centuries the slightest sound in the woods was his
signal to take cover. He and his children will still do this, even in foreign surroundings.
His mind reacts in the same way as his body.”103
A handbook that was assembled for use in the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school
was clearly based on the earlier handbooks. In an expanded section on Aboriginal
culture, it stated that First Nations had traditionally followed a “natural” religion thatrecognized the existence of spirits throughout nature. At the same time, they had “onesupreme God,” who was “Lord of all nature and the creator of all things.”104

Language and culture
Former students have described residential schools as places where their culturesand languages were banned, marginalized, and derided. The churches—particularly the Roman Catholic Church—and the federal government took differing views
towards the use of Aboriginal languages. From the government’s perspective in the
1940s, the future for Aboriginal students lay in their learning English (or, in Québec,French) as quickly as possible. Some of the churches, with their missionary tradition, were more prepared to create a place for Aboriginal languages, particularly for
religious instruction. An event from 1947 underscores this tension. In that year, an
Aboriginal man from northern Manitoba wrote to Indian Affairs, raising a number ofconcerns about the Cross Lake school, where, he said, the children were taught Cree.
There is no copy of this letter, but it would appear the man wished to see the children
taught English. It is clear from the government response that it opposed the teachingof Aboriginal languages in residential schools. On receipt of the letter, Bernard Neary,
the Indian Affairs superintendent of Welfare and Training, informed the Cross Lake
principal, “As English is the only authorized language in our Indian schools for all

The educational record: 1940–2000 • 127

provinces exclusive of Quebec, it would be appreciated if we could have your comments concerning his statement about the Cree language.”105 In his response, Father
G. E. Trudeau wrote that in the half-hour a day allotted for religious education, “weteach them their prayers in Cree which is their own language so they won’t be at aloss to pray with their parents when they go back home. During this half hour we alsoteach them to read the Cree syllabic as written in their prayer books.” At the same time,in class, the students were taught only in English. Indeed, he said, none of the classroom teachers could speak, let alone teach in, Cree.106 For the churches, Aboriginal
languages remained part of the missionary toolkit in a broader campaign to win not
only Aboriginal children but also their parents to Christianity and away from traditional beliefs.
The commitment of a half-hour a day to religious instruction meant that the ongoing displacement of Aboriginal culture, including spirituality, was embedded in theschool curriculum. In his memoirs, Stoney Chief John Snow tells of how at the Morley,
Alberta, school, the “education consisted of nothing that had any relationship to ourhomes and culture. Indeed Stoney culture was condemned explicitly and implicitly.”107 He recalled being taught that the only good people on earth were non-Indiansand specifically white Christians. “We were taught that the work and knowledge of our
medicine men and women were of the Devil. We were taught that when people diedthey went to Heaven and walked streets paved with gold or to Hell and forever roasted
in a lake of fire.” This, he later observed, “was real indoctrination and some of the students dreaded going to church, but they were given no choice. These were confusing
times for all of us when we were taught at home to respect the beliefs of our elders andat school to have disrespect for their values.”108
School principals did not limit their opposition to Aboriginal culture to the classroom. In 1942, Gleichen, Alberta, principal John House became involved in a campaign
to have two Blackfoot chiefs deposed, in part because of their support for traditional
dance ceremonies. In one case, Chief Turned Up Nose had come into the school to
see three girls who had not been allowed to leave the school on Saturday afternoons(as was the custom at the school) because they had misbehaved. According to theprincipal, Turned Up Nose “used insulting language to the supervisor and incited thegirls to rebellion.” In another case, House asked Chief Joe Crowfoot to give his son a“talking to” for “acting smart in front of a lady member of my staff.” Instead, Crowfoottold House, “If you interfere with my boy, I’ll beat you up.” House said that the two
had been “spreading the propaganda that it is not right to be ruled by the Government
and that the Chiefs are supreme.” When the principal had refused to allow students toattend an “Indian dance,” Crowfoot came to the school and took his son to the dance.
These activities were, House wrote, incidents “in a subversive movement that is likely
to be very serious if it is not checked.”109 The Indian agent concurred with House’s
assessment and recommended that the chiefs be deposed.110 Crowfoot protested,128 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

saying that he was being singled out for criticizing the school for not properly feeding
the students. Life on the reserve, he wrote, had come to resemble a dictatorship: “If wemake any complaints, we Chiefs will lose our chieftainship.”111 In the end, the inspector of Indian agencies chose to warn the two chiefs that they risked being put out of
office, but took no further action.112
In1943, F. E. Anfield, the principal of the Alert Bay, British Columbia, school, wasprompted by a recent Potlatch ceremony in the village of Kingcome to write a letterto the school’s former pupils. He started with a reference to the ongoing world war,
stating that should Hitler and Hirohito be victorious, “all races and tribes other thanthemselves shall be made slaves and worse.” He asked if Aboriginal “‘custom’ or ‘potlatch’ give you and your people freedom to work, laugh, and play or does it make you
and your children slaves to debt, to unsatisfactory marriages, to poverty, poor healthand bad living conditions.” Although the letter was posed as a series of questions towhich Anfield claimed not to know the answers, its underlying argument was that the
Potlatch, and other traditions, constituted a barrier to progress. The barely concealed
implication was that these practices undermined the war effort, divided communities,
were based on outdated superstition, and led to impoverishment and family neglect.113
Mandatory religious instruction remained part of the curriculum into the 1960s. In
1966, for example, five of the nine Saskatchewan schools had one-half hour of religious
instruction each day, and the other four schools incorporated religious instruction
into their daily activities. Attendance at Sunday church service was also compulsory.
Forced attendance appears to have only alienated many students from the church:
only 6 of 354 Saskatchewan residential students surveyed by the Canadian Welfare
Council in 1966 made mention of religion when asked what their school experience
had taught them.114
Indian Affairs appears to have had no other policy on the use of language in theschools beyond its requirement that English and French were to be the only two languages of instruction and the only two languages to be taught in the schools. This policy
deficiency is obvious in a 1953 Indian Affairs response to a request for information on
government policy on the use of Aboriginal languages in its schools. Branch Director
H. M. Jones wrote that the goal of the schools was to “make the Indian literate in theofficial language predominant in the area where the school is situated.” This meantthat outside Québec, the language of instruction was English, and inside Québec, it
depended on the dominant language of the region (this usually meant English in the
Anglican schools and French in the Catholic schools). Textbooks and library books
were supposed to be provided according to the practice of the provincial education
department in which the schools were located. The policy was to teach English or
French and to teach in English or French. The rest of Jones’s answer, however, downplayed the value of teaching or learning Aboriginal languages. Jones noted that First
Nations people accounted for less than 1% of the population—a figure he expected toThe educational record: 1940–2000 • 129

further decline in coming years. There were also several Aboriginal languages, manywith a limited number of speakers. Other than works by missionaries, there was also
little that was written in Aboriginal languages. Jones said,
Even if we were to produce text books or other teaching aids in the various
Indian languages, professionally trained teachers who could use such materials
would rarely be available. Moreover, our aim is to arrange for as many as possibleof the Indian children to get their schooling in association with other children
who will be taught in French or English.115

The government simply thought the languages were disappearing and would be of nointerest or value to Aboriginal children in the future.
The schools were left to improvise their own policies. Those policies and theirenforcement varied significantly. At the Anglican school at Moose Factory, Ontario,
Billy Diamond, who went on to serve for many years as chief of the Grand Councilof the Crees of Québec, recalled that in the 1950s, the punishment for speaking Creewas having one’s mouth washed out with soap.116 Jane Willis, who attended residential
school in the 1940s and 1950s, recalled how the opening message from the principal
at the Anglican school in Fort George, Québec, stressed that from then on, the students were to speak English in the school, since they were there to learn new ways. In
practice, students refused to abide by this rule. They avoided punishment by refusing
to speak Cree or English when the teachers were around, and speaking Cree among
themselves.117 When Isabelle Knockwood’s mother first took her to the Shubenacadie
school in Nova Scotia, they encountered a young Aboriginal girl in the school parlour. When Isabelle’s mother began to speak to her in Mi’kmaq, the girl responded,shyly, in English. It was then explained to Mrs. Knockwood that it was not permitted
to speak Mi’kmaq in the school.118 According to Albert Canadien, at Fort Providence
in the Northwest Territories in the 1950s, once students had learned a little English,
they were forbidden to speak Slavey (Dene).119 When James Roberts became the first
Aboriginal administrator of the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, residence in 1973, heremarked that when he had attended the school as a boy, he had not liked the fact that
he and his fellow students “were not allowed to speak their own native language.”120
These examples make it clear that in schools across Canada, children were told that it
violated school policy to speak their own language.
In 1952, newly hired school nurse Kathleen Stewart commented on the fact thatat the Presbyterian school in Kenora, students were allowed to “talk Indian freely infront of the staff.” She wrote that it may be a “surer way to a better end, but in the meantime we are still shut out of their fellowship in school, and they don’t seem to know
how rude that must seem to new people.”121 Students at the Norway House, Manitoba,
school were allowed to speak Cree when Elijah Harper attended the school in the
1960s. He did, however, come away from the school with a strong memory of one girl’s130 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

being humiliated for writing to her parents in Cree syllabics and being told she shouldbe learning to write in English.122 As late as the 1970s, students at the Mennonite-run
schools in northwestern Ontario were not allowed to speak their language if they werein the presence of a staff member who could not understand that language.123
The interest in Aboriginal languages among Catholic officials at residential schools
continued into the 1950s. The Oblates operated a Cree-language training program at
the Blue Quills, Alberta, school during the 1950–51 school year. Under the directionof Jean Lessard, who spoke Cree, four young Oblates came to the school to learn Creefrom him and the students. One student wrote in the school newsletter, The Moccasin
Telegram, “We will be very glad when the Fathers will be able to speak Cree like us.”124
At the end of the year, the four were expected to “spread out through western missions
to continue the great task of educating the Indian masses.” Before they could graduate from the program, each of the Oblates was required to preach a mass in Cree tothe Blue Quills students.125 During Lessard’s time at the school, students were given
more opportunities to speak Cree and participate in what were deemed to be, if ina stereotypical way, traditional Aboriginal dances. One of the highlights of an open
house at the Blue Quills school in the spring of 1951 was, according to a local newspaper, “the ten little Indian boys … who relived the role of their ancestors in an Indian
war dance.”126 At the same event, Lessard appeared “with full buck-skin costume as aBlackfoot chief.” One of the students explained, in Cree, the significance of the beaded
designs on the clothing.127 That same year, Lessard had worn the buckskin clothing toa student assembly. In the school newsletter, a student wrote, “He told us it had been
made by the children at Crowfoot Indian School. He explained the headdress, thegloves, the blanket and other parts of the costume. Finally he showed us a buffalo-hairlariat which the Indian used in the olden days to catch wild horses.”128
In the early winter of 1950, Lessard recorded the boys’ and girls’ choirs singing
Christmas songs for broadcast on a local Cree-language radio program.129 They also
recorded traditional songs. Grade Five student Romeo Paul reported, “We sang an
Owl Dance Song and then we listened to ourselves. We laughed at ourselves because
we had made some mistakes. So we started over again. We sang four songs and thistime we sang them well.”130 But Aboriginal languages and cultural expression were
tolerated only under the supervision of the missionaries. General use of Cree was stillbanned in the school, although it appears that some of the Oblates sought to have theban lifted. One of the Oblates learning Cree actually came into conflict with the nuns
over their ban on Cree, telling them, “If you stop speaking French then I’ll tell the children to stop speaking Cree.”131
The one-year program at Blue Quills does not appear to have been repeated. It was
not until the 1960s that attitudes began to change about the place of Aboriginal culture in residential schools. The shift was reflected in a brief that the Canadian Catholic
Conference submitted that year to the Joint Committee of the Senate and House of

The educational record: 1940–2000 • 131

Commons on Indian Affairs. Among the four key sociological facts that the brief identified at the outset was the importance of theperseverance among these communities of Indian cultural identification.
Culture is the accumulated wisdom and way of life of the forefathers, and it
is only natural for persevering Indian communities to raise their children in
the human tradition they know best. The tradition may be exteriorly quite
modified from what it was before Columbus and reflect our majority culture
in various degrees. Substantially however, and as far as the communities areconcerned, the marrow of traditional culture has been preserved as a spiritualand psychological heritage characterizing almost all people of Indian status
and background. The characteristics may vary from group to group and witheach individual. But practically all Indian people share them to a certain extent
and are justly proud of them as a common bond among themselves and theircommon link with the past.

The Catholic brief did not take the view that this culture should be erased. Instead,
it recommended that steps be taken to assist First Nations people in learning “about
their past and present conditions objectively, and inviting them to plan their future
within the Canadian commonwealth so as to contribute the best of their cultural heritage to the common society of Canada.”132
The second volume of A Survey of the Contemporary Indians of Canada (better
known as the “Hawthorn Report”), a report commissioned by the federal government
in 1964 and released in 1967, dealt largely with education. The authors wrote that they
could findno proposal that education or any part of it be given in an Indian language orthat courses in Indian languages be offered. It is true that this would be moredifficult to accomplish in the joint schools [by this they meant the public schools
in which Indian Affairs was paying to educate First Nations students] than inreserve schools, but it is conceivable that, even in the joint schools, Indianchildren could be given the opportunity to improve their written and spoken
knowledge of their own language, even if this required that special courses
be offered. The lack of qualified teaching staff for the Indian languages is theprincipal reason for this serious weakness.
The government’s policy on the preservation of the Indian languages isambiguous. It would appear that there is a general unwillingness to make openstatements on this subject. However, the lack of attention shown towards theteaching of the Indian languages in the courses of study would seem to indicate
rather clearly that the Indian languages might be allowed to disappear and be
replaced by either English or French (in Quebec). The great number of Indian
languages and dialects and the need to integrate Indians with Canadian society
might justify this measure.133

132 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The informal policy of the mid-1960s was, in other words, the same as the one that
H. M. Jones had implied in 1953: it was aimed at a belief that Aboriginal languages
would simply disappear.
Small but significant improvements to incorporating meaningful Aboriginal content were made in coming years. The Canadian Welfare Council’s 1967 report on nine
Saskatchewan residential schools described “an emphasis on relating course content
to the Indian culture” as “imaginative” and a sign of progress in “making the educational experience meaningful for the Indian child.”134 By 1968, the Roman Catholicschool in Cardston, Alberta, was incorporating Blackfoot into its educational program.
Joanne Davis, a local woman, was hired as a special assistant for the Level One class.
She worked with the students, “using their mother tongue as a basis for teaching themEnglish.” According to one report, “she spent twenty minutes a day recounting legends
to the children in Blackfoot, followed by a discussion of the legends in Blackfoot.” Theschool Christmas pageant was conducted in Blackfoot, with hunters substituting forshepherds and a teepee replacing the traditional stable. In the new year, the students
were taught Universal Indian Sign Language. As part of this class, the students met
with adults who showed them the “signs used by them in the old days.”135
As late as the 1969–70 school year, only seven Indian Affairs schools offered courses
in Aboriginal languages or used Aboriginal languages as the language of instruction.136
In 1972, Indian Affairs had come to recognize
the cultural difficulties which hinder the progress of many students, and Indian
history, traditions and languages are now being included in the curriculum.
Teachers are taking courses in cross-cultural education and research is being
done in universities on how to bring the Indian languages into the life of theschools. During the year visual aids, tapes and printed matter were produced,
Indian dances and arts were brought into the schoolrooms and the native
culture stressed.137

In the 1972–73 school year, a Cree-language program was introduced at Gordon’s
and Qu’Appelle schools.138 By 1974–75, the number of Indian Affairs schools offeringsome form of Aboriginal-language education had increased to 174.139 Again, it should
be noted that although a small number of residential schools would continue to operate until the end of the 1990s, by the time the expansion of Aboriginal-language training came in the mid–1970s, the government was in the process of closing most of theexisting residences.

The half-day system
The term half-day system is common in any discussion of residential schooling in
Canada. It refers to the system under which older students took academic classes for

The educational record: 1940–2000 • 133

half the school day and vocational training for the other half. Although Indian Affairs
generally recommended that schools follow such a system, there never was a formal
government policy that described in detail how the system was to be implemented.
In fact, the half-day system existed in contradiction to the general policy that schools
were to adopt and follow the curriculum of the province in which they were situated.
No provincial education curriculum required primary school students to spend half
the week on vocational training. The policy of keeping older students out of the classroom for half of the school week contributed to one of the residential school system’s
major failings: the fact that students rarely made it to the highest grade offered in theschool before they were old enough to drop out.
The half-day system not only stood as a barrier to Aboriginal children’s achieving academic success, but it also seldom provided them with meaningful vocational
training. It is clear from the record that rather than being given training that helped
them develop employable skills, students spent their half-day doing repetitive chores
that helped subsidize school operations.
For instance, a 1946 survey of the quality of food at schools in northwestern Ontario,
Manitoba, and Saskatchewan reported that, as part of their training, girls should betaught to peel potatoes by hand: “But to do this, it is not necessary to peel potatoes for
100 or more each day. In fact, other phases of training are thus neglected.” The study
recommended that schools be supplied with automatic potato peelers.140 In 1948,
D. S. Pitts, the principal of the Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario, complained,“We feel that in an Institution of this size a Potato Peeler is a necessity. There is a gooddeal of time ‘wasted’ in the very elementary ‘lesson’ of peeling 100 lbs of potatoes
every morning—time that could better be used in teaching some better methods suchas actual cooking.”141
Indian Affairs was quite well aware of the fact that the schools were offering little
in the way of real vocational training. The 1942 Indian Affairs annual report noted:“Difficulty has been experienced in securing teachers with the training necessary toprovide worthwhile vocational instruction for boys.”142 In 1944, R. A. Hoey reported
that although Indian Affairs had developed a vocational training program for thoseschools, “very few of our schools have either the classroom buildings or the equipment necessary to introduce this program.”143
In a 1946 report, Indian Affairs official A. J. Doucet assessed the opportunities formanual training being provided at a number of schools in northwestern Ontario,
Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. In northwestern Ontario, he felt, “little organized training is taking place.” The facilities were poorly equipped, making it difficult to recruitand retain qualified teachers. At the Lestock, Saskatchewan, school, the shop was inan old and unsatisfactory building. The Grayson school lacked a suitable workshop.
However, the Qu’Appelle school had a good shop facility, which they had renovatedthemselves. Doucet thought that a garage located near the Portage la Prairie school134 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissionin Manitoba could be converted into a suitable facility, and he considered the Sandy
Bay, Manitoba, workshop, which had been remodelled by the students, to be in good
shape. In addition, however, Doucet noted that the “instructors have no training forthis work.”144
In 1947, John House, the principal of the Gleichen, Alberta, school, complainedthat Indian Affairs had recently come to the conclusion that
vocational training was more important to Indians than academic work, andso complete courses in woodwork, metal work, tinsmithing, leather work,
dairying, dressmaking, household science, cooking, goat keeping and several
others were thrust upon us. These were put on a compulsory basis and monthly
reports concerning them were to be sent to the Department. It would take a staff
of about thirty to handle the technical instruction and executive work to teachall these things and no Canadian technical or public school has ever attempted
such an ambitious programme.

He said that the policy would lead to a decline in the emphasis on academic work,
sparking complaints from parents that they wanted their children to be in the “classroom all the time like white children.”145
In 1957, vocational training at residential schools that Indian Affairs operated insouthern Canada remained limited. Of the sixty-six schools:• forty-nine had courses in home economics (cooking, sewing, housekeeping)• forty-seven taught woodworking• twenty-five taught sheet-metal work
• twenty-one taught motor mechanics• eleven taught welding• four taught shoe repair• three taught home and farm mechanics
Woodworking was the only vocational training given at more than half theschools.146 The Canadian Welfare Council’s 1967 report on nine residential schools in
Saskatchewan observed, “The program of study is academic with no vocational training except that woodworking and domestic science classes are scheduled for the older
boys and girls a half day a week.”147
In 1940, British Columbia school inspector G. H. Barry wrote that it appeared tohim that the nine girls at the Lytton, British Columbia, school who were taking home
economics were not getting any academic training. He complained that “even though
Indian children are most anxious to have at least a minimum time in the actual classroom,” the principal excluded the older students from class. “Again and again,” wrote
Barry, “I have heard the complaint that the school room work was denied to the childand therefore they did not wish to remain in school. On occasion a child runs away forthe reason outlined here.”148

The educational record: 1940–2000 • 135

Parents objected to the fact that their children were being overworked. When aMounted Police officer tracked down Wilfred Deiter, a runaway from the File Hills,
Saskatchewan, school in 1940, his father said he did not want the boy to return toschool. According to the father, Wilfred “gets no class work, he is doing outside work,
such as hauling hay, cutting wood, and general labouring.” He felt that his son was“receiving no better education than he would receive at home.”149
At a 1946 meeting of the Council of the Stony Indian Agency, band members presented a lengthy list of reasons why over forty children had not been placed in school.
The central reason related to the amount of work the students were required to do andthe limited amount of time they spent in the classroom. It was reported to the meetingthat when one boy asked a school staff member, “How much money am I getting forworking half days doing chores at the school?” he was told, “You get nothing. You areworking for your clothes.” When asked by a band member if she was getting a goodeducation at the Morley school, a girl had answered, “We older girls have never beenin the class rooms for two years.” One father said that after eight years at the school,
one of his daughters had spent her final years in the school doing chores. He said
he was reluctant to send his eight-year-old son to the school, fearing that “when heis old enough he will be made to do chores when he should be doing school work
like the white children.”150 These concerns were corroborated by the local inspector ofIndian agencies, G. H. Gooderham, who wrote, “There are no teachers; the class-room
work is very sketchy, as the Principal and Matron have to do this in addition to theirother duties.”151
The rural labour shortage created by wartime enlistment in the 1940s presented
older residential students with employment opportunities. Many of them felt that if
they were going to be forced to spend their day doing farm work, they might as wellbe paid. The mother of one of the boys who ran away from Mount Elgin, Ontario, inthe spring of 1943 asked that her son be discharged when he was located. She said,“Each time he has run away and when they got him back the principal of the School
gives him a big beating up but he says that will not make him stay.” The last time she
saw him, he told her “he would rather leave school or work on a farm.”152 Indian Affairs
wanted the boy discharged, but Mount Elgin principal Oliver Strapp thought the government should prosecute farmers who hired runaways for employing underageboys.153 Indian Affairs official R. A. Hoey rejected the idea.154 The situation at Mount
Elgin had reached a crisis point by the fall of 1944. According to Strapp’s successor,
S. H. Soper, the farm work was falling on the shoulders of a dwindling number of students, most of whom were under twelve. He wrote that with the help of “one sixteen
year old boy and seven 9, 10, and 11 years,” the school had harvested 160 tons of hay,
500 bushels of oats, 350 bushels of wheat, and 200 bushels of barley. The same students had also been caring for fifty-five head of cattle and forty hogs. There were only
sixty-five students in total—with only one new student recruited that year. The school,

136 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

he wrote, needed 120 students to succeed financially. Soper pleaded, “We must havemore students and we must have more twelve to seventeen year old students.”155 Hoey,
however, held out no hope for any increase in enrolment until the end of the war.156
The Survey of Indian Education on Reserves in Western Ontario noted that at residential schools, “the pupils who are able to do the work on the farm and in the house are
required to do more work than should be required.” The problem was exacerbated by
the young age of most of the students.157
Work was not only onerous, but it also continued to be dangerous. The 1946 reportof the Anglican Church’s Indian Work Investigation Commission into the condition ofresidential schools recognized this.
A physician associated with the Indian Department says he does not think it
reasonable or wise that the pupils should be expected to assume all the heavy
tasks which are incidental to the administration of a relatively large institution
and at the same time to carry on their studies in a language which is not theirown, in fact he considers this state of affairs to be a definite health-hazard.

The Anglicans recommended that the students “should be relieved of heavy work. The
hours of labour in many schools should be at once reduced, and the hours of study
and recreation increased.”158
The system remained in place for at least another half-decade. The risk to student
health was quite real during that period. At the Brandon school, a twelve-year-old
boy, who was working in the barn, lost all the fingers on one hand when it was caught
in a pulley used to raise hay into the hayloft. In reporting the accident, Principal R. T.
Chapin stressed that the boy, Kenneth Smith, “was apparently playing with the running rope.” Details of the accident, which occurred on July 10, 1941, were not reported
to Indian Affairs until September 10 of that year.159
In 1942, Indian Affairs received a $350 bill for the hospital treatment of Christine
Nichols (also given as Christina Nicholas), who had been hospitalized after an injury
she sustained while working in the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school laundry. Since
he had not been informed of the accident, R. A. Hoey was surprised by the bill.160
In response to Hoey’s request for a full report, Shubenacadie principal J. P. Mackey
explained that the girl had been warming her hands on a mangle (a machine that usedheated rollers to press clothing) on a cold morning in December of the previous year,
and one of her hands had become caught in the machine. She did not return from thehospital until April 1942, “with the hand bandaged, and the fingers still quite stiff andbent towards the palm of the hand.” According to Mackey, by the end of May, she was“able to take a grip with the hand.” Mackey, who rarely let pass an opportunity to complain about what he perceived to be the laziness of First Nations people, added, “While
she was at the hospital we heard about the Doctors being quite annoyed because she

The educational record: 1940–2000 • 137

would not exercise the hand, and also that a certain amount of experimentation was
being tried out. All this is just hearsay, so take it that way.”161
On April 16, 1949, fifteen-year-old Rodney Beardy was one of four boys who werereturning from the Brandon school farm for the noon meal. They were riding on a
tractor that was being driven by a fifteen-year-old student. As it came down a hill,
Beardy, who was riding on the left fender, fell off and was run over by the left rear
wheel. He was dead by the time the school staff could be summoned.162 The secretaryof Indian Affairs, T. R. L. MacInnes, wrote that “it seems to me that great care should
be taken by the residential school authorities to see that young boys are not exposedto accidents through operating machinery of this kind.”163
Two boys from the Birtle, Manitoba, school were injured in a truck accident in 1942.
From Indian Affairs correspondence, it appears that the accident involved a truck carrying seventy boys who were being taken from the school to the fields to do farm work.
Indian Affairs official R. A. Hoey criticized the principal for allowing the practice totake place, noting that “it is almost unbelievable that the principal should permit 70
pupils to be conveyed in a truck.”164
A student at the Edmonton, Alberta, school, George Breast, lost a foot in 1944
after an accident during the operation of an ensilage cutter (a machine used in the
preparation of fodder).165 In 1953, Marlene Milliken had to be treated in hospital after
she was injured while operating the manual bread cutter at the Mohawk Institute in
Brantford, Ontario.166
The overreliance on the work of residential school students continued into the1950s. Inspector C. A. F. Clark concluded that the 1949–50 school year at the Brandon,
Manitoba, school had started badly. During the opening weeks, he said, the “accentshould be on fun and games.” Instead, Principal Oliver Strapp had commenced thehalf-day system immediately. By October, there still had not been any movies shownat the school and physical education would not start until after Thanksgiving.167 In
1952, the Grade Five through Grade Seven boys at the Brandon school were working
four half-days a week at manual labour while the girls in grades Four through Seven
were spending four half-days a week performing domestic labour. Philip Phelan, thesuperintendent of education for Indian Affairs, informed Strapp that he thought thisto be “an unreasonably high percentage of the pupils’ time,” particularly since mostresidential schools had abandoned the half-day system.168 Strapp responded that theschool was economically dependent on the farm. In an effort to reduce student labour,
he had been investing in farm technology. He pointed out that a functioning farm wasessential, given the government’s small per capita grant. If the government wished tosee farm work discontinued, all it needed to do, he wrote, was to increase the grant.169
In 1952, Phelan wrote to the Alberta regional inspector of Indian schools, L. G. P.
Waller, for information on the amount of work being done by students at the Anglican
school in Cardston, Alberta. The issue had been raised by parents at a recent meeting,138 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

but Phelan said the department could not take action “without specific information
as to the amount of time which pupils lose from classroom work, and the age andgrade placement of these pupils.” The statement is, in effect, an admission that IndianAffairs had no policy on the issue, and was not tracking how much work students werebeing obliged to do.170 Waller replied that while there were numerous examples ofoverwork at the Anglican school at Cardston, he thought it best to “attack the principle
on which the system is based rather than point out the horrible examples.” He notedthat he believed that Principal Pitts’s approach was somewhat similar to the infamous“Dotheboys Hall” in Charles Dickens’s novel Nicholas Nickleby. According to Waller,
at Cardston,All children from Grade III up perform farm and domestic duties daily outside ofclassroom instruction time, and each child in Grade III–VIII spends two half daysof school instruction time at these same chores.
Daily chores begin at 6:45 a.m. for the boys with the milking of the dairy herd of
12 cows, feeding of pigs and chickens. The girls do the domestic chores in the
kitchen and dormitories.

Of particular concern to Waller was the fact that
individuals or groups are assigned to each member of the staff for the dailychores, so that the staff members become supervisors and the children do thework. The engineer has boys to shovel and stoke; the farm assistant supervises
the milking, feeding and stable work, the matron oversees the girls’ housework,
etc. School children are employed as domestic servants of the staff. Endless jobs
are found for them to do. The work of the institution is so organized as to keep
every child busy every day. The laundry work, for instance, is spread over theentire week instead of being cleaned up on Monday.171

By 1952, government officials were encouraging principals to abandon the half-day
system. In that year, Inspector G. H. Marcoux wrote of the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba,
school that the “half-day system is still being followed for the higher grades (VI to
VIII). We are expecting these pupils to cover the same course as the white pupils in
half the time. I strongly recommend the system be abolished.” Philip Phelan agreed,
and instructed Manitoba Indian Affairs official R. S. Davis to speak to the school principal about discontinuing the practice.172 That same month, Marcoux reported that at
the Sandy Bay, Manitoba, school, the half-day system was being replaced by one inwhich older students would “miss half a day every seven school days.”173
In January 1953, Indian Affairs developed a set of residential school regulations
that included a provision that “every pupil in a residential school shall receive classroom instruction for the number of hours weekly as required by curriculum.”174 This
policy was both a tacit recognition of the fact that, in the past, students had not been

The educational record: 1940–2000 • 139

spending enough time in the classroom and, in effect, an instruction not to use thehalf-day system.
Ending the half-day system would, however, require additional resources. Not only
would the schools need more funding to make up for the loss in student labour, butthey would also need more classrooms and more teachers.175 One Indian Affairs official described the termination of the half-day system as the switch from “the industrial school system to the provincial school system”—a switch that left “classroom
accommodation at the Edmonton Residential school … inadequate.” Indian Affairs
was able to postpone building new classrooms by having students educated at a local
public school.176
Just because students were now mandated to spend a full day in class does notmean that they were not still put to work at the schools. A 1956 federal report on First
Nations education in Canada reported that at residential schools, thepractice is to assign chores to the boys and domestic duties to the girls. This
though it may be necessary in the operation of the institution, is not directly
related to the educational activity. The end result is that these domestic duties
and chores become burdensome and breed a dislike for work rather than awholesome respect for it.

The report also stated that vocational training was often relegated to basements
and outbuildings. This did little, the authors of the report felt, “to establish an academic prestige to these branches of instruction or to elicit much interest or response
from the pupils.”177
In 1957, K. Kingwell, the principal of the Lytton, British Columbia, public school,
complained that students from the Lytton residence who were attending his school
were having trouble keeping up academically. He attributed the problem to the chores
that the students were required to do before and after school. He asked an IndianAffairs official, “How well would you do in your studies if you rolled out of bed at 5:00
a.m. in the morning and did heavy labour until 7:30 or 8:00 then went to school until
3:30 p.m. and back again to your chores and supper from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m.?”178
After Sam Ross ran away from the Birtle, Manitoba, school in 1959, he told IndianAffairs official J. R. Bell that he wanted to continue his education, but had been forced
to work “too hard” at the Birtle school. He said that from September to Christmas ofthe previous year, he had worked in the school barn every day between “6:00 a.m. and7:00 a.m. and from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. again at recess, from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
and had had to stoke up the furnace with coal at 10:00 o’clock before retiring.” Ross
said “he liked school but not working like a hired hand.” He had been first in his Grade
Nine class at Christmas with an average of 78.8. Bell recommended that the amount ofstudent labour being done at the Birtle school should be investigated.179

140 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Bell raised the issue again in October when another boy from The Pas Agency ran
away from the Birtle school. Fred Nasecapow said that he had run away because he
had not gone “to school to become a farm hand.” In addition to school work, he said,
he did three hours a day of work on the farm. In reporting on the case, Bell observedthat in northern Manitoba, Nasecapow was seen to be a “conscientious and reliable worker.”180
Examples of student labour continued to arise. In 1963, the principal of the Roman
Catholic school in Kenora decided to take several fifteen-year-old girls, who, hebelieved, had no academic future, out of class and use them as assistants in the school.
The department had to step in, since provincial regulations required children to attend
school until they reached the age of sixteen.181 In 1975, the Mission, British Columbia,
residence had begun using older students to do kitchen work, office work, and supervision of younger students. Unlike in the past, these students were paid for theirlabour. But the reason why the residence had to turn to students was long-standing:the wages the residence was offering were too low to attract anyone else.182

Classroom life
Given that there were hundreds of teachers working in classrooms across the country for over a century, it is difficult to generalize about classroom experiences throughout the system. The student reports of their educational experiences are described indetail elsewhere in this report. It is important to recognize that many students, both inmemoirs and in statements to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
have spoken positively about the impact that specific teachers had on their lives.
In her memoirs, Jane Willis had kind words for the vice-principal at the publicschool in Sault Ste. Marie that she attended when she lived at the Shingwauk Institute.
When she enrolled in the school, Vice-Principal Weir told her that he wanted her tolook upon him as a friend. “I did not believe a word he was saying, of course, but,during the years I spent there, he proved that he was sincerely interested in helpingme. He encouraged me whenever I felt like quitting. Nobody at the Indian school
had taken such an active interest in me and I came to look upon him as my second grandfather.”183
Many years after she left the Shubenacadie school in Nova Scotia, Rita Joe, who,
as an adult, won national recognition for her poetry, went to visit one of her former
teachers; they hugged and cried. She said of the meeting, “It was true that many negative things occurred, but there was also a lot of good that happened.”184
However, it is clear that hostile attitudes, low expectations, and excessive regimentation all worked to undermine the schools’ educational mission. In 1945,
Philip Phelan, the chief of the Indian Affairs Training Division, drew attention to theThe educational record: 1940–2000 • 141

Hobbema school’s poor educational record. In a letter to the principal, he pointed toseveral boys who were only in Grade Three after four years in the school. One had only
reached Grade One after three years, and, after ten years in the school, another was
only in Grade Five. “Any pupil,” he wrote, “who requires ten years to cover five grades
will certainly be discontented.”185 Two years later, the Hobbema principal, Gérard
Labonté, provided the following description of educational progress at the school
during the previous year.
It is pretty hard to give anything precise, since there are so many impediments
to prevent the children from being really in the real milieu to learn anything.
In general, it is quite fair, though they are rather slow in acquiring the habit of
speaking English among themselves. And without practice, they will never know
it so as to speak it fluently.
The girls learn better and faster than the boys. Boys, in general, when reaching
the age of 13 and 14, become kind of lazy, indifferent, even lunatic, and theclassroom is definitely a non-sense for them. It is the only reason why I send
them half a day outside.

He thought the girls were making good progress in vocational training, learning
such domestic skills as cooking, sewing, and knitting. The boys, however, he said,
did not want to learn. Some of them ran away with the horses. “We have to punish
the children for one reason or the other, the parents are taking their children without reason.” He had budgeted $250 per month in total for fifteen members of female
religious orders on staff, five of whom were teachers. One of the teachers had a highschool certificate and a diploma from Laval University in Montréal. Three others were
finishing Grade Ten by correspondence courses. The annual report did not provide
information on the educational attainment of the fifth teacher, who was assigned the“baby grade.”186 The parents objected to Labonté’s treatment of their children, writing
to a senior Oblate official that they wanted him replaced. “He doesn’t like us Indians.
He is not friendly with anyone of us and he makes lots of different rules in this Schoolthat displeases the parents.”187
At the Hobbema school in December 1964, nineteen years after Phelan had raised
the issue of the lack of academic success at the school, R. F. Davey, the Indian Affairs
assistant director of education, asked why it appeared that over 60% of the students
in Grade Six at the school had dropped out at the end of the previous school year.188
An inquiry indicated that in reality, forty-four of the eighty-six students in Grade Six
had been promoted to Grade Seven. Of the others, only thirteen had left school. The
inspector noted, “The successful promotion of 44 out of 82 [he used the figure 82 rather
than 86 because there was uncertainty as to status of four of the students] is, of course,
far below what would be considered tolerable in any provincial school system.” Thepoor performance was attributed in part to an epidemic of diphtheria that had hit the142 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

school the previous year and in part to the “practice of making ‘social promotions’from Grade II to Grade VI at this school, followed by a drastic assessment of individual progress at the end of Grade VI, with the result that only those who appear to bepromising material are permitted and encouraged to attempt Grade VII.” Hopes for
future improvements were placed on the new principal and senior teacher, who were“much more aware of fundamental educational (as compared to religious) problems
and issues than were their predecessors.”189
A June 1964 Promotion Sheet for the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school painteda grim picture of official attitudes. Of thirty-two Grade Seven and Grade Eight students, the teacher had assessed five as lacking ability, while others were “slow,” “veryslow,” “not too bright,” “emotionally upset,” “too unstable to achieve much,” had an“unsettled home life,” had “difficulty in math,” did “not apply herself,” were “not working to capacity,” were “unwilling to work,” lacked “a good foundation,” or had “spent
2 yrs. in gr. 7.” On the positive side, one had a “good average,” one had “promise of
improving,” one was “capable,” one was “average,” one was “ambitious,” one was “themost capable in the class,” and one was noted to work so hard that “she may succeed,”despite being “not capable” and “slow.”190
Richard King, who taught at the Carcross school in the Yukon in the early 1960s,
thought the regimented nature of school life destroyed the students’ interest in learning. He observed that when students were in their early years at residential school,“they feel themselves learning.” However, “By the time the children are in their thirdyear at school, they simply prefer routine as the simplest way of coping with life. The
spark of learning for learning’s sake is gone, replaced by a programmatic gamesmanship.” Students knew and resented the fact that they were being controlled and devised
strategies to frustrate those who sought to control them.191
In his memoirs, Harold Cardinal wrote,
Any initiative a young Indian might have had when he started throughthe church school system was beaten out of him before he finished. Rules
and regulations counted for everything and discipline was severe. Such anenvironment conditioned the student to act only under strictly controlled
circumstances. When he left the institution he was unable to function in anenvironment where initiative was needed to guarantee survival.192

Of his time at Fort Providence in the Northwest Territories, Albert Canadien recalledthat religious training was given pride of place, to the point that he concluded, “I think
actual education came second.”193 In particular, he realized that he had never beenencouraged to question or challenge anything.194 According to Alice Blondin-Perrin,
one supervisor at Fort Resolution (also in the Northwest Territories) “seemed intent
on killing my values and self-worth. In response, I became stubborn. Yet when I left
the confines of her authority, in front of other nuns and priests, I became the perfect little girl. I learned to please the ones I liked. I learned to manipulate them, andThe educational record: 1940–2000 • 143

even myself.”195 Theodore Fontaine, who was sexually abused when he attended theFort Alexander, Manitoba, school, wrote in his memoirs, “Looking back on my years
at school, I remember fondly some nuns, priests and others who I think were truly
there in the belief that they could help us adjust to a foreign way of life.”196 However,
he also described the school’s unofficial curriculum: “Fooling authority became
a reprieve from boredom, and defying authority became a way of life when I wasan adult.… Residential school life thus taught us well how to be cunning, deceitfuland untrusting.”197
The December 1945 report of G. H. Gooderham of the Anglican and Catholicschools on the Blackfoot Reserve observed:
Classroom work always appears to be lacking in something: possibly this is due
to lack of interest by the pupil but it is so easy for a teacher to get in a rut and lackthat spirit which the child needs so much to retain its interest and enthusiasm.
Indian children love to sing and they are good singers. We need to practice alittle more psychology to get nearer the desired result.198

There were also many positive teaching assessments. A 1949 Indian Affairs
inspector’s report on a teacher at the Pine Creek, Manitoba, school said that Sister
Louis-Philip
has a very pleasing classroom manner. She has the happy knack of seeing
the humorous side of situations as they arise. This is reflected in a happy andcontented class. Geography facts are well known here, particularly facts about
Canada. A half hour period per day is devoted to History and Geography.
Reading is good in Grades Four, Five and Six, and Fair in Grade Seven.
Mathematics is only fair in all grades.

The assessment also revealed the limited expectations that teachers and staff hadof their Aboriginal students: “It seems to be a very difficult task to teach an Indianchild much in Arithmetic.”199
In 1956, a provincial inspector described the students in one class at the Grayson,
Saskatchewan, school as being alert and interested, and the teaching methods as
being sound: “The work done here should be very satisfactory.”200 A 1948 report on ateacher at the Cluny, Alberta, school stated, “Sister Eulalia displays a very sincere andconscientious interest in her work. She has been giving some time to the daily planning and preparation of both lesson material and suitable seatwork [classwork].”201 A
1951 inspection of the same school reported, “A good teaching staff has been obtained.
The work in the various rooms has been well planned and organized. Class activities
proceed smoothly.”202 A 1954 report was equally positive about the entire school. The
inspector of schools, L. G. P. Waller, wrote that he had “every reason to hope that nonormal child will leave this school with less than Grade VIII and that seventy-five percent will have Grade IX or better. This progress can be traced to better attendance,

144 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the full-day program, an enlightened promotion policy, and a more highly qualified
teaching staff and a more attractive school program.”203
A 1954 report on a teacher at the Christie Island School (Gertrude Lagarde) notedthat she had a first-class licence from Québec and complimented her on her “creativeness and ingenuity.” Inspector A. V. Parminter, whom the Catholic hierarchy tended
to view with suspicion, noted that the “children are reluctant to leave when classes
terminate and eager to return when recess is over.”204
School administrators did not always accept the validity of an inspector’s judgment.
In responding to Inspector G. H. Barry’s 1940 recommendation that British Columbia
Catholic schools employ more qualified teachers, the Oblate G. Forbes wrote that
Barry was “a fool and a tool.” What was needed was not more qualified teachers, hefelt, but a more qualified inspector.205

Parent response
Parents responded to the poor quality of education in a number of ways: they
sought to have teachers dismissed, they tried to take their children out of school, theylobbied for day schools, and, in at least one case, they even tried home schooling.
The parents of the Kahkewistahaw Band petitioned the federal government toremove a teacher from the Round Lake, Saskatchewan, school in July 1949. They said
that “the children’s report cards are very unsatisfactory, worst ever received, andshe abuses the children too much.206 While Indian Affairs official J. P. B. Ostrander
opposed replacing the teacher, he did report that she kept a strap on display in herclass, saying, “If she does not use it for punishment, at least she keeps it on display as athreat of punishment, which does not promote harmony in the classroom.”207
At a 1946 meeting of the Council of the Stony Indian Agency, band members called
for a day school so their children would not have to be sent to the Morley, Alberta,
residential school.208
In March 1948, George Good Dagger (alternatively, Gooddagger) made a complaint
before the Blood Indian Council that he had been struck by Principal P. A. Charron of
the Roman Catholic school at Cardston when he tried to take his son out of school.
Charron’s own account of the incident was that when he took measures to stop Good
Dagger from removing his children, the man had become abusive. Charron then tried
to force him out of the school, and, according to Charron, both men had struck eachother. The Indian agent informed the band council that he had warned Charron not
to allow such a conflict to break out again. Good Dagger agreed to forget about thematter, and the council insisted on having the record note that this was “not the firsttime that Father Charron had hit an Indian.”209The educational record: 1940–2000 • 145

Dissatisfaction with both the Catholic and Anglican schools at Cardston in thespring of 1948 led parents from the Blood Reserve to request an on-reserve day school.
Chris Bullshield said, “I am very much in favour of having the Day schools on our
Reserve, because our young children will have a start while still being at home.” Pat
Eaglechild said, “I am in favour of Day schools.” Stephen Fox Jr. said, “I am in favourof Day Schools, it will give our children a better chance.” Charles Goodrider said, “I
am in favour of Day Schools on this Reserve because all the world’s progressing, it is
not right that we should become or stay backward. Also I am in favour of having an
Industrial School in one of our Residential Schools and a High School in the other.”
Steve Bruisedhead said,
I am in favour of Day Schools on our reserve, because our children will be raised
during their earlier years at home, where they will learn to obey us, the parents.
These young people who turn out to be criminals and the ones who leave homeand roam away from the reserve are the ones who were raised in school fromtheir earliest years.

Jim Whiteman said, “I am in favour of day schools, I want my son to have a goodeducation, where he is at present, he is just learning religion” (at the St. Mary’s residential school). George Gooddagger (spelling as reported in minutes) was present at
the meeting and asked, “How can a child respect, honour and love his (or) her parents, when they are raised in school far from home among strangers? Why must ourchildren be separated from us, the parents, for approximately 280 days per year? Other
Indian reserves have Day Schools, why can we not have them, too?”210
In 1941, Muriel, Doreen, and Kathleen Steinhauer were kept home from theEdmonton residential school because their parents were not satisfied with the progress they were making at the school. Their mother, Isabel, had been a teacher prior toher marriage and was home-schooling the children, making use of correspondence
courses from the Alberta education department. Their father, Ralph Steinhauer, wasthe adopted son of James Arthur Steinhauer, a descendant of the Ojibway missionary
Henry Steinhauer. Ralph Steinhauer later became president of the Indian Associationof Alberta and lieutenant-governor of Alberta.211 His daughter Kathleen went on to
become a nurse, working at the Indian Affairs hospital in Edmonton.212
In 1949, citing their rights under Treaty 4, the parents at the Cowessess Reserve in
Saskatchewan petitioned the government for a non-sectarian day school. “We ask fora higher standard of education so as our Children will grow up in the spirit of self reliance.”213 The department did open a day school on the reserve the following year, but
the regional supervisor of Indian agencies, J. P. B. Ostrander, recommended that the
department take steps to find a Catholic teacher. He noted that the chief had asked fora non-denominational school, but said, “I see no reason why it should be as the great
majority of the Indians of that reserve are of the Catholic faith.”214146 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

As these examples suggest, complaints from students and parents were discredited. In January 1956, Albert Fiddler, a Gordon’s school student, wrote to his parents
that he wanted them to take him out of school. He said the principal had kicked him
and told the boys that they “weren’t fit for the school and he also said we might aswell go back to our old reserves and live a rotten life.” He said he felt the principal andthe supervisor did not like him and worked him too hard.215 In response to a queryfrom Indian Affairs, the principal, Rev. A. Southard, wrote that Fiddler suffered froma “‘father on the council’ attitude towards the staff” and was one of the four laziest
students in the school.216
From 1940 to 1970, the period of greatest residential school enrolment, theCanadian residential schools failed to provide Aboriginal children with the educational supports they needed to progress through the school system at a rate similar
to that of non-Aboriginal children. A significant percentage of teachers lacked qualifications; the curriculum contained material that was either irrelevant to, or offensive in its treatment of, Aboriginal people; Aboriginal languages were suppressedand demeaned; and the views of parents were discounted or ignored. After 1970,
Aboriginal students were transferred in increasing numbers to public school systems
that had little knowledge of their rights and heritage, and little interest or ability inmeeting their specific needs.

CHAPTER 34

The schools as child-welfare
institutions: 1940–2000

In a private conversation, a former British Columbia social worker once referredto the practice by which First Nations children were taken into custody bychild-welfare agencies in her province as the “Sixties Scoop.” That term has cometo stand for the process by which provincial child-welfare agencies took an ever-larger
percentage of the Aboriginal population into custody in the 1960s and into the 1970s.
By 1980, 4.6% of all First Nations children were in care; the comparable figure for thegeneral population was 0.96%.1
The taking of so many Aboriginal children into provincial care in this period is seenas the product of a number of political, social, and economic events, one of the mostsignificant being the extension of the authority of provincial and private child-welfare
agencies over Aboriginal people.
The reality is that residential schools had been used as child-welfare facilities fromthe outset of the system. Writing in 1883, Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald predicted that until parents overcame their opposition to industrial schools, enrolment
would depend largely on “orphans and children who have no natural protectors.”2
The regulation adopted under the Indian Act amendments of 1894 authorized Indian
agents and justices of the peace to commit any “Indian child between six and sixteen
years of age that is not being properly cared for or educated” to a residential school.
In Manitoba and the North-West Territories (which at that time still included Alberta,
Saskatchewan, and the North), such an order could be issued without the need togive any notice to the “parent, guardian or other person having charge or control ofsuch child.”3 The influenza epidemic that followed the end of the First World War had
killed so many Aboriginal adults that in 1919, Indian Affairs decreed that “no children,
whose parents are alive should be admitted to residential schools, unless under very
exceptional circumstances, as long as there are orphans of this class to fill the vacancies.”4 From the 1940s onwards, residential schools increasingly served as orphanages
and child-welfare facilities. By 1960, the federal government estimated that 50% of thechildren in residential schools were there for child-welfare reasons. The 1960s Scoop

148 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

was in some measure simply a transferring of children from one form of institutionalcare, the residential school, to another, the child-welfare agency.5
The schools were not funded or staffed to function as child-welfare institutions.
They failed to provide their students with the appropriate level of personal and emotional care children need during their childhood and adolescence. This failure applied
to all students, but was of particular significance in the case of the growing numberof social-welfare placements in the school. The routine of the institution was neverintended to meet the personal and emotional needs of students, but, instead, tomaintain overall order and discipline. For the children whose parents were not able toprovide them with a safe and loving home environment, the residential school environment did not prove to be a safer or more loving haven. Children who had to stayin the schools year-round because there was no safe home to be returned to spent
their entire childhoods in an institution where they grew up unloved. This is a pointthat recurs in countless Survivor statements and in residential school memoirs. BasilJohnston, who attended the Spanish, Ontario, school in the 1940s, wrote: “Most of
the boys were already hurt; they were orphans, waifs, cast-offs, exiles from family
and home, who needed less of a heavy hand, a heavy foot, heavy words, and moreof affection, approbation, companionship, praise, guidance, trust, laughter, regard,love, tenderness.”6
Elise Charland, who attended residential schools in Saskatchewan and Alberta in
the 1940s and 1950s, recalled: “There was no one there to help us, to love us, to takeus in their arms and take the hurt and tears away. That loneliness was unbearable. No
one cared whether we lived or died.”7
In such an atmosphere, small kindnesses and caring staff members werelong remembered.8
Admissions policies were haphazard and poorly enforced, and children became
warehoused in residential schools because there was no other place for them. As early
as 1940, Indian Affairs education official R. A. Hoey had concluded that although residential schools had limited “efficiency” as educational institutions, they were likely
to continue to be needed to house “Indian orphan children and children neglectedby their parents and indeed children from homes where conditions are such that achild, unless removed to a residential school, has little chance of surviving.”9 The 1944
“Survey of Indian Education on Reserves in Western Ontario,” by an inspector of public schools in Ontario, noted that although residential schools had been planned as
vocational institutes, they were now being used as “orphanages or children’s shelters,”
in which the “young children tend to be neglected for part of the day.”10 Due to a growing number of “Indian orphans or children from broken homes,” as early as 1947, theAnglican Church said that many residential schools were having to care for “a numberof very young children.”11 In short, by the beginning of the 1940s, one of the main purposes of Canada’s residential school system was to serve as child-welfare institutions.

The schools as child-welfare institutions: 1940–2000 • 149

The government was also given warning that the schools were not up to thetask. The inadequacy of the schools as child-welfare institutions had been drawn
to the attention of Indian Affairs as early as 1947. In their brief to the Special Joint
Committee of the Senate and House of Commons, the Canadian Welfare Council andthe Canadian Association of Social Workers urged “the abandonment of the policyof caring for neglected and delinquent children in educational institutions. These
children require very special treatment and we suggest utilization of recognized childwelfare services.”12
There were several interconnected factors in the increase in the number ofAboriginal children placed in residential schools and, in later years, in the custody ofchild-welfare agencies. One of the most significant was the decline of the Aboriginal
economy in the post-war years. On the Canadian Prairies, for example, agriculture
became much more capital-intensive. It was difficult for any farmer to succeed without access to sufficient credit to allow for investments in increasingly expensive farmmachinery. Most First Nations farmers, because they did not hold title to their land,
had little access to credit. As late as the 1960s, Indian Affairs farm-loan programs werecapped at $500. Under these conditions, successful reserve-based farmers found it
impossible to compete economically. Many of the Aboriginal people who had worked
as farm labourers for non-Aboriginal farmers lost their jobs to mechanization. Oneof the few economic activities open to Aboriginal people on the Prairies during thisperiod was as a migrant labourer.13
A 1963 assessment of the Sandy Bay Reserve in Manitoba made the following
observations: people from the reserve sought work off-reserve at fish camps, on
farms, harvesting Seneca root, and on railway-track gangs. In addition, in the spring,
many residents travelled to the United States in search of work, generally returning in
October. To pursue these limited opportunities, the parents had to leave their children
in residential school—even if there was a day school in their home community. An
Indian Affairs official lamented this practice, saying that the presence of a residential
school on the Sandy Bay Reserve had fostered “feelings of dependence on government
for the care and upbringing of children.”14 In northern regions of the prairie provinces,falling fur prices had a similar effect on the Aboriginal economy, while racism andlack of training served as barriers to new jobs in the mining and forestry industries.15
The 1966 Survey of the Contemporary Indians of Canada (commonly known as the“Hawthorn Report”) included employment statistics on the members of thirty-fiveFirst Nations. In only one case was the per capita income more than $1,000 per year.
On twelve reserves, the per capita income was less than $200 per year.16 The poor
housing and limited diet associated with such levels of poverty led to children being
taken from their parents.
In 1959, J. H. Gordon, the chief of the welfare division of Indian Affairs, noted that“many children may be improperly in residential school on the grounds of ‘broken

150 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

homes.’ In some cases these broken homes or poor homes may merely require more
adequate welfare assistance in order that they may maintain minimum standards.”17
In May 1969, three children were attending the Sandy Bay, Manitoba, residence solely
because their mother did not have adequate accommodation for them. Indian Affairs
official G. T. Ross instructed local departmental staff to “attempt to arrange satisfactory accommodation for the entire family.”18 Despite this instruction, two of the boys
ended up attending the Fort Alexander, Manitoba, school in the next school year.19
There were exceptions to the patterns of the continued impoverishment of
Aboriginal communities. A number of First Nations had developed specific,
well-paying, niches in the labour market. Most prominent of these were the high-steel
workers from Québec and southern Ontario, and the west-coast loggers, longshore
workers, and fishers.20 But these, it must be stressed, were exceptions. The federal government’s policy of isolating Aboriginal people on reserves had left them as onlookers
during a period of extended economic growth.
The extension of provincial child-welfare services to Aboriginal people necessarily meant non-Aboriginal people made judgments about Aboriginal child-rearing
practices. These could involve an overemphasis and reliance on an exclusive role ofparents, ignoring the role that the extended Aboriginal family played in raising andeducating children, and providing substitute care. Similarly, these judgments could
view the traditional respect for a child’s autonomy—and a preference to let a childlearn by example—as being lax parenting. Informal adoption practices could beviewed as inappropriate by those implementing a rule-bound system. The languageof child-welfare legislation is open to cultural interpretation: living conditions thatmight be judged “unfit” or “improper” in urban Canada might well be the norm in aremote community.21
The residential schools themselves contributed to the increase in the number ofAboriginal children being taken into care. By 1940, the schools had been operating inmuch of the country for over sixty years. This disrupted traditional Aboriginal family
life and Aboriginal communities. Many children were being raised by parents who had
spent at least a part of their own childhoods in residential school, where their culture,families, and community had been systematically devalued. Parents complained thatthose who returned from the schools had little respect for their elders.22 As well, theyoften did not have the skills to survive economically on the reserve. Annie Neeposh
Iserhoff grew up in her Cree family in the James Bay area of Québec and attended
residential schools in both Ontario and Québec. She recalled the low regard in which
parents held students who had returned from residential school.
The students were being criticized that they didn’t know how to work. The boys
didn’t know how to pitch a tent, how to set up nets, or how to hunt. The girls
were being told that they couldn’t handle women’s work, such as getting boughs

The schools as child-welfare institutions: 1940–2000 • 151

for the tent floor, washing clothes as fast as the bush women, chopping wood, or
lugging pails of water. Soon we were referred to as the lazy school kids.23

At the same time that the schools were undermining the traditional economy, they
were not giving their students the training to compete in an industrializing economy.
As noted in the previous chapter, only half of the residential school students weremaking their way through elementary school in the 1950s.

Indian agents as social workers
Even though large numbers of children were being placed in residential schools forwhat would be termed “child-welfare reasons,” these decisions were not, for much ofthis period, being made by people trained as child-welfare professionals. In the 1940s,
provincial child-welfare agencies did not operate on reserves and had few dealings
with Aboriginal people.24 Up until the 1960s, the decision to send a child to a residential school for child-welfare reasons was usually made by the Indian agent. Many
years after she attended the Edmonton school, Rosa Bell asked her mother why she
had been sent away. She was told:
Your dad was very sick and I couldn’t take care of all of you. I couldn’t support allof you. The Indian Agent told me to send some of you kids to residential school.
The Agent told me they would take good care of you. He picked out which of thechildren would go. I didn’t have any choice or say in the matter.25

The same process was followed across the country. Indian agent Harper Reed
decided to send a six-year-old boy to the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school in
February 1940. In Reed’s opinion, the boy’s father had lost all energy after the deathof his wife. Once the boy was sent to school, the agent denied the father any financial assistance, telling him to “get out of town and earn some revenue by trapping.”26
When, in 1941, the Fort Providence school in the Northwest Territories had recruited
only forty-five students, fifteen less than its authorized enrolment of sixty, IndianAffairs official R. A. Hoey urged the local Indian agent to have the Mounted Police
help “in securing additional pupils. There must be several orphans and abandoned
children for whom institutional care is desirable.”27
In 1943, Indian agent F. W. Tuffnell sought to place two children, aged six and seven,in the Muncey, Ontario, school. Their mother had gone “away with another man” andleft the children with their father, who was “sickly and unable to care for them.”28 In
1948, J. V. Boys was recommending the admission of two children to the Fraser Lake
school. One had been “living with various families since the death of her mother.
Home conditions have been most unsatisfactory.” In the second case, the boy’s father

152 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission“has been working in lumber camps away from the reserve, at points where there wereno school facilities.”29
Indian agents also determined if and when children were to be discharged. In 1943,
the principal of the McIntosh, Ontario, school received permission from the federal
government to keep a student at the school past the age of discharge. The principal
said he would not put her out to work, describing her as the “poor illegitimate child ofan abused young girl she would surely follow her mother’s past judging by her attitude
and disposition.” The principal’s hope was to have her choose a husband while at theschool.30 Three months later, the principal was allowed to keep two over-age orphan
girls at the school until they found work.31
In 1949, a father attempted to take two of his children out of the Fraser Lake school,saying that they would attend a day school in Smithers, British Columbia. The principal allowed him to withdraw his son, but kept his daughter, saying he would not discharge her without the approval of the Indian agent.32 The agent, J. V. Boys, rejected therequest, saying he regretted the decision to discharge the boy. “Most of the children
sent from this agency are sent because of poor home environment,” he wrote, addingthat the home of these children was no exception. He described the father as “lazyand a drunkard,” and concluded that if the children were to have any success in life, itwould be through being “educated in the residential schools.”33
As the previous example indicates, a great deal of official correspondence about
Aboriginal children reveals both a disdain for Aboriginal parents and a belief that
their views could be disregarded. When passing on a father’s complaint that his son
was spending too much of his time doing work for the school, a Mounted Police officer noted in 1940 that “Indians are fond of making complaints of frivolous nature.”34
Mounted Police officer A. H. Langille’s overall view of Aboriginal people was apparent when he described the father of one student as being “above the average as an
Indian.”35 In 1950, Old Sun’s, Alberta, school principal E. S. W. Cole wrote:
When the stampedes are in full swing the Blackfoot Indian is happy, he is
happy and grumbles not at all; but during the winter when time hangs heavily
on his hands because, through no fault of his own, he cannot fish, trap or cut
cord wood, he is inclined to meditate over his troubles, real or imaginary, andenventually [sic] convinces himself that he had a grouch.36

In the fall of 1960, Mike Legarde and his wife arranged to have their two sons attend
the Fort William, Ontario, school. However, they did not return the children to theschool after the Christmas break. They told an Indian Affairs official who was sent toinvestigate the situation that their children “came back with black eyes and came backwith old clothes.” Indian Affairs sent a letter to Legarde, informing him that his children were “now in the care of the Minister [responsible for Indian Affairs] and that thechildren should return to residential school.” Legarde said he would not return them

The schools as child-welfare institutions: 1940–2000 • 153“even if the police were sent.”37 Indian Affairs official F. Matters said that “we need
not give much attention to Mr. Legarde’s remarks describing the condition in which
his children returned from the residential school.” Since the boys were not attending
a day school, he recommended that the case be handed over to a probation officer
and the local child-welfare agency.38 The result of the case is uncertain, although theLegarde children’s names do show up on a list of students who had been re-enrolled
in the Fort William school the following summer.39
This was a child-welfare system that viewed parents with distrust, disdain,and hostility.

Schools as detention facilities
The schools had never been staffed or funded to serve as child-welfare facilities.
Increasingly, schools were housing children whose needs they could not begin toaddress. In the 1940s at Kuper Island, British Columbia, Principal J. Camirand objectedto the government policy of sending to the school “problem pupils and ‘undesirables’”in the hope that “segregation on an island will prove to be the ‘cure-all.’” Instead, thesestudents constituted the bulk of the school’s truancy problem. Camirand said he
could see no value in imposing too rigorous a discipline on the students, since suchtreatment only encouraged them to run away. He had not rounded up the latest groupof truants, since he had had no time and the police were not “disposed to cooperate.”
Furthermore, he did not wish to appear in court to lay a charge against the parents.40
British Columbia Indian agent R. H. Moore attempted in 1946 to have a twelveyear-old boy, whose father was dead and whose mother was in jail in the UnitedStates, admitted to the Kuper Island school. The principal objected, saying the boy
had been at the school before and had tried on several occasions to run away. The
agent said that if the principal did not accept the boy, he would have to be sent to
the British Columbia Boys Industrial School (a school for ‘incorrigible youth’).41 In
1947, Indian Affairs arranged to have several boys from Smithers, British Columbia,
who had been convicted of theft, sent to the Fraser Lake residential school rather than
to the Boys Industrial School. The local Indian agent had recommended this courseof action, saying that boys who were sent to the industrial school generally emerged“much worse for the experience.”42
In June 1950, after the father of two children said he was not able to control themor enforce their attendance at the day school in Whitehorse, Indian Affairs official R. J.
Meek sought to have the children admitted to the Carcross, Yukon, school.43 That same
year, an Indian Affairs official sought to transfer two brothers, who were described
as being “entirely out of control, both at home and at Mohawk Institute [sic],” to the
Shingwauk Home in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. The boys, upon hearing of the proposed154 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

transfer, threatened to run away from Shingwauk, just as they had from the Mohawk
Institute.44 Despite this, the boys were transferred to the Shingwauk Home.45 In 1958,
a girl from the Peguis Band in Manitoba was enrolled in the Portage la Prairie school
because she had become “a truancy problem and the mother, a widow, is unable tocope with the girl.” She was viewed as a good student who could go on to high school
if she were “subject to discipline.”46
Sometimes, Indian Affairs used the schools as an alternative to jail. Indian Affairs
recommended that a girl not be returned home from the Fraser Lake school during
the summer of 1960 because she was facing prosecution for breaking and entering.
Keeping her in school, it was thought, would keep her out of the courts.47 In 1963,
two girls who had been suspended from the public school in Glen Avon, Alberta, fortheir behaviour were going to be brought to court as “juvenile offender[s].” The court
proceedings were dropped when their parents agreed to send them to the Wabasca,
Alberta, Anglican residential school. A social worker in each case stated, “A new environment could save this child.”48
In April 1960, André Renaud, general director of the Oblate Fathers Indian andEskimo Welfare Commission, worried that Indian Affairs officials were “using residential schools as correction institutions. I am referring to the enrolment of pupils
and students who, in the schools where they were originally enrolled are proving to
be misfits and incipient juvenile delinquents.” He said that when these cases werebrought to the attention of local Indian Affairs officials, usually by social workers,
school principals, or the courts, the students were sent to “residential schools, sometimes without even notifying the principal as to the background.”49
The problems children brought with them could be very serious. In 1963, a boy
from Fort Smith in the Northwest Territories was placed in the Alberta Provincial
Mental Institution for observation after he had shot and wounded his father in thestomach. At the time of the shooting, the father had been beating the boy. At the hospital, he had been judged to be “normal,” but it was thought he should not be returned
to his home.50 Upon his release, he was sent to the Desmarais, Alberta, school.51
In 1964, a fifteen-year-old girl, who had been repeatedly absent from the Hobbema,
Alberta, day school, was placed in a children’s centre. From there, after a suicide
attempt, she was taken to juvenile court, where the judge recommended that she beplaced in the Hobbema residential school. Her father was a widower who had been
judged to be “unable to make a home for her.”52
In some cases, principals sought to discharge students who were disciplinary problems. Many of those children ended up in the child-welfare system. In 1960, the principal of the Shingwauk Home sought permission to discharge a fourteen-year-old boy
for repeatedly beating younger boys.53 A school staff member protested the decision,arguing that the principal was dealing with the boy unfairly. While Indian Affairs official F. Matters accepted the principal’s rationale for discharging the boy, he noted,

The schools as child-welfare institutions: 1940–2000 • 155“We have had more children discharged from your school during this last year or two
as being unmanagable [sic] than from any other. I might add that some of those who
were discharged have been fairly successful in North Bay where they live in private
homes and are subject to comparatively little control.”54
Father G. LeBleu, the principal of the Roman Catholic school in Kenora, Ontario,
sought to discharge four boys who had run away in January 1968. One of them had
assaulted a teacher and the school’s night watchman. LeBleu had turned his case overto the police. Another boy was developing into an aggressive fighter, the third was “amoral cancer for the other boys,” and the last was in need of the experience of “begging for food and shelter for two or three weeks to bring him back to his senses.” Theprincipal lamented that, at the school, there were “so many children who have big
problems, it is hard to deal with them and to help children who do not want to behelped.”55 In a different letter, LeBleu noted that the school needed at least three more
supervisors if it was to cope with the “welfare problems” associated with the children’s
being sent to residential school. He recommended the creation of a central training
school for problem students.56
When a student, whom Principal E. Turenne described as “very deeply disturbed,”
tried to burn down the Kamsack, Saskatchewan, school, the principal said that forsome time he had been trying to “convince whoever wants to listen to me that theschool has to care for quite a number of emotionally disturbed children. My point isthat this school is not prepared to take care of the needs of this type of children [sic].”57
In other cases, it appears that principals had to be warned by Indian Affairs not totake in “social-welfare cases.” Alberta Indian Affairs official J. R. Tully was concernedin 1971 over the number of “welfare cases” that the Cardston, Alberta, Roman Catholicschool was being asked to accept by either the Blood Band Welfare Committee or provincial “Probation Services.” He reminded the school principal that the institution was“not set up to deal with delinquent cases.” He advised the principal “to be very cautious about accepting any additional cases if they are referred to you.”58

Connections with parents
One of the roles of a functioning child-welfare system is to attempt to strengthenfamily ties and help build healthy relations between children and parents so thatthe child can be returned to their parents. In their 1947 brief to the Special Joint
Committee of the Senate and House of Commons, the Canadian Welfare Council andthe Canadian Association of Social Workers said that the use of residential schools as
child-welfare facilities wasout of line with newer thinking respecting community life. We are convinced thatthe best interests of Indian children and families are not served by the present

156 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

system. The lack of what Canadian communities have come to recognize as
the moral partnership of home and school in child care and training not only
hampers the social adjustment of the child, but is a serious deprivation forthe parents.59

Not only did residential schools separate parents and children geographically, butthey also discouraged visits. In 1942, Minnedosa, Manitoba, lawyer C. L. St. John wrote
a letter to Indian Affairs on behalf of the leaders of the Rolling River and Elphinstone
bands about the need for accommodation when Indian parents visited their children
at the Birtle, Manitoba, school during the winter. Indian Affairs allowed parents tovisit their children only on Saturdays, but rail and bus connections meant that it wasalmost impossible for First Nations parents to visit their children on that day without
overnight accommodation.60 Indian Affairs official R. A. Hoey stated that “in view ofexisting conditions everything humanly possible should be done to discourage Indian
parents from visiting their children at [the department’s] residential schools.” Heexplained that there was “no accommodation that could be placed at the disposal ofIndian parents” at the schools, that the “preparation of a number of meals for Indian
parents” was an unnecessary burden on the already strained kitchen staff, and that
visits from parents had “on a number of occasions … resulted in the spread of disease
and the outbreak of epidemics.”
A special inspection of the Birtle school in March of that year had revealed that visits from parents disrupted “the whole school and [made] it more difficult to keep theplace clean,” as visiting parents were “obliged to sleep in the hall leading to the chapel.”
Hoey then asked that St. John “persuade the Indians that during the war period at least
it [was] their patriotic duty not to visit the school except on very special occasions andthen only after securing the permission of the principal to do so.”61
In 1952, E. J. Galibois, the Indian agent for the Fort St. John Agency in northern
British Columbia, gave the parents of two boys in the community of Mile 428 an ultimatum. He was going to send their sons to the Grouard school in Alberta rather than
to the much closer Lower Post school, unless they agreed to visit the Lower Post school
only twice a year. Evidently, in Galibois’s opinion, the mother’s visits to her children at
Lower Post in the past had been the cause of “difficulties” at the school.62
In at least one case, administrators felt compelled to spy on parents and children
when they were visiting. One of the Saskatchewan schools had what was termed an“Indian Parlor” on its porch, in which parents were allowed to visit their children.
According to a 1967 Canadian Welfare Council report on the schools, “The problem ofsupervision reached such proportions at some point in the past that a one-way mirror
was installed to observe what was going on in the parlor.”63
Parental visits were viewed as being disruptive in part because they served as acheck on deteriorating conditions in the schools. In 1944, a group of parents from thenorthern Manitoba community of The Pas travelled to the Elkhorn school in western

The schools as child-welfare institutions: 1940–2000 • 157

Manitoba. They were concerned about reports over the conditions at the school.
According to the petition that arose from their visit, conditions “were so bad that it
was utterly impossible for any body to believe unless one actually saw with his own
eyes.” The school, they said, should be closed and day schools opened in The Pas.64
Four years later, Chief Bignell and Band Councillor Constant travelled from The Pas
to Winnipeg to voice their complaints about the Elkhorn school before the local IndianAffairs officials. They said the children were not being properly clothed and fed or kept
clean. An inspection by A. G. Hamilton largely confirmed their report. Students did nothave overshoes, had lice, lacked soap, had barely enough skimmed milk for their porridge (and none for the rest of the day), and changed their clothes only once a week.
He attributed the problems to a lack of staff, saying that without an improvement, he
did not see how the school could be kept in operation. Chief Bignell had threatened
to take his children out of the school if conditions did not improve in two weeks.65
Conditions did not improve: instead, the school was closed the following year.66

Year-round facilities
For those students who were deemed to be social-welfare placements, residential
schooling could be a year-round experience. In the 1940s, the Shubenacadie, Nova
Scotia, school did not return students from New Brunswick to home communities
during the summer months due to the difficulty in getting them to come back toschool in the fall. This ban on returning home included not only those children who
were orphans or had been deemed to be neglected, but also all children in the schoolfrom New Brunswick.67
In the summer of 1945, Fraser Lake, British Columbia, principal Alex Simpson
reported that because the school had been taking in large numbers of orphans andindigent or neglected children, there were forty-four students who would not be goinghome for the summer. The per capita grant was not paid for those months, creating an
ongoing financial challenge for the school.68 Although his request to receive the percapita grant for the summer months for the students who remained at the school was
declined, Indian Affairs agreed to provide a grant for June for ten students above theschool’s pupilage.69
From 1958 to 1960, between twenty-two and thirty-seven children spent the summer at the Alberni school because their home conditions were deemed to be unsuitable. According to a report on the school, four siblings in their early teens had eachbeen at the school since they were six or seven and lived at the school year-round.
Their father was dead, and their mother lived in the United States and had not beenin contact with the children for the past four years. In another case, a brother andsister in their mid-teens also lived at the school year-round and “had no contact with

158 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

any relatives.” During the same period, approximately 10% of the Mission, British
Columbia, school enrolment remained in school over the holidays “because they
had no home or because someone decided their home was unsuitable for even abrief visit.”70
James DeWolf, the principal of the Anglican school in Cardston, Alberta, struggledwith what he viewed as a series of undesirable options in the case of two children in
the summer of 1962. If they were not to be sent to their parents, from whom they had
been apprehended, he thought they should be boarded out for the summer. While hefelt that the children would be unhappy in a family with no children, he also worried
that they would exercise a bad influence on other children. If they were taken in by afamily that simply wanted the board money, they would be neglected. If they stayed at
the school, they would be lonely and unhappy. In the end, DeWolf recommended thatthe children be sent to their parents “with a warning that if the children are neglectedagain the whole family will be taken away from them for good.”71
As in Nova Scotia, even non-social-welfare students in other schools were forced
to spend the summer at the schools. In the summer of 1956, R. F. Battle, the regional
supervisor of Indian agencies, inspected the Edmonton school. He was critical ofboth the condition of the school and that fact that many children were forced to live
year-round in a substandard facility. He observed many thousands of dollars could bespent on renovating the school and there would still not be “too much to show for it.”Due to the lack of funds to send them home, the children from British Columbia
must remain in this environment throughout the summer holidays. I believe an
arrangement is being made to take them to a two week long camp in August, but
I could not reconcile myself to the idea that these young children should remainaround the inadequate playrooms with apparently nothing to occupy their idle
time for the remaining six weeks.72

In 1964, the principal of the Fraser Lake school asked Indian Affairs to help parents
in Hazelton pay to bring their five children home for the summer vacation.73 At theGordon’s, Saskatchewan, school in the 1970s, it was the responsibility of the school
administrator to find foster placements for students.74 In this capacity, the principal
was truly taking on all the roles of the child’s legal guardian.75
These policies all undermined the children’s well-being and their future. They
were obliged to spend their summers in underfunded institutions with few recreational programs or facilities. When they were finally discharged from the schools,
they often would have no remaining connection with any of their family members or
home communities.

The schools as child-welfare institutions: 1940–2000 • 159

The Sixties Scoop in residential schools
By 1960, what would come to be known as the “Sixties Scoop” was already wellunderway. In January 1961, a survey was conducted in the Alberni and Mission schools
in British Columbia regarding the “circumstances of children who were shown asplaced in residential school because of poor home conditions, absence or separationof parents, children who were orphans, etc.”76 As Table 34.1 shows, of the 276 students
at the Alberni school, only 36% (the sum of the ‘No other school being available’ and‘To attend high school’ percentages) were there for educational reasons, and over 60%
were child-welfare cases.77
Table 34.1. Rationale for students’ being enrolled in Alberni, British Columbia, school,
March 1960.
Rationale for enrolment

Number of students

Percentage ofenrolment

Orphan18

6.5

Abandoned13

4.7

Behaviour problems

5

1.8

Illness in home

12

4.3

Unfavourable home condition

124

44.9

No other school being available

72

26

To attend high school

27

9.8

Old admission (reason not given or known)

5

1.8

276

99.8

Source: TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 901/29-4, volume 2, 03/61–05/70, Table 4: Enrolment by Categories, Alberni
Residential School, 31 March 1961. [AEMR-014110E]

Descriptions of home conditions that led to children’s being placed in residential
school included: “Parents separated”; “Illegitimate child. Mother married child cared
for by Grandparents since birth”; “Parents divorced. Mother taking courses at V.V.I.”;“Migrant parents”; and “Poor home conditions—no discipline.”78
The situation at the Mission school was similar. As Table 34.2 shows, purely educational admissions accounted for less than 30% of school enrolment at that school.79

160 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Table 34.2. Rationale for students’ being enrolled in Mission, British Columbia, school,
March 1960.
Rationale for enrolment

Number of students

Percentage of enrolment

Orphan8

3.2

Behaviour problems

7

2.8

Illness in home8

3.2

Unfavourable home condition

141

57.1

No other school being available

62

25.1

To attend high school9

3.6

Old admission (reason not given or
known)

3

1.2

Parents requested admission

9

3.6

247

99.8

Source: TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 901/29-4, volume 2, 03/61–05/70, Table VII: Enrolment by Categories, St. Mary’s
Residential School, 31 March 1961. [AEMR-014110I]

The descriptions used for unfavourable home conditions included: “Parents separated. Too far from day school”; “Family were living at Hatzig. Didn’t send child toschool—said it was too far away”; “Illegitimate child—grandmother raised child”;“Migrant parents. Boy is a behaviour problem”; and “Broken home—parents separated. (2 sets of parents visiting children).”80
Applying these figures nationally, Indian Affairs concluded that 10% of the children in residential school (1,050 children) were orphans, and 40% (4,200) were there
because their home conditions had been judged to be inadequate, representing fully
50% of all children.
Indian Affairs official M. S. Payne noted in 1961 that the basis for judgment of theinadequacy of home life was “usually a personal opinion and seldom has the situation
been reviewed by a staff member with professional qualifications.” Payne noted thatsome of the homes described as being inadequate might in fact “be adequate or canbe made so.” He concluded that a high percentage of the school population required“specialized attention for which there are few resources available to identify the problems or to provide remedial services.” It was recognized that there was a need for better assessment, record keeping, and training.81
Shirley Arnold, the author of an Indian Affairs report on the Alberni and Mission
schools, wrote that “in this respect the residential school becomes a custodial centre
for children who are not ready for the labour market and who may or may not be eligible for some sort of vocational training later on.”82
The percentage of residential school children who were there for child-welfare
reasons only increased in the 1960s. A 1966 study of nine residential schools in
Saskatchewan concluded that 59.1% of the students enrolled were there for what weretermed “welfare reasons” and 40.9% for “education reasons.” The details are provided

The schools as child-welfare institutions: 1940–2000 • 161

in Table 34.3. If one removes the Prince Albert school from the calculation, the ratio is
73% related to social welfare and 27% related to education.83
Table 34.3. Reasons for admission of 1,612 Indian children to nine residential schools in
Saskatchewan in 1966.
School

Education-related

Social-welfare-related

Educational
Needs

Mentally
RetardedChild Welfare Emotionally
Needs
Disturbed

Kamsack

18

0

87

0

0

Onion Lake

13

0

113

0

0

Prince Albert

315

0

31

4

0

Punnichy* (Gordon’s)

40

1

110

1

5

Beauval

80

4

44

6

3

Lebret (Qu’Appelle)

Delinquent

112

2

139

9

6

Lestock (Muscowequan)

0

12

157

6

0

Duck Lake

45

0

158

0

0

Marieval

16

2

73

0

0

Totals

639

21

912

26

14

Source: TRC, NRA, Canadian Welfare Council and Caldwell, 1967, 63. [AEMR-019759]* Spelled Punnich in original.

By 1968, Indian Affairs estimated that 60% of the students in residential schools had
been placed in the institutions “to remove them from disturbed homes.”84 According
to the Indian Affairs annual report for 1968–69, the number of students living in residential schools in that year was 8,206.85 This meant that approximately 4,900 children
were in residential schools for reasons of child welfare. This was 7.8% of the numberof First Nations students in school throughout Canada, both in public and residential schools.86

Staff and care
Although Indian Affairs significantly increased teachers’ pay in the 1950s, little
was done to improve the wages paid to the non-teaching staff. The people who were
hired to supervise the daily lives of the students were called alternately “supervisors,”“dormitory supervisors,” “child care workers,” or—in the Catholic schools—“disciplinarians” (because they were expected to maintain discipline). Pay was low, job
descriptions were largely non-existent, and workloads were heavy.
After the drowning death of two girls at the Gordon’s school in 1947, Harry Morrow,
who was both the manual training instructor and the acting boys’ supervisor, gave thefollowing account of his duties.

162 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The Boys’ Supervisor gets the boys up, gets them ready for school, supervises
meals, sports or handicrafts during the evenings, and puts them to bed.
I try to keep them on the playground, but it is hard to keep check of them unless
you are able to be there all the time. Other duties sometimes keep you inside.
There are times when they have to be left on the playground alone. If some ofthem are not around they have to be looked up. When I am having my meals thesupervisor for the junior boys is around. I always have an idea where they arebecause the Farm Instructor tells me the ones he wants.87

When staff members were overworked and poorly trained, conditions at the schools
could become chaotic. In 1954, Indian agent Ralph Ragan reported that the students
at the Anglican school in Cardston, Alberta, were out of control. According to Ragan,
the school’s principal, James DeWolf, had been unable to strap two boys, who, he felt,
deserved punishment. In Ragan’s opinion, “the entire fault lies in the under staff—the
boy’s [sic] supervisor and other employees of the School. Mission salaries are so outof line that the proper type of employee can not possibly be obtained.” He pointed outthat the $70 a month paid to the boys’ supervisor meant that “the only type of personthat can be obtained for this salary, is a person who can not get work elsewhere.”88
In his 1956 report to the Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada,
Henry G. Cook, the Indian School Administration superintendent, wrote that thegreatest single problem facing the board was the recruiting of “competent Anglican
staff workers.” There was “a critical shortage of lady workers with Matron qualifications,” and many capable staff had been “enticed away by higher salaries paid in otherinstitutions.” The recruiting problem was aggravated by the fact that “Clergy are reluctant to encourage parishioners into i.s.a. [the Anglican Indian School Administration]schools as staff members.89
Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, principal John J. T. Johnstone initially expected that
under the new funding formula of 1957, “we will have more money to spend on theoverall operation with more freedom in the general field of administration.”90 A few
months later, however, he concluded that “salary scales are still lower than those paid
locally for comparable jobs.”91
In 1960, R. Phillips, the principal of the Shingwauk Home in Sault Ste. Marie,
Ontario, acknowledged that when it came to student supervisors, “with our salary allotment, we are unable to secure qualified men. Also, compared with similar
institutions, the supervisors are expected to put in too many hours weekly to give of
their best, anywhere from 66 to 72 hours. Our top salary for a supervisor is $2400 per
annum.” By comparison, he said, Brookside Training School for Boys, a youth reformatory in Cobourg, Ontario, paid supervisors a starting salary of $3,200.92
In the course of a negative assessment of the United Church school in Edmonton,
Indian Affairs official R. F. Battle commented on the lack of emotional care given to children at the school, particularly those who came from broken homes. His observations

The schools as child-welfare institutions: 1940–2000 • 163

on the Edmonton school led him to conclude that the Catholic schools did a better job
than the Protestants in meeting the emotional needs of students.
I feel that many of these children need the loving care of parents more thananything else. I have observed that institutions of this type, operated under
Roman Catholic auspices, often are able to offer some acceptable substitutefor the care and attention children would normally obtain from their parents. I
cannot put my finger on the exact reasons for this unless it is the well known factthat r.c. institutions are usually operated by dedicated people. The same spiritof dedication seems to be unattainable in Protestant institutions unless suchinstitutions are fortunate enough to obtain this type of personnel. It has been
my experience that such achievement in Protestant institutions is the exception
rather than the rule, and even if attained, continuity is rarely maintained.93

Even the Catholic Church had difficulty getting the sort of staff that was required. In
1950, a desperate Fraser Lake principal J. P. Mulvihill asked the Oblate order in Ottawa
if “there was any possible chance of getting a Brother. The boys [sic] disciplinarian isquitting and I cant [sic] find anyone to take his place. We are having a hectic time, one
teacher short and no prospects. The one who was coming suddently [sic] changed her
mind and we are in a pickle.”94 He had to turn down one of the candidates who had
been proposed to him because “we have one subnormal Brother here already.”95 The
major commendation for the one he accepted was the assessment that, as the seniorbrother at the Novitiate (Catholic training institute), he had the “knack of ordering
the other Brothers and Lay postulants around with a certain degree of success.”96 As
Mulvihill awaited the arrival of the new disciplinarian, he lamented that the school
year was not off to a good start: for “the last two nights I have been chasing run-aways.
The Sisters are having a very hard time with discipline. Their choice of sisters for thework is not a very happy one.”97
In 1955, Mission, British Columbia, principal John Ryan reported that the “discipline problem still casts its ugly shadow.” He proposed exchanging his school disciplinarian, Brother Gerard, for the disciplinarian at the Christie, British Columbia,
school. Gerard, he wrote, “is not too inefficient, but he has poor judgment and he israther inclined to be lazy, especially when the going gets tough.”98 The following year,
the Christie disciplinarian was sent to Mission, and Gerard was sent to the Williams
Lake school. Oblate Provincial L. K. Poupore wrote that he felt a good disciplinarian
was needed at the Mission school, since “discipline was not too good there last year
and it will require someone with firm hand to get things back to normal.” Brother John
MacDonald was sent to Christie Island to serve as disciplinarian there, even though,as Poupore wrote, he “is not the best disciplinarian in the world but he will not find it
so difficult at Tofino. His main problem was the High School boys at Mission.”99164 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Five years later, a different Mission principal, Edward J. Clarke, complained to asenior Oblate about one of the boys’ supervisors at the school. Brother Sampson,
he wrote,whilst not an old man, is not in condition to keep up with these Indian teenagers. I feel that the time has come for him to be released from supervision of
the boys of any age, particularly this age group. He shows no inclination to guidethem. He has little talent that is required for the direction of boys of this age. He
is quite suspicious of their motives and has little training to handle problems ofthis age group.

He added that Sampson was inclined to fall asleep “at the wrong time.” The previous night, fourteen boys had been out of the school and “could have come in at any
time of night as far as he was concerned.”100 When asked to appoint a replacement,
Oblate Provincial Poupore informed Clarke that he had no one he could spare.
In fact, the Oblates were experiencing a staffing problem. According to Clarke,“Four Brothers did not renew their vows this year. Of five who made first vows in
1959–60 there are only two left.”101 The following year, Brother Sampson was sent from
Mission to the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school.102
There were also problems at the Williams Lake school. On December 22, 1955, theBritish United Press agency carried a story from Lillooet, British Columbia, with theheadline “Indian Children ‘Starved.’” According to the story, parents at Creek Side hadcomplained that their children at the Williams Lake school “are being half starved.”
When the children returned home for the Christmas holiday, “they all had frozen
hands, ears, faces and even feet. Some had to be taken to the hospital.” As a result,parents were planning not to return their children to the school.103 William Christie,
the local Indian agent, demanded an apology from the news service, saying that while
it was possible that such a story might have “originated with an irresponsible Indian,”it should not have been broadcast until the reporter had checked with the school.104
The news service did not apologize, but it did run stories quoting parents and school
officials who disputed the original allegations.105
Although the public-relations problem created by the news story had been
resolved, the Williams Lake school was in crisis. On December 29, 1955, an Oblate at
the school, Leo Casey, wrote to Oblate Provincial Fergus O’Grady, outlining Principal
Dennis Shea’s drinking problem. According to Casey, Shea had a number of healthproblems that had led to his having “lost control,” regularly “inviting a few friends into
his room and breaking open a bottle of Scotch.” Rather than paying attention to theboys, the disciplinarians were spending their time entertaining the new lay teachers,
whom Casey described as “exemplary Catholic girls.” A few days earlier, four boys had
run away when the temperature was minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit, after having “beengiven a beating the night before by one of the disciplinarians.” When the boys were
found the following morning, one had badly frozen toes.106

The schools as child-welfare institutions: 1940–2000 • 165

Indian agent William Christie also wrote to O’Grady, echoing Casey’s concerns andrecommending that the principal and a number of other staff members be replaced,since “the children are suffering for lack of supervision and other activities.”107 Christie
also apparently told Poupore, who was just replacing O’Grady as Oblate Provincial,that Shea “needs a holiday.”108
The Oblate order sent Kamloops principal J. P. Mulvihill to investigate the situation
at Williams Lake. He met with Indian agent Christie, who told him that he believed theschool principal, Father Shea, had a drinking problem, that the kitchen was not wellrun, that the discipline on the boys’ side of the school was poor—he described one
staff member as “useless” and the other as “spoiled”—and that neither the doctor nor
the local nurse was satisfied with the health conditions. Christie, who was a Roman
Catholic, was also concerned about the degree of publicity the problems were generating, admitting to Mulvihill that a Protestant Indian agent “would have reported
Shea a long time ago.” When Mulvihill met with Shea, he admitted to his drinking, but
said “he didn’t drink as much as last year.” Shea and the mother superior denied that
there was any substance to the other complaints—other than to point out that when it
came to sanitary facilities in the boys’ playroom, there were three toilets for 160 boys.
However, one nun stopped him in the hall to tell him that “there was enough truth inall the accusations so that they couldnt [sic] stand an investigation.” Another Oblate
told him that he thought “Shea was going mental.”109
When, on January 22, 1956, Poupore wrote to Shea, saying he wanted to discuss thepossibility of his taking a rest, Shea, to Poupore’s displeasure, immediately packed hisbags and left for Ottawa.110 In response, Poupore informed Shea that he would not be
returning to his position as school principal and that his cousin, who had been working at the school, had also been relieved of his duties.111
These are issues that both the Oblate order and Indian agent Christie shouldhave reported on to Indian Affairs. In the files that it has reviewed, the Truth andReconciliation Commission of Canada has not located any correspondence regarding
their doing so. The Commission has, however, found records showing that Christie,
perhaps because he was Catholic, was not passing on information that would beembarrassing to the Roman Catholic Church.
By 1960, the department had come to the realization that there was a high turnoverin residential school dormitory supervisors, primarily caused by the “low wages andlong hours entailed in this work.” An internal government paper recommended raising the wage from $2,600 a year to $2,900.112 It was not until 1963 that Indian Affairs
organized its first in-service training course for dormitory supervisors. Fifty supervisors, including twelve First Nations people, attended the two-week course that washeld at the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, school.113
These limited measures brought only limited improvements. In 1965, Ahab
Spence, who was both a former residential school student and the former principal

166 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissionof the Sioux Lookout, Ontario, school, told Indian Affairs that although he believed
most principals and teachers to be properly qualified, there was a need to improve
the quality of the supervisory staff. These members of the staff were with the children“from sunrise to sundown,” yet many were “inexperienced, immature, and perhaps
are in this job because they were not able to find or ‘hold’ another job.”114 Clara Tizya,
a former residential school matron in the Yukon, echoed Spence’s views, writing that,when it came to hiring, “there seems to be a tendency to take anyone that applies.” Sherecommended that “it would help more if native people were trained for the different
types of jobs involving supervision.”115
A 1966 survey of nine schools in Saskatchewan, conducted by the Canadian Welfare
Council, observed that although the schools employed eighty-six teachers, there were
only sixty-three child-care workers. At the start of the year, the government-authorized
staff–student ratio for child-care workers was one to thirty, although this was reduced
to one to twenty-five in the spring of 1966. They worked split shifts, having responsibility for students in the morning, at mealtimes, after school, and in the evenings. Mostof them worked between sixty and eighty hours a week. Since there were no relief
workers, when one had a day off or was sick, the other workers simply had to assume
their workload. As a result, the staff–student ratio could often be much higher than
one to thirty or one to twenty-five.116 Only sixteen of fifty-three workers surveyed hadcompleted high school. (For details, see Table 34.4.)117
Table 34.4. Training and education of child-care workers at nine Saskatchewan schools,
1966.
Highest Level of Education

Number of Child-Care Workers

University graduation

1

University courses

1

Special training

8

High school completed

6

Grade Ten or Eleven completed

13

Grade Eight or Nine completed

20

Less than Grade Eight4
53

Source: TRC, NRA, Canadian Welfare Council and Caldwell, 1967, 121. [AEMR-019759]

Although Indian Affairs “urged that the education standing for Supervisors shouldbe, at least, Grade 12,” in 1967, the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school handbook
required only that applicants have a minimum of Grade Eight. The employees were
hired on a monthly or yearly basis, and could not attain permanent status until theyfinished Grade Ten.118 The following year, Indian Affairs had to acknowledge thatmost of the 300 child-care workers or dormitory supervisors employed in residential
schools were “non-professionals.” In that year, the federal government approved a

The schools as child-welfare institutions: 1940–2000 • 167

five-year plan intended to create “a core of 100 trained child care workers” by putting twenty workers a year through a training program at Mount Royal Junior College
in Calgary.119 The year-long program included theory, practice, and fieldwork, withspecific instruction in English, community service, recreation, child-care methods,
and social service. The program was not specifically designed for those who worked
in residential schools, but was intended “for people who wish to work with children
in residential settings.”120 By the spring of 1969, thirteen former residential school
employees were taking child-care training at Mount Royal Junior College. All of themwere receiving some form of government support while they were taking the course.121
In later years, the program was offered at both Mount Royal and Douglas College in
New Westminster, British Columbia.122

The transfer to provincial authorities
Many government officials and social service professionals thought that the issueof child welfare would be best handled by transferring the responsibility to provincial governments. In their 1947 brief to the Special Joint Committee of the Senate andHouse of Commons, the Canadian Welfare Council and the Canadian Association ofSocial Workers recommended, “Arrangements might be made with provincial childcaring authorities to supply a service on the basis of payment for individual cases
where it was deemed advisable.”123 Such a transfer to provincial authority was in keeping with federal policy of the day. It would require legislative change, agreement withthe provinces, and, if it was to be truly effective, improved funding. Under Section
87 of the 1951 Indian Act, the government of Canada had sought to transfer responsibility for delivering child-welfare services for people with status under the Indian
Act to provincial authorities.124 In coming years, agreements were reached between
the federal government and a number of provincial child-welfare agencies to extend
child-welfare services to reserves. Provincial governments maintained that the federal
government was obliged to pay for these services and conflicts over the level of funding restricted the types of services available.125
Once agreements were put into place, the number of First Nations children being
apprehended by provincial children’s aid societies began to climb. In 1955, only 29 of
the 3,433 children in care in British Columbia were of First Nations ancestry. An informal agreement was reached with the British Columbia government in 1962, underwhich the federal government paid 100% of the costs of child protection and child-incare costs. By 1964, the number of First Nations children in the care of provincial agencies had jumped to 1,446. In less than a decade, First Nations children had become athird of the province’s child-welfare caseload.126

168 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The overall assessment of the 1966 Hawthorn Report, which surveyed First Nations
conditions, was that for much of the country, the provision of child-welfare services
to First Nations people was “unsatisfactory to appalling.”127 Manitoba, Saskatchewan,and Alberta—provinces that had large numbers of residential schools—had no province-wide child-welfare agreements with the federal government in the mid-1960s.
Provincially funded agencies stepped in only when a child’s life was endangered. Insuch cases, children were apprehended, while families were left without preventive
or follow-up services. Children could become stuck in a succession of foster homes.
Delaying intervention until a life-or-death crisis occurred inevitably meant that somechildren were not only exposed to needless risk, but also, in some cases, died.128

The Caldwell report
In 1965, Indian Affairs contracted the Canadian Welfare Council to carry out astudy to determine “how well do the residential schools and hostels satisfy the needsof the Indian pupil population enrolled in these institutions and are there practical alternatives to residential school care.” Indian Affairs official R. F. Davey recommended, “Since the problems in Saskatchewan are particularly acute and will require
early attention it is hoped that the study might be centred in that province.”129 George
Caldwell, the associate executive secretary of the Family and Child Welfare divisionof the council, directed the ensuing study of nine Saskatchewan schools in 1966. A
final report was submitted the following year. It concluded that the residential school
system failed
to meet the total needs of the child because it fails to individualize; rather
it treats him en masse in every significant activity of daily life. His sleeping,eating, recreation, academic training, spiritual training and discipline are allhandled in such a regimented way as to force conformity to the institutional
pattern. The absence of emphasis on the development of the individual child asa unique person is the most disturbing result of this whole system. The schools
are providing a custodial care service rather than a child development service.
The physical environment of the daily living aspects of the residential school is
overcrowded, poorly designed, highly regimented and forces a mass approachto the children. The residential school reflects a pattern of child care which
was dominant in the early decades of the 20th century, a concept of combined
shelter and education at the least public expense.130

Caldwell reviewed the admission process in light of what he termed “normal childwelfare practice.” This would require1)

an assessment of the child’s need and the ability of the institution to meetthat need;The schools as child-welfare institutions: 1940–2000 • 169

2)

counselling with parents to let them know the reason for the placement
and the role they could play, and to address the underlying reasons forthe placement;

3)

pre-placement treatment that would help children prepare for their residential school; and4)planning for meeting the child’s needs upon discharge.

The reality was very different from normal practice. There was virtually no
pre-placement counselling; and Indian Affairs did not have any staff who could
provide such counselling. Social workers were not involved at any point in the decision-making process. The report observed that “one could search far to find a parallelsituation in which parents are less involved in the direction of their children than residential schools.” No substantial work had been undertaken to provide “service to theIndian parents around the problem which necessitated placement of their children.”Once the students were in the school, professional services to help children address
the reasons for their placement were “completely lacking.” There was no planning forthe discharge of students, other than an interview with an Indian Affairs educational
officer when the student reached Grade Eight.131 Indian Affairs had established standards and provided professional supervision in areas such as finances, education, andmaintenance of residential schools, but Caldwell could identify “no outside evaluation and supervision of the child-care component of the program.”132 Caring for thechildren did not exist as a category that was in need of monitoring.
As with so many aspects of residential schooling, funding was inadequate. Caldwell
reported that the Saskatchewan residential schools were spending between $694 and$1,193 a year per student. The schools with the largest enrolments had the lowest
per-pupil costs. (See Table 34.5.)133
Table 34.5. Spending per child, Saskatchewan residential schools, 1966.
Enrolment

Per Child per Annum

Kamsack

100$1,122

Onion Lake

125

$850

Prince Albert

375

$702

Punnichy (Gordon’s)

165

$852

Beauval140$1,093

Lebret (Qu’Appelle)

300

$694

Lestock (Muscowequan)

175

$742

Duck Lake

180

$880

Marieval

90$1,193

Source: TRC, NRA, Canadian Welfare Council and Caldwell, 1967, 89. [AEMR-019759]

170 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

These figures compared poorly with other residential care facilities. According to
Caldwell’s report:
A 1964 study of the costs of residential treatment in the United States showed anover-all range of costs per child per annum from $4500 to $14,059. In Canada,
there is a wide pattern of costs. Provincial institutions for children in Nova Scotia
are averaging $3,300 per annum, an Ontario treatment centre for children,
Warrendale, has had a fee of $27.00 per day or $9,855 per annum; a Winnipeg
institution reports its per diem cost at $16.50 per day or $6,052.50 per annum.134

Caldwell’s point was simple: good care for children costs much more than IndianAffairs was spending on residential schools.
The report focused considerable attention on the residential schools’ regimentation and lack of privacy. In most of the schools in Saskatchewan, the students lived inlarge dormitories, some of which had up to fifty students. They ate in large dining halls,
and had little in the way of personal storage space. There was no place where a childcould be alone. It was, wrote Caldwell, “inexcusable that children are still cared for ina nineteenth-century atmosphere.”135 In this, he was echoing Ahab Spence’s concernthat students had no time “to do [their] own thinking.” As a former principal, Spence
recognized that the easiest way to operate a school was to impose “air-tight” regulations. But, as a former student, he knew that this meant there was no “opportunity forsome responsibility and initiative on the part of the children without the feeling thatsomeone is looking over their shoulder.”136
When the government received Caldwell’s report, R. F. Davey thought its distribution
should be restricted to “departmental officials and the representatives of the clergy.”137
The principals of the eight Oblate-run schools in British Columbia objected to the factthat Caldwell’s report was billed as a report on all residential schools. Oblate F. G. Kelly
wrote, “To survey nine schools in one province and then proceed to make universal
recommendations to all schools in all provinces, is to say the least, presumptuous.”
The principals disputed the allegation that children were treated “en masse,” and said
the schools operated as a “bridge between white and Indian cultures.”138 Kamloops
Oblate principal Allan Noonan argued that the report was biased and unfair, failingto take into account “the tremendous amount of labor and love that the Oblates andSisters of St. Ann and other congregations have poured into these Schools over the
past 100 years. The white man has taken the land of the Indian away from him; now
more white men want to take their Residential Schools away from them.”139
In a response to the Oblates, Caldwell said that Indian Affairs held the British
Columbia schools in highest regard; the Saskatchewan schools had been selected
because “a system is only as good as its weakest parts.” In response to a claim thatthe British Columbia schools did not engage in the “en masse” treatment of children,
Caldwell pointed to his experience when visiting a school in that province. There, hesaid, the junior boys had been lined up in what was referred to as a “beat room.” They

The schools as child-welfare institutions: 1940–2000 • 171

were “referred to by the supervisor, who had many more children than he could control, by numbers, rather than names. The silence rule, the marching, the numbering,
the bang on the head to keep the child quiet and in line, are classic examples of regimentation, of ‘en masse’ treatment.”140

Improved admission policy
Caldwell’s criticism of the inadequacy of the schools’ admission policies drewattention to a long-standing problem. Government officials had thought for decadesthat principals had ignored Indian Affairs directives regarding admissions. For example, in 1951, Indian Affairs returned the application for admission documents for students attending the Moose Factory school in northern Ontario to Indian agent J. S.
Allan, pointing out that the documents had not been signed by the parents.141 Allan
explained that the parents were scattered throughout the James Bay district, making the cost of contacting them prohibitive. Instead, he said, he would instruct the
principal to have the documents properly filled out in the following year.142 Principals
did not always inform Indian Affairs when students had been enrolled. The first thatIndian Affairs knew that three girls were attending the Hobbema, Alberta, school, in
1960 was when it was reported that they had run away.143 Indian Affairs official L. C.
Hunter noted that the Hobbema school was “not the only school that is deviating fromestablished regulations and we are relatively helpless in this situation. The prevailing
attitude is that approval of admissions is a mere formality, and after all, what can bedone after students are already in school.”144
Stung by Caldwell’s criticism, Indian Affairs Deputy Minister J. A. MacDonald
reported in 1968, “For the first time we have set down in a precise and detailed manner the criteria which is to be used in future in determining whether or not an Indianchild is eligible for these institutions.” This acknowledgement—that this was the firsttime that Indian Affairs had developed such criteria for school admission in a “precise
and detailed manner,” even though it had been funding the schools for a century—
plainly underscores the haphazard history of the residential school system.
According to MacDonald, admission would be based on the following six categories:
Category 1: students whose home was isolated and removed from federal orprovincial day school services
Category 2: students whose parents or guardians were migratory
Category 3: students from families where a serious problem of neglect existed
Category 4: students who had a health problem and came from an area whereproper health services did not exist, but could reside in a student
residence and obtain regular medical follow-up

172 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Category 5: students who required a gradual orientation to urban living before
they could manage in a private boarding home in a community
Category 6: students deemed ready to make the adjustment to private homes,
but for whom there was no suitable boarding home available in thearea in which the school they were attending was located

The policy was intended to exclude those “who do not need this special care or canbe served in some other way.” Deputy Minister MacDonald advised the sitting IndianAffairs minister, Jean Chrétien, that he should expect opposition from “some Indianfamilies who insist on institutional care for their children, irrespective of their ability
to look after them in their own homes,” and from “some members of religious organizations who in the past have exercised considerable influence in arranging admissions
to these institutions for reasons which in some instances would not be acceptable
under present criteria.”145 The following year—1969—R. F. Davey reported, “For the
first time in many years the admissions to these residences have been assessed withsome degree of objectivity and steps have been taken to ensure at least a modicum of
training for the child care workers who are, in effect, substitute parents.”146
In other words, it was not until the government was about to commence the closingof the residences that it developed what it viewed as an objective admission policy
and was providing “a modicum of training” for the people who were caring for the
thousands of children taken into custody, largely for child-welfare reasons.
The closure of residential schools, which commenced in earnest in 1970,
depended on a dramatic increase of the number of children being taken into care bychild-welfare agencies. The increased activity of provincial children’s aid societies led,
in 1964, to a decline in the enrolment of the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school.147
Three years later, the school was closed.148 By the end of the 1960s, three-quarters of
the students in the Mohawk Institute in southwestern Ontario (Brantford) came fromeither northern Ontario or northern Québec. The other students were from local First
Nations and had been placed in the school for child-welfare reasons. The opening of
on-reserve schools in Québec and northwestern Ontario meant that enrolment would
be reduced to twenty-five child-welfare students in 1970. As a result, the federal government closed the Mohawk Institute—the longest continually operating residential school in Canada—and transferred students to local child-welfare authorities.149
When the decision was made to close the Onion Lake, Saskatchewan, residence in
1974, the Onion Lake Band requested federal government funding to establish fourgroup homes.150
By the end of the 1970s, the transfer of children from residential schools was nearlycomplete in southern Canada, and the impact of the Sixties Scoop was in evidence
across the country. In 1977, Aboriginal children accounted for 44% of the children in

The schools as child-welfare institutions: 1940–2000 • 173

care in Alberta, 51% of the children in care in Saskatchewan, and 60% of the children
in care in Manitoba.151
By the late 1960s, some Indian Affairs officials had begun to see residential schools
and residences as being preferable to placements with provincial child-welfare facilities since they were less disruptive to families. In 1967, Indian Affairs official J. C.
Letcher was seeking to have two children admitted to the Sechelt, British Columbia,
school. Their father was dead and their mother had left the home. The children had
five older siblings living at the school. Relatives requested that the children be admitted to residential school, thereby “keeping the family together.” The alternative wasfor the government to have the two children declared “Neglected,” and place them infoster care, thereby separating them from their siblings.152 While the numbers of residences continued to decline, the percentage of social-welfare cases remained high.
In 1981–82, the Mission, British Columbia, residence had 118 students, of which 79
were there for social-welfare reasons. These included family breakup, lack of community housing, overcrowded home conditions, and the impact of alcoholism in
the family.153 Here again, the Indian residential school was seen as preferable to theprovincial child-welfare system in that “it maintains sibling groups and family ties.
Within the provincial child welfare system it is often difficult to maintain the bonds
among families.”154
By 1985, there were only thirteen residences in operation in southern Canada.
As the following chapters make clear, the care given to students at residential
schools from the 1940s onward rarely rose above the substandard. The history ofdisregard and underfunding, coupled with the government’s new preference forinvesting in an expanding day-school system, led to another half-century of further
government neglect of residential schools and the students who attended them.
Buildings were crowded and unsafe; diets were unappetizing and often inadequate;
and policies on discipline and truancy were at first non-existent, and later ignoredor knowingly breached. School staff members were poorly trained, limited in numbers, and unscreened—allowing sexual predators the opportunity to establish undetected, unpunished, and long-lasting regimes of abuse. It was impersonal, custodialcare, inappropriate for the physical and emotional needs of any child. For those who
needed special care, as was the case with a growing number of students, it was little
more than institutionalized negligence.

CHAPTER 35

Building conditions: 1940–1969In the spring of 1940, R. A. Hoey, the superintendent of Welfare and Training for
Indian Affairs, prepared a review of the residential schools to identify how, ina wartime context, the cost of operating the schools could be “kept within reasonable bounds” without impairing the government’s $10 million investment in theschools. He started by noting that during his time with the department (which began
in 1936), there had never been available “the funds necessary to undertake the repairs
required at a majority of our residential schools.” He also worried that the decision to
pay the per capita grant to schools at 92.24% of the maximum pupilage, and to reduce
the funds available for repairs and the replacement of equipment, “may not be thebest policy to pursue.” (The pupilage was the maximum number of students the federal government agreed to fund at a particular school.) Instead, he recommended
that the government consider “closing a number of government-owned and churchowned schools that are at this date in a somewhat dilapidated condition and whichhave become acute fire hazards.” He said that many of the problems lay in the factthat the buildings were poorly built in the first place, failing to meet “the minimum
standards in the construction of public buildings, particularly institutions for the education of children.”
According to Hoey, poor brickwork at schools at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, andAlert Bay, British Columbia, meant that the walls were constantly leaking rainwaterand that the inside walls were regularly in need of replastering. Both school buildings were less than ten years old. The foundation of the ten-year-old Birtle, Manitoba,
school was sinking and large cracks were opening in the floor of the school. There had
never been money to repair the foundation or the cracks. Faulty eavestroughing wascausing the north wall of the Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario, to buckle. The roofof the fifteen-year-old Lytton, British Columbia, school required a costly replacement.
In the previous three years, Indian Affairs had made improvements to the watersupply at nine schools. There were, however, Hoey wrote, “still a large number ofschools where the water supply is wholly inadequate,” with critical shortages at the
Chapleau, Ontario, school and the Brandon and Sandy Bay schools in Manitoba.

176 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Since December 1936, the Alberni, Ahousaht, Albany, Carcross, Alert Bay, andKenora schools had been wholly or partially destroyed by fire. (In the case of Alert
Bay, the boys’ building had been destroyed, and, at Kenora, the staff residence anddormitories were destroyed.)
The Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, school needed a new sewage plant; the Pine
Creek, Manitoba, school was on the verge of collapse; the Round Lake, Saskatchewan,
school was “one of the most dilapidated and insanitary [sic] schools we have at present”; the Delmas, Saskatchewan, school was “in poor state of repair,” as were theWabasca, Whitefish Lake, and Sturgeon Lake schools in Alberta; the Roman Catholicand the Anglican schools in Brocket, Alberta, were so strangely constructed that theyswayed and rocked in a high wind; and the “ramshackle” Squamish, British Columbia,
school was “an acute fire hazard.”
Some schools were poorly located. After explaining that the Elkhorn, Manitoba,
school had been closed during the First World War, Hoey commented that “it is difficult to understand at this date why it was ever re-opened.” Most of the students at theschool in southwestern Manitoba came from the North, and “the cost of transportation is quite substantial.” Edmonton, Alberta, school principal J. F. Woodsworth wasdeemed to be “one of our best principals,” but, even though he was allowed to recruit
students from the British Columbia coast, he had not been able in recent years to fill aschool “that cost more to erect than any other in our entire system.”
In his 1940 report, Hoey recommended that the government close twelve schools.
In Manitoba, they included the Portage la Prairie school, which was not closed until
1975; and the Pine Creek school, which was closed in 1969. In Saskatchewan, the listof schools Hoey recommended be closed included Round Lake, which was closed in
1950; and Thunderchild school in Delmas, which was destroyed by fire in 1948. In
Alberta, the list included Wabasca, which was transferred to the Alberta government
in 1966; Whitefish Lake, which was closed in 1950; Sturgeon Lake, which was closed in
1961; Sacred Heart in Brocket, which closed in 1961; and St. Cyprian in Brocket, whichclosed in 1961. In British Columbia, the list included Kitamaat, which closed in 1941;
Port Simpson, which closed in 1948; and Squamish, which closed in 1959.
He further recommended that the government transfer funding of the St. Paul’s
Hostel in the Yukon to the Yukon territorial administration, since there were non-status
Indians living in the hostel. He recommended that an additional twenty-five day
school classrooms be established across the country to replace the schools that herecommended be closed.1
Hoey did succeed in closing some schools, but there were still fifty-six in operation
in southern Canada in 1969 when Indian Affairs took over full management of the system from the churches.2 Although there had been some improvements in operational
funding for the schools, Indian Affairs refused to make significant capital investments
in a system it intended to close. After 1969, Indian Affairs rapidly began to shut downBuilding conditions: 1940–1969 • 177

the schools. But, in the intervening years, residential school students lived and studied in aging and inadequate buildings, usually in crowded conditions.
After a 1942 inspection of the Mount Elgin school in Muncey, Ontario, Hoey
wrote that while the exterior of the school was “somewhat imposing,” on the inside,
the school was “one of the most dilapidated structures I have ever inspected.”3 (It is
unlikely that he knew it, but Hoey was echoing Martin Benson’s 1902 assessment that
the Mount Elgin school “is a very handsome structure but the out-buildings are not at
all in keeping with it and certainly want renovating, as a survey of the present premises presents a showy front and a shabby back.”)4 Hoey’s 1942 report continued:
At the time of my visit the plumbing in the boys’ wash-room was in a faulty stae[sic] of repair, with the result that the wash bowl were [sic] full of filthy water andthe floor of the wash-room in a filthy condition. The odors in the wash-room andindeed throughout the building were so offensive that I could scarcely endure
them. Certain parts of this building are literally alive with cockroaches—thisapplies particularly to the kitchen.

His recommendation was to either close it immediately or rebuild it—at a cost of$200,000.5 In a letter to the United Church Board of Home Missions, Hoey acknowledged that the condition of the Mount Elgin school was due to the limited funding
provided by Indian Affairs. He also feared that the school might be “kept open andin operation in its present dilapidated condition almost indefinitely.”6 By 1943, local
Indian agents had informed Hoey that “in view of the condition of the building, they
were not prepared to encourage Indian pupils to attend the institution.”7
The United Church opposed the government plan to close the school (the only
United Church school in Ontario) and send its students to local day schools or an
Anglican residential school. Church official George Dorey said that when United
Church students attended such schools, they came to view themselves as Anglicans,and, on their return to their home communities, they did not attend the United
Church.8 Hoey eventually prevailed: Mount Elgin was closed in 1946.9
Wartime labour shortages made it difficult for principals to recruit skilled mechanics to maintain the schools, or to acquire needed maintenance equipment.10 The
problems that Hoey identified in 1940 continued to plague the schools, even after
the end of the war and the commencement of a long period of economic prosperity for Canada. From 1945 to 1950, the country’s gross national product, adjusted for
inflation, doubled. From 1945 to 1960—again adjusted for inflation—it quadrupled.
From 1945 to 1956, the unemployment rate averaged just 2.5%.11 In March 1933, in thedepths of the Great Depression, the rate had been 30%.12 Clearly, the country’s economic fortunes had recovered, but there was insufficient new investment in Canada’s
residential schools.
In 1947, H. A. Alderwood of the Anglican Indian School Administration described
the Chapleau, Ontario, school as “a disgrace” to both the government and the church.

178 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

It was in need of painting, plastering, and repair “from one end to the other.” Thedining-room floor was full of holes, the boys’ playroom floor was broken “beyond
description,” and the tables and benches in the sewing room were “unfit for use.”13
A 1950 inspection found the plaster in the Presbyterian school in Kenora to be in a
“deplorable state of repair,” the light was judged to be poor, and the sewage systemappeared to be leaking. The roof on the Catholic school in the same community wasin poor shape and water was leaking into the classrooms.14
Maintenance was also an issue at the Brandon school, which had opened in 1895.15
By the fall of 1948, the school, which was operated by the United Church, was in what
Indian Affairs official R. S. Davis called “a very deplorable state of repair.” The playrooms had “no facilities for children to play games, and only one or two benches tosit on,” the washrooms needed repair, the roof leaked, and the dormitories needed
redecorating. According to Davis, Principal Oliver would do nothing to the building
except see that “the staff and himself are comfortable.” On this point, he said that inbuilding a new house for the principal, the department may have overdone it, since itstood out in marked contrast to the school.16
A 1948 building inspection of the File Hills, Saskatchewan, school reported thatthe plumbing was in poor shape, the septic tank was not functioning properly, thegenerator did not supply enough electricity to light the school adequately, the boilers
were old, the water supply was insufficient, and only two of the seven toilets werefunctional. The report concluded that the building should be demolished.17
While the Chapleau school closed in 1948 and File Hills in 1949, other schools inpoor repair continued to operate.18 Indian agent G. H. Gooderham detailed a number of problems with the Roman Catholic school in Cluny, Alberta, in the summerof 1945. He pointed out that an addition to the school constructed in 1938 had neverbeen weatherproofed, the windows “did not keep out the wintry gales,” the walls werebeginning to crack, the foundation had no footings, and the boys’ playroom in thebasement could not be heated adequately.19 In 1946, Gooderham prepared an overall
survey of the schools in Alberta: he had little that was positive to say. The Hobbema
school was “depressing,” the Peigan schools were “God-forsaken set-ups,” and standards at the Anglican school at Cardston had been lowered by the “stress of the lastwar.” Only the Morley school, the two schools at Cluny on the Blackfoot Reserve, andthe Roman Catholic school at Cardston received positive assessments.20 That same
year, E. L. Stone, the Indian Health Services medical superintendent for Alberta, wrote:
The Anglican residential school at Wabasca is a discredit to the Department
and the Church. The main school was burned some time ago and not rebuilt.
Seventeen girls are housed in crowdede [sic] and unsanitary sleeping quarters
over an old warehouse, a similar number of boys over another building.

Building conditions: 1940–1969 • 179

Stone wrote that the principal was “discouraged and embittered and is said to haveresigned. It is hard to concieve [sic] what would tempt or induce anyone to take up hisburden after him.”21
The Hobbema school was sixty years old and overcrowded in 1949. According to
the principal there, it needed a new fire-escape system, new dormitories, a new barn(the existing barn was so cold that the cows did not produce enough milk in the wintermonths to meet the students’ needs), a new well, new staff housing, and new cutlery.22
Inspector L. G. P. Waller pointed out in October 1951 that the heating system at theDesmarais, Alberta, school was “not entirely adequate.”23 He returned to the subject in
his December 1952 report, noting that “an improved heating system is imperative forthe health of the pupils and the staff.” At the same time, he questioned the wisdom of
putting a new heating system, which might cost up to $100,000, into the aging building.24 Three months later, a different inspector, G. L. Berry, reported:
The room temperature was very low, about 45 degrees F., and reports are thatit cannot be raised to a comfortable level when the wind is in certain quarters.
Probably the cold room had something to do with the poor attendance and withthe restlessness of the class. The room is insufficiently lighted, with cottage type
windows at the back and on one side.25

There were similar problems farther west. In 1946, the Williams Lake, British
Columbia, school was deemed to have outlived its usefulness. According to the minutes of a meeting between government and Catholic officials, the school was both afire hazard and a menace to the health of the students and staff. The government recommended that the Oblates, who owned the building, replace it.26
Sister J. Baptist wrote to the wife of Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent (referring to
her as “Dear Mother”) in 1949 to make the case for a new school at Williams Lake. She
said the buildings had been condemned ten years earlier and were now “so cold anddilapidated.” There were often blackouts because the generator failed, and there werefears that the convent “will go up in flames some fine night.”27 A government official
responded that government architects were in the process of drawing up plans for a
replacement building.28
Indian Affairs official J. Coleman delivered a scathing critique of the Alert Bay,
British Columbia, school in October 1947.
A tour was made of the main building on the first day and everywhere was foundevidence of very bad housekeeping and maintenance. On the boys’ wing only
one toilet was found in order, most of the others being in a filthy condition andrunning over into the dormitories. On both the boys’ and girls’ sides only one rollof toilet paper was hung on the wall.29

In 1956, the federal government agreed to provide funding for the construction ofa new school at Christie, British Columbia. The Oblates, while recognizing that there180 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

were problems with that school, believed there was greater need for a new building at
Mission in that province.30
As Hoey had noted in 1940, water supply was a problem at many schools. In 1941, amonth-long breakdown in the water supply at the Roman Catholic school in Cardston,
Alberta, led officials to close the school and send the children home.31 An analysisof the Birtle, Manitoba, school’s water in 1940 showed a high level of colon bacilli, asign of fecal contamination. It was discovered that the school chlorination plant was
not working. Not only was it difficult to get trained repairmen out to the school, but
the Indian agent also worried that it would be difficult to recruit a school engineer
who was familiar enough with the technology to properly maintain it.32 In 1950, theschool’s hot-water supply had to be shut down because of a leak in the heating equipment. To bathe, the students had to haul buckets of boiling water from the boiler in theschool basement to the bathtubs.33 In 1957, a federal report rated the quality of watercoming from the tap in the school kitchen as “dangerous.”34
The water supply at the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school was dire in 1945. The
school drew its water from a small, nearby lake. A period of drought had led to a
decline in water levels, affecting both water supply and quality. Indian Affairs official
J. P. B. Ostrander reported that the water was largely stagnant, and the staff refused todrink it, saying it was making them ill.35 A report the following year concluded that theschool’s water was not fit for human consumption.36 The problem was so severe thatthe school was open only “spasmodically” between 1946 and 1950.37
Inspectors had harsh words for the water-treatment systems at the two schools in
Kenora, Ontario, in 1946. The system at the Roman Catholic school was described as“extremely antiquated” and in need of replacement. The system at the Presbyterianschool was functioning erratically. Where, in the past, the system had added excessive
amounts of chlorine to the water, it had now become so blocked that it was not adding
any chlorine.38 In 1950, the Ontario Grand Jury, which inspected public buildings innorthwestern Ontario, felt compelled to use capital letters to comment on the effectof the Catholic school on Kenora’s sewage-disposal system. The jury concluded it was“dangerous to the health of the residents of the school. further, the natureof the sewage disposal outlet, being so close to the water intake of the townof kenora, it is also dangerous to the health of the citizens of kenora.”39 The
concern about the threat to the local water supply had been raised in the early 1950s.40
By 1959, Dr. Eaton, the local medical officer, felt that the sewage system had contributed to local water pollution so much that he was threatening to close the school andtake the federal government to court.41 Although the problem was abated by a reduction in enrolment, in 1962, piping on the school’s water-intake system broke, leading
to a situation where the school was pumping sewage into its own water system.42
There were ongoing water and sewage problems at three Roman Catholic schoolsin Manitoba through the 1950s. In the fall of 1953, G. H. Marcoux, the Manitoba

Building conditions: 1940–1969 • 181

inspector of Indian schools, reported that the sewage system at the Fort Alexander
school had failed. There were fifteen to twenty centimetres of sewage in the boiler
room that was seeping into the boys’ playroom and threatening to back up in the
toilets. The smell, Marcoux wrote, “was unbearable and no human being should be
asked to live under such circumstances.” He recommended an immediate closing of
the school.43 A 1954 bacteriological report on the water from five different taps (thekitchen, the junior boys’ playroom, the girls’ playroom, the small boys’ playroom, andthe boys’ dormitory) came with the same comment on the quality of the water fromeach tap: “bad.”44 A follow-up report two months later described the water as being
contaminated, though not necessarily harmful.45 A 1957 inspection concluded thatthe water was being improperly chlorinated: the three bacteriological samples taken
were all described as “dangerous.”46
As he prepared for the start of the 1958 school year, Sandy Bay school principal
Father Roland Chaput wrote to the local supervisor of Indian agencies, wondering“what is going to happen to our plumbing,” which he described as being in a “pitiablestate.” He wrote:
More leaks seem to open almost every day and I have just stopped counting
them. It makes life miserable for everybody to tread over puddles of water,and more still to have to wipe the floors several times each day. The sight ofsteam pipes patched with friction tape, or of cans and jugs hung up to catch thedripping water is very unsightly to say the least.

Something needed to be done that fall “if we are to live till next year.”47
The principal of the Pine Creek school had reached a point of despair in 1959. By
then, he had been making the case for urgent repairs to the school for two years.
There have been Department engineers and other minor officials by the dozen,
to take measurements for the proposed toilets and shower baths etc. … monthafter month they have kept coming in, promising that the proposed repairs
would be dealt with at once … but … winter employment was a good occasion to
give work of that kind … etc. … but … nothing has been done yet.

He pointed out that he had two toilets for eighty boys and two toilets for seventy-fivegirls (this included both boarding students and day students). There was one shower
and one shower bath for sixty-five boys and three bathtubs for sixty-five girls. Tenders
had been received to fix the leaky roof, but the school had been informed that since
the tenders were high, the repairs would be postponed until the following year.48
Shortly after taking over as principal in Wabasca, Alberta, Eric Barrington reported
in 1961 that the water at the school had, “to put it mildly, a flavour all its own, thecolour is that of medium strong coffee also is very hard and discolours all receptacles
it has the misfortune to touch.”49

182 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The Cariboo Union Board of Health declared the Williams Lake school to be a public nuisance in June 1965. The school, which Indian Affairs had judged to have outlived
its usefulness almost twenty years earlier in 1946, was now dumping 40,000 gallons(151,416 litres) of raw sewage into the San Jose River on a daily basis. The board was
threatening to have the school closed in two months if Indian Affairs did not havea promised sewage-treatment plant in operation.50 The federal Treasury Board gave
approval for the leasing of land for a new sewage lagoon in November 1965.51 The
school itself remained in operation until 1981.52
The general decline in the quality of conditions throughout the school system continued through the late 1950s and into the 1960s. After an inspection of the Edmonton
school in 1957, W. E. Frame, a new inspector of Indian schools, wrote that since taking
on his position with Indian Affairs, he had been
struck by the fact that the quality of classroom accommodation provided forthe Indian pupils on the whole is inferior to that found in the public schools of
this Province, with which I am very familiar. In many cases the Indian schoolbuildings and additions appear to have been constructed on a “make do” basis
to meet immediate needs.

He found the Edmonton school to be “outmoded and in very poor physical condition. Renovation and upkeep have been delayed to such an extent that nothing
short of a complete and thorough overhaul can bring the buildings up to a reasonable standard.”53
A 1958 inspection of the Fort Frances, Ontario, school concluded that the building, which dated back to the nineteenth century, was beyond repair and should becondemned. Indian Affairs’ plan was to replace the school with a dormitory and athree-classroom block.54
An inspector concluded in 1960 that the wiring system at the Portage la Prairie
school—one of the schools that Hoey sought to close in 1940—was “in very bad condition.” The lighting intensity was poor throughout the building, and a lack of outlets
led to the “use of many extension cords which constitute a fire hazard.” The inspector said that the wiring at the Brandon and Birtle schools was similar to that at thePortage school.55 The following year, the principal of the Portage la Prairie residential school informed Indian Affairs that the residence was a “hazard and should beclosed.” Cataloguing the major deficits, he wrote: “dormitories too small, plumbing
fixtures absolutely worn out, lighting a fire hazard.”56
During the early 1960s, the principal of the McIntosh, Ontario, school had raised
concerns about the school’s heating system. One fall, temperatures were fluctuating
between 50 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit (10 to 29 degrees Celsius).57 In a letter to IndianAffairs in April 1962, he expressed the hope that the government would have the system fixed by winter.58

Building conditions: 1940–1969 • 183

In 1958, the Oblate order established the Assiniboia school in a forty-year-old
building that had been constructed by the Winnipeg School Division as a residence
for abandoned and abused children.59 A 1965 inspection described the boys’ dressing
room, located in the school basement, as “totally inadequate, grossly over-crowded,
depressing and damp.” The boys’ toilet room had too few urinals, and the shower
room was poorly ventilated and provided students with no privacy. The inspector
described the playroom, the manual training room, the home economics kitchen, andthe home economics classroom as being, respectively, “inadequate,” “unsatisfactory,”“extremely inadequate,” and “entirely inadequate.” Each was crowded and poorly ventilated. Equally critical remarks were made about the girls’ playroom, and the dormitories, which were seen to be overcrowded.60
The Alberta schools continued to decline. In 1965, it was decided that the Roman
Catholic school in Cluny was to be closed within five years. Only emergency repairs
were to be made to the building from that point on.61 (The school closed in 1968.)62
In 1967, the principal of the Roman Catholic school in Cardston, Alberta, complained that the domestic staff members at the school were required to sleep four to aroom. As the principal noted, “If our employees were not Indians, this would not havebeen tolerated as long as it has been.” The primary school, a former army barracks that
had been donated to the school twenty years earlier, had been “condemned by the fire
marshall several years ago.” On hot days in the spring and fall, the “classrooms actually stink.” The Kindergarten had been operating out of the church basement for three
years—a point that particularly irritated the residential school principal, since IndianAffairs had managed to come up with the money to build “a comfortable Kindergarten
in Cardston, for the integrated children.” Although a housing unit for teachers, anextension to the school block, and a Kindergarten space had been on the residential
school budget for the past three years, “to date we have received none of these: repeat:none of these.”63 The Cardston residence did not close until 1988.64
However, some money was spent on the schools. In 1965, Indian Affairs reported:
An extensive program of modernizing the residential schools was carried out,
particularly with respect to mechanical equipment. Additional funds were
provided to enable the principals of the schools to conform, insofar as possible,
with provincial standards concerning the staff required to maintain and operatemechanical equipment.65

The phrase “insofar as possible” is not insignificant in this sentence: it is clear thatIndian Affairs was not providing enough funding to allow all schools to meet the provincial standards for the training of such specialized employees as operating engineers.
From 1959 to 1968, over $150,000 was spent on repairs at the Sept-Îles, Québec,school. The school had opened only in 1955. In 1968, $50,000 needed to be spent on asprinkler system. From 1959–60 to 1965–66, Indian Affairs spent $380,000 on repairs

184 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

to the Roman Catholic school at Cardston on the Blood Reserve. It was reportedly themost money spent on any residential school in Canada for that period.66
Despite the spending, from the perspective of the school principals, the buildings
continued to decline. A 1967 brief from the National Association of Principals andAdministrators of Indian Residences—which included principals of both Catholicand Protestant schools—contained an extensive listing of government failure toinvest in the upkeep of residential schools. The principal of the La Tuque, Québec,school, J. E. DeWolf, wrote that “since there was said to have been an austerity cutof one quarter of a million dollars while the school was being built, there are a lot of
deficiencies which have been brought to the Department’s attention. Fixtures and furniture are cheap and hard to keep in repair.” At the time, the La Tuque school was lessthan ten years old. Pointe Bleue, Québec, principal C. Couture complained of “undue
delays, postponements, refusals, etc., in obtaining improvement, necessary changes
or additions for this Residential School.” Birtle principal N. M. Rusaw wrote that, forfour years, he had been unable to get approval to have the front steps to the mainbuilding repaired, even though they were “a pedestrian hazard.” At the Muscowequan,
Saskatchewan, school, the Beginners and Grade One classes were being taught in aconverted granary (a building for storing grain), a condition that Principal I. Joyal
described as “totally unsuitable and a disgrace to Indian Affairs.” David Lawson wrotethat at the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school, “the old style army barracks, whichhouse the majority of the students, are in … dire need of replacement.... It is also truethat the electric wiring, plumbing, windows, floors, showers, heat in the old building,are in very poor condition.” The Beauval, Saskatchewan, school had been waiting for
a new gymnasium since 1959. Kamsack, Saskatchewan, principal Edmond Turenne
reported, “Our heating system has hardly been touched since the construction … in1927. Steam pipes are so clogged up that in some sections of the building hardly any
steam manages to circulate.” At Blue Quills, Alberta, some students were being taught
in a converted chicken coop, and the Kindergarten class in the Roman Catholic school
in Cardston was held in a flood-prone church basement.
The overall conclusion of the report from the National Association of Principals
and Administrators was: “In the years that the Churches have been involved in theadministration of the schools, there has been a steady deterioration in essential services. Year after year, complaints, demands and requests for improvements have, inthe main, fallen upon deaf ears.” The principals also contended that the residential
schools were being financially starved in order to provide additional funds for thejoint agreements with provincial governments that were essential to the Indian Affairs
program of integrating students into the public schools.67
When E. A. Côté, the deputy minister responsible for Indian Affairs, met with churchand school representatives to discuss the brief, he told them that “capital expenditures
would be drastically curtailed at federal day schools where eventual integration would

Building conditions: 1940–1969 • 185

result in the closing of these schools and at residential schools which the Department
foresaw as closing during the five year period.” Only emergency repairs would beundertaken at schools that Indian Affairs intended to close.68
An internal Indian Affairs memorandum had taken issue with specific items in theprincipals’ brief, but there was no ignoring the fact that repairs had been delayed andfacilities were overcrowded. As the memorandum noted, “Our field officers are facedwith the problem of distributing inadequate amounts of funds over a larger numberof schools.” (This would have included both day and residential schools.) If a problem
was not urgent, it was likely to go unaddressed. In some cases, such as in the St. Phillip
school in Kamsack, Saskatchewan, officials argued that the solution was not repair but
closure.69 Indeed, this is what happened: the dormitory block at the Kamsack school
was judged to be beyond repair in 1968, and the following year, the residence closed.70
The closing of the Roman Catholic school in Kenora serves as another example of
the way the schools were being allowed to deteriorate. In 1971, G. LeBleu, the administrator of the Catholic residence in Kenora, pointed out to Indian Affairs that no major
repairs had been carried out at the residence for the past six years, and that, withoutmajor alterations, it would no longer be safe for children to live there. The neededwater-quality and fire-safety improvements would, he wrote, cost over $100,000.71 The
residence was closed the following year.72
The mass closure of schools that occurred during the 1970s was brought about bymany factors, but among the most prominent was the decades of deliberate government underfunding. Many of the problems (described in an earlier chapter) that were
subsequently experienced by the Aboriginal agencies that assumed responsibility torun residential schools into the 1980s and 1990s were the legacy of this prior, longterm neglect.

Overcrowding
The buildings were not only in physical decline, but they were also overcrowded.
Between the ongoing growth in the Aboriginal school-aged population and the government’s efforts to enrol all school-aged Aboriginal children, overcrowding wasendemic from the 1940s onwards. It was common for schools to enrol considerably
more students than their authorized pupilage. In 1943, fifty-one of seventy-threeschools had enrolments that exceeded their authorized pupilage.73 In 1955, forty-one
of sixty-six schools enrolled more students than their pupilage allowed.74 The numberof students enrolled in the system began to decline in the 1960s, but this was in largepart due to school closures. The schools that remained open were often overcrowded.
The crowding problem ended only with the closure of the schools.

186 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In 1944, Mission, British Columbia, principal A. H. Fleury reported that there was
no room at the school. “Every inch of dormitory, refectory and classroom space is literally crammed with children.” The school had thirty students more than it was authorized for, and he foresaw no relief.75 In 1945, the Catholic school at Cluny had thirty
students over its pupilage.76
Also in 1945, the average attendance at the Grayson, Saskatchewan, school was
about 113, even though the school’s pupilage was 90.77 In explaining why there wereso many students, the principal wrote that “it is practically impossible to refuse admission to youngsters of school-age, specially when they ask, themselves or their parents.” He asked if the pupilage could be increased.78 It was not, and, four years later,a government official was asking why a school with a pupilage of 90 had an average
enrolment of 122.79 In his response, the local superintendent of Indian agencies
recommended that the pupilage be increased to 110, a recommendation that was
accepted.80 Exceeding the pupilage created a funding crisis for those people running
the schools, since it was Indian Affairs policy to provide per capita grants only for theauthorized pupilage. A school with a pupilage of 90 and an enrolment of 122 was eligible only for per capita grants for 90 students. The money would have to be spread out
to cover the needs of the entire enrolment. However, the per capita system also gavethe schools an incentive to take in too many students, in hopes that they would receive
the additional funding. A 1956 handbook for Roman Catholic principals and teachers
stressed, “It is of the highest importance that all schools be maintained at or over theauthorized number because, even at the present per capita rates, a reduction below
the authorized figure means a loss in revenue.”81
After the fires that destroyed the Onion Lake Anglican school in Saskatchewan, students were moved into the St. Alban’s school in Prince Albert. The result, according
to Indian Affairs official J. P. B. Ostrander, was serious overcrowding. In a 1946 report,
he complained of low ceilings and cramped dormitories. In one dormitory, sixteen of
the thirty-nine boys had to sleep two to a bed. Ostrander wrote, “There seems to be nothought about the health of the children when such a large number are permitted tosleep in crowded quarters.”82 A year and a half later, the school was still overcrowded.83
The Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario, which was built to accommodate 135
students, had an enrolment of 146 in 1950.84
In 1950, G. H. Gooderham, the regional supervisor of Indian agencies, wrote
to Indian Affairs official B. H. Neary, expressing his disappointment in the $72,000
reduction in the already conservative expenditures estimate for the schools in Alberta.
He pointed out that, currently, there were many Indian children not attending school
because there were no facilities for them. Since the First Nations population in theprovince was growing at 3% a year, he said, the problem would only worsen in the
future.85 Three years later, the Bishop of Calgary, Francis P. Carroll, pointed out that
the Roman Catholic school at Cardston had an enrolment of 256, and there were 101

Building conditions: 1940–1969 • 187

students on the reserve between the ages of seven and ten for whom there was noaccommodation. The failure to provide sufficient accommodation meant that children were not entering school until they were nine, ten, eleven, and, in some cases,
even twelve years old.86
In 1952, the Beauval, Saskatchewan, school had a pupilage of 120 and an enrolmentof 140. 87 Four years later, Beauval was still overcrowded. Indian Affairs official J. R. Bellwrote that “this condition may not meet with approval, however, I feel the children are
immeasurably better off at the school than they would be at home, as regards food,clothing, health, cleanliness and education.”88 In 1953, the Fort Vermilion, Alberta,
school buildings were described by an inspector as “being old and out-dated” and“entirely inadequate to care for the number of pupils enrolled. Classrooms, dormitories, dining rooms are small, poorly lighted and badly overcrowded.”89
A memorandum sent out in 1956 to all residential school principals observed thatmany of the schools were operating over their authorized enrolment. It was noted that
this was not always the principal’s fault, as the government on occasion authorized
more pupils than were allowed under the assigned pupilage.90 In 1959, for example,
the Indian superintendent in British Columbia’s Stuart Lake Agency was seeking tohave the Fraser Lake pupilage increased by twenty, since “the school-age population
on Reserves where no Day School facilities is [sic] available is increasing very rapidly.”91
The problem continued through the late 1950s and into the 1960s. In 1958, theenrolment at the Roman Catholic school in Kenora was 157, while the authorized
pupilage was 110. Indian Affairs official R. F. Davey wanted to see the enrolment
brought down by moving students to existing day schools and establishing new day
schools.92 Despite instructions to reduce enrolment, in 1959, the principal announced
his intention to accept 188 students, leading to a confrontation with Indian Affairs.93
The problem was averted by a last-minute decision not to offer Grade Twelve at theschool, which led to some students’ being transferred to the Jesuit school at Spanish,
Ontario.94 By 1960, the number of students in residence was brought down to 110.95
A 1961 inspection of the Assumption, Alberta, school found that the dormitories were overcrowded and lacked sufficient exits. The inspector recommended thatenrolment be reduced to allow for fifty square feet (4.65 square metres) per person in
all the dormitories. He also recommended the installation of additional fire escapes.96
By 1964, the Roman Catholic school at Cardston, Alberta, was running at double
its originally intended capacity. It had been built to accommodate 100 students, but
had 200 residential students and 200 day students. An Indian Affairs report noted,“To accommodate this tremendous increase, the original building has, over the years,
taken on many forms of additions and appendages with little attention to proper concepts of planning and architectural control.” It was proposed to reduce the pupilage
to 150 and to undertake a major overhaul of the building. This was estimated to be
sufficient to allow the building to remain in operation until 1975.97

188 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Enrolment had been reduced at the Roman Catholic school in Kenora in 1959, but
by 1965, it was once again, along with the other residences in northwestern Ontario,
operating at “over-capacity.” To ease the pressure, the department was “scouring theKenora-Fort Frances districts” for families willing to take in students to live with them.
As a departmental memorandum noted, “Many of the homes will be ‘borderline’ but
we hope to make do.”98
In May 1967, at least three schools in British Columbia had taken in more than theirallotted number of students. The Sechelt school with a “rated capacity” of 88 had anenrolment of 126; the Fraser Lake school had a rated capacity of 110 and an enrolmentof 181; and the Williams Lake school had a rated capacity of 257 and an enrolmentof 307. (The Mission school, on the other hand, had a capacity of 448 and only 273
students.)99 The principal of the Williams Lake school refused to reduce enrolment,saying that, instead, the government should provide more accommodation. The principal of the Fraser Lake school said that because of the high ceilings in the dormitories
and the use of bunk beds, the conditions were not overcrowded.100 By August 1967, theMission school was itself over its quota.101 In 1967, Kamsack school principal EdmondTurenne wrote that when the planned Kindergarten class was to open in the coming
fall, he would be “operating a 12 room school within the walls of a 6 classroom block….
What a feat!”102
In 1968, the Grand Jury of Ontario, in its report on the public buildings of Kenora,
described the Presbyterian school as being clean, but overcrowded and understaffed.
It judged the food allowance to be “entirely inadequate,” the clothing allowance to be“entirely too low,” and the fire escape to be in need of replacement.103
The mention of the need for improved fire escapes underscores the fact that poorly
maintained and overcrowded buildings were, almost by definition, fire hazards. As
the following chapter demonstrates, Indian Affairs policy during this period continued to gamble with children’s health and safety.

CHAPTER 36

Health: 1940–2000

T

uberculosis and the scandalously high death rates it left in its wake were thepredominant health issue in residential schools for the system’s first seventy
years. Those rates had begun to decline by 1940, and they dropped rapidly
after 1945 as effective tuberculosis antibiotics became available.
As part of its work, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (trc)
has created a Register of Confirmed Deaths of Named Residential School Students(the “Named Register”) and a Register of Confirmed Deaths of Unnamed Residential
School Students (the “Unnamed Register”). The first register contains reports on thedeaths of students whose names the trc has been able to identify. The Commission
undertook a statistical analysis of the registers in January 2015. According to that analysis, for the period from 1940 to 2000, there were 647 reported deaths on the Named
Register and 44 deaths on the Unnamed Register, for a total of 691 identified deaths
for this period. It should be stressed that these figures are likely to represent an undercounting of the number of student deaths that occurred during this period. Graph 36.1
shows the annual death rate for 1,000 students of the Named and Unnamed registers
combined for the period from 1940 to 1965. (Due to changes in the way Indian Affairs
reported enrolment, it was not possible to calculate death rates per enrolled students
after 1965.)

190 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Graph 36.1
Residential school death rates (Named and Unnamed registers
combined) per 1,000 students, 1940–1965
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0

1940

1942

1944

1946

1948

1950

1952

1954

1956

1958

1960

1962

1964

Source: Rosenthal, “Statistical Analysis of Deaths.”

As can be seen, the death rate declined significantly by the end of the 1940s.
For approximately 45% of the deaths that the trc has identified in this period(Named and Unnamed registers combined), there was no recorded cause of death. In
those cases in which there was a cause of death recorded, tuberculosis was by far the
single most prevalent cause of death, accounting for 39.7% of the deaths identified by
the statistical analysis for the period from 1940 to 2000 (Graph 36.2).
These diagnoses of the cause of death may not have been accurate. For example,
it may be that cases of meningitis were tubercular in origin. Hemorrhage is not an
illness, but the result of an illness or injury. Severe hemorrhaging was not uncommon
in cases of tuberculosis. These illnesses are also linked in other ways: tuberculosis, forexample, can lead to pneumonia.
Graph 36.3 shows the dramatic decline in the tuberculosis death rate from 1940
to 1965.
The overall decline in the death rates, and in the tuberculosis death rate in particular, was an important and positive development. But, as other chapters in this section make clear, even after 1940, the residential school system still failed to address
many of the underlying determinants of residential school student health. Buildings
were poorly maintained, sanitation was limited and often ineffective, fire safety was
ignored, and diets were inadequate. It was not until 1957 that the federal government
adopted a funding system that was intended to provide schools with a budget thatallowed them to supply the students with nutritionally adequate diets and a sufficient
supply of clothing.

Health: 1940–2000 • 191

Graph 36.2
Causes of residential school deaths by illness(contributing and sole causes combined; Named andUnnamed registers combined), 1940–2000
Tuberculosis
Meningitis
Hemorrhage
Pneumonia
Influenza
Heart disease
Lung disease
Whooping coughKidney disease
Appendicitis
Brain disease
Liver disease
Other unknown illness
Multiple causes
Other cause
0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100 110 120 130

Source: Rosenthal, “Statistical Analysis of Deaths.”

Graph 36.3
Residential school tuberculosis death rate per 1,000 students(Named and Unnamed registers combined), 1940–1965
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0

1940

1942

1944

1946

1948

1950

Source: Rosenthal, “Statistical Analysis of Deaths.”

1952

1954

1956

1958

1960

1962

1964

192 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

After reviewing the treatment of tuberculosis in schools during this period, thischapter addresses the presence of other diseases and illnesses in the schools and thedegree to which the schools contributed to health problems. It also highlights certain
questions relating to the adequacy of care. In the case of dental care, into the 1960s,
the service focused almost solely on addressing fillings and removals, as opposed topreventive care. Mental health issues went unattended as residential schools wereincreasingly obliged to care for high-needs children in institutions that were understaffed and under-resourced.
Two other interrelated issues are also discussed: a growing recognition that school
principals were not in fact the legal guardians of the students; and the fact that doctors
and scientists were not just caring for students, but also were using them as subjects
for research. In many cases, the schools failed to secure the consent of parents prior totheir children’s being subjected to treatment or being used in ongoing research. This
failure is attributable to many factors, but one of the most significant is the paternalistic and colonial view that Aboriginal parents were simply unable to make intelligent,
informed decisions on matters affecting their children’s future. The chapter ends witha review of incidents that led to students’ being injured, sometimes fatally. As a whole,these incidents underscore the continuing lack of supervision and funding for theschools after 1940.

Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis and Aboriginal people: Post-1940
In 1940, tuberculosis was the prime cause of death among First Nations people in
Canada, just as it had been forty years earlier. It was also the prime cause of deathamong residential school students. Canada was also on the verge of a large-scale
tuberculosis epidemic among its Inuit people, who had only recently begun to moveoff the land into permanent settlements. An Inuit tuberculosis death rate of 314 per
100,000 was identified in 1945.1 It would climb to 569 in 1952.2
In coming years, all these rates would drop dramatically. In 1943, the First Nations
tuberculosis death rate was 662.6 per 100,000; by 1957, it was 42.0 per 100,000.3 By
1960, tuberculosis had been dislodged from its position as the prime cause of deathamong First Nations people, falling to eighth position.4 The Inuit rate had undergone
a similar decline. From 569 per 100,000 in 1952, it fell to 84 per 100,000 in 1960.5 Tables
36.1 and 36.2 provide an overview of the changes in the First Nations and Inuit death
rates during this period, and Table 36.3 makes comparisons with the national tuberculosis death rate.

Health: 1940–2000 • 193

Table 36.1. First Nations tuberculosis death rates, per 100,000 population, 1943–1953.
Year

First Nations tuberculosis death
rates (per 100,000 population)

1943

662.6

1944

605.0

1945

565.7

1946

579.1

1947

549.8

1948

488.5

1949

399.6

1950

298.8

1951

268.2

1952

167.5

1953

100.0

Source: Canada, TRC, NRA, No document file location, no document file source, The Department of Health andNational Welfare Annual Report for the Fiscal Year Ended March 31, 1955, 83. [AEMR-251213]

Table 36.2. Inuit tuberculosis death rates, per 100,000 population, 1950–1960.
Year

Inuit tuberculosis death rates(per 100,000 population)

1950

411

1951

327

1952

569

1953

369

1954

211

1955

169

1956

232

1957

179

1958

126

1959

53

1960

84

Source: Statistics Canada, reproduced in Grygier, Long Way from Home, 84.

Table 36.3. National tuberculosis death rates per 100,000 population, 1953–1957.
Population

1953

1954

1955

1956

1957

All Canada

12.3

10.3

8.9

7.8

7.1

Inuit

369

211

169

232

179

Registered Indians

100.3

60.2

53.1

39.6

42.0

(Yukon and Northwest Territories excluded prior to 1957. Nova Scotia rates based on “persons of Indian
Origin.”)Source: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3132, file 861-2-1, part 1, section B: Special
Tuberculosis Statistics; [NPC-625218i] Statistics Canada, reproduced in Grygier, Long Way from Home, 84.

194 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

There is no single explanation for the decline. In the case of First Nations people,
the decline started in the late 1940s.6 This reduction could not be attributed to federal
health policy: as late as 1937, Indian Affairs Director Dr. Harold McGill had announced
that as part of a cost-cutting effort, there would be no funding for tuberculosis surveys or for treatment in sanatoria or hospitals for First Nations people suffering fromchronic tuberculosis.7
Under pressure from anti-tuberculosis societies across the country, the government
dropped this extreme position and made a limited investment in fighting First Nations
tuberculosis.8 By 1940, the government had purchased and converted a hospital in
Dynevor, Manitoba, to be used as a sanatorium for First Nations people. As a result, it
could report that “582 Indian patients were receiving treatment [for tuberculosis] ininstitutions.”9 The following year, isolation wards were opened on Manitoulin Island,
Ontario; hospitals in Norway House and Fisher River, Manitoba, were expanded; andthe former United Church school near Chilliwack, British Columbia, was converted toa sanatorium. Hospital treatment for tuberculosis was provided in that year to 1,488
First Nations people.10 Despite these improvements, in 1943, Indian Affairs reported:
Tuberculosis continued to be the leading cause of death among Indians. Deathrates from this disease are from ten to thirty times higher than among the white
population. During the year over 1,500 Indians were treated for this disease in
hospitals and sanatoria, with an average of slightly over 800 under treatment.

Even though, by this point, Indian Affairs was operating fourteen Indian hospitals,
there was a serious shortage of sanatorium beds for First Nations patients.11 In 1944,
Indian Affairs estimated that it was short about 1,500 beds for First Nations tuberculosis patients.12
Dr. E. L. Stone, who had been the superintendent of Indian Affairs’ medical service since 1927, rejoined the Canadian military at the start of the Second World War
in 1939.13 His successor was Dr. P. E. Moore, who had served as Indian Affairs’ assistant superintendent of medical services.14 At the war’s end, the Indian Affairs medical service was transferred to the Department of National Health and Welfare.15 The
newly created Indian and Northern Health Services (sometimes called “Indian HealthServices”) was given responsibility for both First Nations and Inuit health.16
The transfer was viewed as a rebuke of Indian Affairs and was a source of tension
between it and the health department.17 Under Dr. Moore’s direction, the branch was
doubtful about the effectiveness of church-run hospitals, particularly in the North.
This suspicion led Moore to oppose the establishment of sanatoria in the North—a
position that would lead to thousands of Inuit and First Nations patients’ being
sent south for tuberculosis treatment in coming years.18 At its creation, Indian andNorthern Health Services operated sixteen hospitals, and employed twenty-seven

Health: 1940–2000 • 195

full-time doctors, twenty-four field nurses, and over 700 physicians on a part-timebasis.19 Tuberculosis control was the services’ major challenge.
Tuberculin, an extract of the tuberculosis bacterium, was used to conduct what wascommonly referred to as a “scratch test” to test for the presence of tuberculosis bacteria.20 The bacille Calmette-Guérin (bcg) vaccine was increasingly used to vaccinate
children in populations with a high risk of developing tuberculosis.21 The bcg vaccine
does not provide absolute protection (recent studies have suggested its effectivenessis between 75% and 80%). Neither does it prevent the development of tuberculosis inpeople already infected with the bacteria.22
Increased efforts were placed on identifying active tuberculosis cases in First
Nations communities. In 1949, a federal tuberculosis control plan for Manitoba called
for the x-raying of all First Nations people in 1949 and 1950. Follow-up x-rays were to
be taken every two years. First Nations people admitted to hospital were to be x-rayed,
and all First Nations schoolchildren were to be x-rayed annually. All people working
with First Nations people were also to be x-rayed annually.
Under the federal plan, testing was to be extended to the point where all children
under the age of sixteen would get the scratch test, and all those who tested negative
would be vaccinated with bcg.23 Tuberculin and bcg were effective for prevention;
they were not treatments.
Streptomycin, the first effective tuberculosis antibiotic, was developed in the 1940s.
Its initial effectiveness was limited, since the tuberculosis bacterium was able todevelop a resistance to the drug. In the late 1940s, this problem was largely overcomeby the introduction of para-aminosalicylic salts (pas) and isoniazid (inh) to the treatment process. Patients who had been diagnosed as being near death began recovering. Streptomycin had to be injected, but the other drugs could be taken orally. They
required a treatment period of eighteen months to two years.24 The national death ratefrom tuberculosis (non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal) fell from 51.4 per 100,000 of population in 1940 to 26.8 per 100,000 in 1950, to 4.6 per 100,000 in 1960.25
By 1955, the First Nations death rate in Manitoba was a tenth of what it had been adecade earlier. The number of infections did not decline as rapidly as the death rate;
the new case rate fell by only 50% during this period.26 This was part of a general trend.
Dr. G. J. Wherrett, the executive secretary of the Canadian Tuberculosis Society, noted
in 1957 that while tuberculosis death rates were at the lowest recorded level, the incidence rates of tuberculosis remained high.27
Although the First Nations death rate had been dramatically reduced, it was stillmuch higher than the national tuberculosis death rate. In the Foothills Region, thetuberculosis rate among the Aboriginal population was still twenty to forty times
higher than among the non-Aboriginal population. (The Foothills Region included
Alberta, the Yukon, and the Mackenzie Valley.) In 1962, a revised tuberculosis control program for the region was put in place. It called for annual chest x-rays of the196 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

First Nations population of Alberta, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories. Newborns
were to be vaccinated with bcg before leaving hospital or shortly thereafter. Within
three months of being vaccinated, they were to be given a tuberculin test. All children under six were to be given a tuberculin test, and all schoolchildren were to betested annually.28
The government response to the tuberculosis epidemic among the Inuit was twopronged: 1) x-ray the entire Inuit population to identify active cases; and 2) vaccinate the rest of the population.29 The active cases were taken either by ship or air fortreatment, often to Québec City or Edmonton, although Inuit were placed in sanatoria throughout the country.30 The government efforts to keep track of patients and tokeep families informed of the health of family members sent south for treatment werelargely ineffective. The medical examinations often took place aboard a government
medical patrol ship. In some cases, individuals who were diagnosed with tuberculosis
were not allowed to return to shore to say goodbye or arrange for the care of their family members. Instead, they were kept on board and taken south for treatment.31 The
Inuit death rate was reduced, but, as Pat Grygier, the historian of the anti-tuberculosis
campaign among the 1,578 Inuit, observed, many of the Inuit
were unable successfully to resume their previous way of life, either because of
the physical effects of their disease or its treatment, or because of the difficulties
of readjustment after so long a time in the south. Young children out for threeor four years faced particular difficulties, for they had virtually become young
southerners, who in many cases were unable to speak their parents’ language
and had no idea of how to behave in the demanding environment of a northernhunting community.32

By the 1960s, the number of First Nations people being treated in sanatoria was
declining. In April 1965, there were nineteen adults and twelve children being treated
for tuberculosis at the Fort Qu’Appelle Indian Hospital. It was expected that by theend of summer, the number would be down to approximately twenty patients. Given
that the Saskatchewan provincial sanatorium had sufficient capacity to hold 100 new
First Nations admissions a year, plans were made to transfer all cases to the provincial sanatorium.33
Even in the 1960s, however, there were severe outbreaks of tuberculosis in Aboriginalcommunities. Thirty-three of eighty-four students from the Arviat (then known as“Eskimo Point”) day school in the Northwest Territories (which had a small residence)
were in the Clearwater, Manitoba, sanatorium in 1963.34 Between September 1966 andMarch 1967, twenty-five people had to be evacuated from the same community fortreatment for tuberculosis.35
Despite these improvements, by the end of the twentieth century, when the last of
the residential schools had been closed, tuberculosis still remained more prevalent
among Aboriginal than non-Aboriginal Canadians.36 According to one study, in 2004,

Health: 1940–2000 • 197

the tuberculosis incidence rate for Aboriginal people in Canada was 23.8 per 100,000;
the rate for the entire Canadian population was 5.0 per 100,000.37

Controlling tuberculosis in the residential schools
As described in a previous volume of this report, by the late 1930s, the federal
government had finally begun to implement a serious program intended to reduce
the level of tuberculosis in residential schools. Key elements of such a program were
proper medical examinations of new students to screen out those with active tuberculosis, regular screening of the student body to detect cases of active tuberculosis, andbcg vaccinations to protect non-infected students. Despite the intensive work that
had begun in the late 1930s, tuberculosis remained a threat in the early 1940s.
In 1940, there had been an epidemic of typhoid fever at the Norway House,
Manitoba, residential school, which was followed by a number of cases of pulmonary
tuberculosis.38 In 1943, Ed Rheaume, the principal of the Hobbema, Alberta, school,
reported that six of the eighteen students who had been discharged in 1938 were
now deceased. Although the cause of death was not given, three of the twelve former
students who were still alive were also still suffering from tuberculosis.39 That same
year, a survey of the Morley, Alberta, school revealed what Dr. A. H. Baker describedas “an alarming number of cases of active, gross tuberculosis.” Baker recommended
that a number of students be either hospitalized or isolated from other students, thatthe non-tubercular students be retested in a few months, and that staff be tested.40
A follow-up investigation, which included the testing of many community residents,
concluded that “the source of the outbreak of tuberculosis among the school children has been from contact with the school since so many of the families do not show
any evidence.”41
Throughout the 1940s, annual tuberculosis clinics continued to be held at many
schools in an effort to identify and remove students with active tuberculosis.42 In
Ontario, the Tuberculosis Control Division of the Ontario health ministry ran the clinics.43 In other cases, provincial health departments ran the clinics.44 A tuberculosis
survey of the Fort Frances, Ontario, school in January 1940 led to five children’s being
recommended for sanatorium treatment.45 The following month, it was recommended
that four children from the Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario, and one childfrom the Catholic school in the same community be sent to a sanatorium.46 In March,
two sanatorium cases were identified in the Chapleau, Ontario, school.47 One of thestudents recommended for sanatorium care in January was still in the Fort Frances
school in June.48 In 1941, a survey of the Fort William, Ontario, school identified three
students in need of sanatorium care.49 That same year, a survey recommended that
another student from the Chapleau school be sent to a sanatorium.50 After a 1941

198 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

inspection, three children at the Sioux Lookout, Ontario, school were thought to be inneed of treatment in a sanatorium.51 After a survey of the McIntosh, Ontario, schoolin the fall of 1941, one student was identified as being in need of sanatorium care.52
A student from the Pine Creek, Manitoba, school was identified for sanatorium treatment in 1941.53 After an x-ray clinic at the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school, alsoin 1941, eight students were sent to the Indian Hospital in Sardis, British Columbia.54
Similar surveys had similar results in 1942 and 1943.55
A survey taken in 1944 at the Hobbema, Alberta, school found thirty-eight active
or inactive cases of tuberculosis among the school’s 128 students—almost a third ofthem.56 It was recommended that six of these students be either hospitalized or sent
to a sanatorium.57 By the mid-1940s, at the Chapleau school, the students were being
x-rayed on admission. In addition, chest clinics were held twice a year. At these clinics,
students who had a positive reaction to the tuberculin skin test were also x-rayed.58 In
some schools, the impact of a variety of preventive measures was beginning to be felt.
By 1942, all the students at the Edmonton school were being x-rayed annually and newstudents were given a tuberculin test. In January 1943, one student was recommended
for sanatorium care.59 The 1945 survey of the Edmonton school reported that “for thesecond year in succession, there are no cases requiring sanatorium treatment.”60
However, x-ray services, which played an important role in identifying active cases,
were not always available. Fraser Lake, British Columbia, principal A. R. Simpson
reported in March 1946 that it had not been possible to have the students x-rayedthat year. He was certain that there were “some very active t.b. cases among the children that should be detected and isolated.”61 In November 1946, approximately 100
students at the Presbyterian school in Kenora reacted positively to a tuberculin test.62
The Ontario government’s Tuberculosis Control Division was not able to provide x-ray
services at the school, due to lack of staff.63 In June 1947, it was reported that there
were six students at the McIntosh school who required sanatorium treatment. Twoof the cases were described as appearing to be “of long standing.” In raising the issue
with the Ontario Tuberculosis Control Division, Dr. D. C. Marlatt of the Fort William
Sanatorium indicated that there was a need to x-ray students at both the Sioux
Lookout and McIntosh schools.64 One of the problems in controlling tuberculosis in
the schools was the ongoing admission of infected students.

Screening for admission
A policy requiring that residential school students undergo a medical examination
prior to admission had been in place since the 1890s.65 Despite this, into the 1950s,
in some cases, such examinations were perfunctory, ineffective, or non-existent.
Responsibility for this failure appears to have been shared between Indian Affairs andHealth: 1940–2000 • 199

the churches. The death of a student in 1946 at the Anglican school in Fort George,
Québec, of tubercular meningitis prompted the principal to complain that the boy
had been admitted by the Indian agent, even though the boy had previously been
diagnosed as having active tuberculosis. The principal asked:
Is there any way in which pressure could be brought to bear upon the authorities
to have the Indian Agent examine the school children on his visit to the Post?
Since I have taken over the School this has never been done. Now that the pupils
will be more or less the same for a few years, an examination at any time would
be a big help to us. The death was an unfortunate occurrence, as the boy was[one] of the Inlanders, and they have just started to put children into the school,
again.

Anglican official H. A. Alderwood passed the principal’s concerns on to IndianAffairs, saying that he hoped, in the future, “pupils entering the schools on James Bay
are examined as carefully as appears to be the case now at Aklavik.”66
The hospitalization of 13 of the 100 students attending the Kuper Island, British
Columbia, school with tuberculosis during the 1947–48 school year led local IndianAffairs official R. H. Moore to conclude that the method of medical examinations
was “ineffective from the point of detecting any latent disease.”67 To the frustration of
the supervisor of Indian agencies, in 1951, the principal of the Sandy Bay, Manitoba,
school admitted thirteen students without either seeking the department’s approvalor having them examined by a doctor. The supervisor wrote that “we might just as wellhand these schools over to the Principals and have nothing to do with them.”68
The flawed examination system meant that students with other infectious illnesses
and serious health problems were also being admitted to the schools. In 1949, P. E.
Moore, who was at that time acting superintendent of medical services for IndianAffairs, wrote that the communicable disease a student was suffering from had notbeen detected by his pre-admission medical examination for the Fraser Lake school.69
Even in cases where the illness did not represent a threat to the health of other students, the lack of information could compromise the care and attention that students
received in the school. In the 1950s, the principal of the Alberni, British Columbia,
school became aware that a student was epileptic only when the child had a seizure
at the school.70
In 1953, responsibility for carrying out the medical examination was transferred to
Indian Health Services. They were to conduct medical examinations “as soon as possible after school opens in September.”71

200 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Treatment in the schools
Once active cases were identified, it was not always possible for officials to findplaces for students in local sanatoria. In April 1943, Dr. G. L. Bell was concerned about
three children in the Sioux Lookout, Ontario, hospital who were awaiting admission
to the Fort William sanatorium. Bell informed Indian Affairs that he doubted that theywould be admitted to the Fort William facility and suggested that efforts be made toplace them, and one other newly diagnosed case, in the St. Boniface, Manitoba, sanatorium.72 A fall 1943 survey of students at the Hobbema, Alberta, school found thata third of them had either active or inactive tuberculosis. The acting assistant superintendent of medical services, W. L. Falconer, called the results “deplorable” andnoted that “it is not good enough to send children home from school without any
further effort to care for their welfare.” He recommended the children be hospitalized
at the Blood Indian Hospital and the Sarcee Hospital, although he was “not particularly impressed with the situation at Sarcee.”73 Instead, six students were sent home
and thirty-two students were put under observation.74 A November 1943 survey of
the St. Albert, Alberta, school identified four students in need of sanatorium care.75
Because there were no beds available for the students in the tuberculosis wing of theEdmonton General Hospital, the students were kept in the school.76 In late December,school official Rose Vincent wrote to Indian Affairs, “As lack of space does not permit
us to lodge them in separate apartments, these children are still in contact with theothers.” She thought the danger of contagion was “very great.”77 In mid-January 1944,
they were still in the school, although plans were in motion to place them in a hospitalin St. Paul, Alberta.78
In some cases, additional funding was provided to schools that were caring fortubercular students. Because of the tubercular condition of thirty students at the
Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario, Indian Affairs in 1940 provided an additional
grant of fifteen cents a day per student. These students received extra food and rest
times, and, at night, were separated from other students.79 In that same year, Dr. A. H.
Baker, the director of tuberculosis control for the Alberta government, recommended
that students with latent tuberculosis at residential schools in that province be given
a one-hour rest period after lunch and an extra serving of milk. Their weight and temperature were to be monitored and, if their condition did not improve, they were to
be re-examined.80
A 1942 Indian Affairs directive on the care of students who were under observation
for tuberculosis in residential schools recommended that they not be required to do
manual labour or to participate in athletics. Instead, they were to have an improved
diet and extra rest. Although they could be kept in the same dormitory as other students, they were to be separated from them “by some sort of screen or canvas.” They

Health: 1940–2000 • 201

were to eat separately off of separate dishes, and their temperature and weight were to
be monitored and changes reported to medical authorities.81
Two students from the Sioux Lookout school were hospitalized with tuberculosis
in January 1943. In reporting on other cases, Dr. Gordon L. Bell wrote that he thought
that, in theory, “minimal cases” could be treated at the school if they received “restand extra rations and reasonable supervision.” This seemed unlikely, however, since
the school was “extremely short of staff and the registered nurse on their staff has
far more work to do than any woman could be expected to perform efficiently.” Bellagreed to allow such students to stay in the school temporarily, but wished to monitor
their progress, since he felt the supervision they received at the school left “much to
be desired.”82
Overcrowding remained an ongoing problem at many residential schools into
the 1940s, and contributed to the spread of tuberculosis within the schools. IndianAffairs health official P. E. Moore felt that an “alarming” number of tuberculosis
cases had been detected at the Cross Lake, Manitoba, school in the spring of 1943.
Overcrowding at the school contributed to the spread of the disease, but Moore said
that “there is little that can be done about it at the present.” He advised the local doctor, B. S. C. Corrigan, to see if the tubercular students could be “isolated from the restof the children in the school and put on full bed care.” Corrigan was also authorized
to provide a “small per diem payment” for the school to ensure that the students got
the necessary bed care. But, he was told not to provide it “unless the school asked forit.”83 In July, the situation still had not been brought under control. Corrigan wrote thatduring his most recent visit to the school, a seven-year-old girl had died of tubercularmeningitis. It was the third such death at the school in four months. Corrigan had
recommended in March that the girl, along with several other tubercular students, bekept in bed. It was his conclusion that “my instructions regarding her and the otherchildren whom I asked to be kept in bed had not been carried out.” Corrigan felt thatstudents were becoming infected with tuberculosis after they arrived at the school,
which he thought to be dangerously overcrowded. He recommended that no children
from Island Lake, Manitoba, be sent to the school, since the people at that community had little resistance to tuberculosis. Putting the matter bluntly, he wrote, “I donot believe they should be brought out and mixed with people who have practically
100% infection.”84
The principal, G. E. Trudeau, disputed Corrigan’s criticisms, suggesting that thedoctor saw “nothing but tuberculosis all over.” Trudeau argued that the children were
not being infected with tuberculosis at the school, but in their home communities.
He wrote that Corrigan “should start first by cleaning the Reserves and then this great
problem would be easily solved for the schools.” As for charges that the sick children
were not kept on bedrest, he said that the girl who had died had been on bedrest until
her death. The others had been on bedrest “until we thought they were well enough202 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

to be up.” He pointed out that when they had been diagnosed, he had recommended
that they be sent for treatment at the Norway House, Manitoba, hospital. This was notdone because there was no room for them there. Trudeau also disputed the allegationthat the school was overcrowded, adding that if the enrolment were cut from 100 to 80,
as Corrigan recommended, the school would run a deficit of $3,000.85 In short, the percapita funding method was encouraging principals to overfill their schools, thereby
compromising student health.
Staff members could also come down with tuberculosis; unless the proper steps
were taken, this could pose a threat to student health. In July 1950, an employee ofthe Hobbema, Alberta, school was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Dr. W. L. Falconer, anIndian Health Services official in Alberta, described his condition as a “menace to theschool children,” and recommended that he be removed from the school.86 Four anda half months later, Falconer repeated the request.87 Finally, at the end of December,
Indian Affairs official Bernard Neary felt compelled to write to the school, requesting that the staff member be removed from the school.88 Five years later, Dr. Falconer
complained again.
It would appear to me that the teaching profession does not realize theseriousness of the present situation. In the last few years we have admitted
probably 50 children with tuberculosis that can be traced back to open cases on
the school staff in this [the Foothills] area. There were about 30 in the Hobbema
school, several in Fort Providence school, a number in the Gleichen school, andnow we have some in the Blue Quills school.

He said that in addition to two staff members who had been removed from the Blue
Quills school because of their tuberculosis, there were two other staff members who
had not been x-rayed. “Father Angine is up in years and he has more or less braggedthat he evaded the x-ray.”89
Some residential schools were viewed as possible treatment facilities for children
with tuberculosis. In the case of one girl who was diagnosed with tuberculosis innorthwestern Ontario in 1943, it was felt that her case was not so serious as to require
sanatorium treatment. Instead, a doctor recommended that, because other membersof her family had active tuberculosis, it would be best if she were placed in a residential school.90

Vaccination and improvements
In 1947, the federal government began to vaccinate “the Indian children of British
Columbia” with bcg. Initially, the focus was on children at residential schools, but
the program was broadened to include newborns and students at day schools.91
Similar programs were initiated and carried out in other provinces. Students at theHealth: 1940–2000 • 203

Sturgeon Landing, Saskatchewan, school were vaccinated with bcg in 1948, leading
to a low number of students testing positive for tuberculosis in 1949.92 By the mid1950s, Indian Health Services had adopted a bcg vaccination policy for the controlof tuberculosis among the First Nations population in Saskatchewan. The goal was
to vaccinate all First Nations newborn infants. Starting in the 1955–56 school year, allstudents were to be given a tuberculin test at school to detect the presence of the bacteria. Those who tested negative were to be vaccinated.93 Campaigns of this nature hada significant impact. A 1957 survey of the Roman Catholic school at Cardston, Alberta,
showed that of 229 students, 195 had no evidence of tuberculosis, and neither were
there any reported cases of active tuberculosis.94
The presence of tuberculosis in the schools continued to decline. In 1964, 93% of
the Kindergarten class at the Onion Lake, Saskatchewan, school tested negative fortuberculosis.95 The disease was not, however, non-existent. In 1964, a “minimal active
case” of tuberculosis was reported at the Birtle, Manitoba, school. There was also acase of reactivated tuberculosis at the Assiniboia School in Winnipeg. In this case, thestudent had been admitted to the school without having undergone an initial medical
examination. Both students were placed in the Ninette, Manitoba, sanatorium.96
Residential school students were still being diagnosed with, and treated for, tuberculosis in 1970.97 Treatment practice was changing considerably: sanatoria were being
closed and tubercular patients were being treated in general hospitals and in theirown communities on a walk-in basis. The number of young people being treated at theCharles Camsell Indian Hospital in Edmonton had declined to the point in 1970 thatconsideration was given to re-evaluating the need for the in-hospital school programfor patients.98 In 1972, an annual tuberculin test, bcg vaccination, and x-ray program
were still being undertaken at student residences in Saskatchewan.99 In 1973, 4,934
First Nations and Inuit people were vaccinated with bcg and an additional 2,072 persons were revaccinated. In that same year, 345 new tuberculosis cases were identified among First Nations and Inuit people. Of these, 134 were among people nineteen
years of age and younger.100
Before turning to the other illnesses and diseases that took root in residential
schools during this period, it is important to note that although the tuberculosis death
rate was brought down through medical intervention, little was done to address thesocio-economic issues that continued to leave so many Aboriginal people vulnerable to the disease. Drinkable water was in short supply, unemployment was pervasive, and housing was both insufficient in supply and inadequate in construction.101
In 1970, the journalist Heather Robertson wrote a lengthy and detailed book about
conditions on reserves across Canada. Her description of housing on the Roseau River
Reserve in Manitoba is illustrative of the conditions that she observed.
Roseau has only 55 homes: these are houses and shacks; and 40 families arewithout shelter altogether. People are forced to double-up and sometimes

204 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

triple-up with relatives and friends. A house inadequate for a family of five holds
15 people in Roseau. The shacks are uninhabitable—no insulation, no floor,
no furniture, often no windows—but people live in them because nothing elseis available.102

Such conditions bred ill health. Robertson wrote, “Pneumonia, bronchitis, colds,
sinus trouble and intestinal infections are chronic and general on Roseau Reserve, theunavoidable result of cheap, badly heated homes, overcrowding and poor sanitation.”103
It was from these communities and with these illnesses that students continued to be recruited into residential schools. And, into the 1960s, these schools were
often cheaply constructed, badly heated, overcrowded, and plagued with deficient sanitation.

Other diseases
Poor health in First Nations communities, coupled with limited screening, meantthat sick children continued to bring other communicable diseases into residential
schools, even as the tuberculosis death rate was being reduced. Overcrowding andinadequate sanitation meant that these illnesses could spread quickly. The conditions
were not limited to schools in remote locations or to the period of wartime economy.
As the following example demonstrates, they were still present in schools in urban
centres during periods of sustained economic growth.
In May 1959, a young girl living at the Fort William, Ontario, school was hospitalized with an ear infection. A test showed that she was carrying virulent diphtheriaorganisms—in other words, although she was not suffering from diphtheria, she wasa carrier of the disease. The matter was reported to Dr. M. R. Warren, the director of
the local provincial health office. He tested the students at the school, which had 115
residents, and discovered that 22 of them were in need of treatment for diphtheria.
The outbreak had been brought under control by the end of the summer, but in thefall, he undertook a second round of testing and found that ten more students werecarriers of the disease.
He also undertook a quick investigation of conditions in the school and prepareda highly critical report for the Ontario director of child welfare. He wrote that theschool was overcrowded by nearly 100% in terms of floor space and by more than
50% in terms of the cubic space available. Many of the residents slept in dormitories
on the third and fourth floors of the building, which, he said, was not in keeping witha Charitable Institutions Act regulation prohibiting sleeping quarters above the second floor.
There were no provisions for isolating young people with communicable diseases.
As far as he could tell, there was “no routine medical examination to rule out theHealth: 1940–2000 • 205

possibility of communicable disease.” He said the dishwashing facilities at the school“would not be permitted in any other eating establishment in this area. The dishes are
washed at each table of four in a pan of water.” In his letter, Warren pointed out thatsix of the school residents attended a local high school, meaning “the Lakehead could
be affected via this route.” Upon discharge, students were likely to spread infection “ineach of their remote communities.” He concluded by noting that it appeared to himthat the sister superior of the school needed guidance on admission procedures andthe treatment of children with communicable diseases.104
Most new students generally arrived without having undergone a medical examination, and were rarely given one after admission. Indian Affairs admitted that it was
not possible to have students in remote communities given a medical examination
prior to their being sent to the school, but made a commitment to see that one wasundertaken upon their arrival. Dr. Warren pointed out that so many agencies wereinvolved in the school that “one Agency did not know what the other was doing
and no standard practices had been evolved.” Representatives of the other agencies
placing children in the school made similar commitments. (Half of the children at
the residence had status under the Indian Act, and the rest were non-status Indians,
mostly wards of the children’s aid societies of Fort William and Port Arthur.)105 One of
the apparent benefits of the attention that Warren drew to the school was the IndianAffairs decision to increase the per capita grant from $375 to $575 a year.106
A decades-old pattern was still being repeated: lack of screening led to the admission of sick children. Overcrowding and poor sanitation allowed the infection to
spread. Staff members were not trained to deal with the illness, agencies were unawareof the problems, and federal funds were inadequate.
Other illnesses coursed through the schools, taxing their resources. Fraser Lake,
British Columbia, principal A. R. Simpson reported in March 1946 that the past winterhad been the worst period with regard to the health of children in all myexperience here. Early in February we had a flu epidemic with about 65 children
being in bed at the same time. This was almost cleared up when anotheroutbreak occurred at the beginning of March, during which we had 145 children
in bed simultaneously with four Sisters and several other members of staff.

He said that Indian Affairs had ignored his requests for vitamins for the children.107
Twenty-two years later, a terse telex message to federal health authorities reported:“outbreak influenza la tuque residential school. rev j e de wolf princpal
complaining lack of medical supplies and ignorance as to availability ofnursing and medical care.” Federal health officials reported that supplies would be
dispatched that day.108
When the Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, school was hit with measles in June 1940,the students initially were not allowed to go home at the end of the school year.109 In

206 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

January 1941, there were outbreaks of measles at the Hobbema, Alberta, school and at
the Gordon’s and Lestock schools in Saskatchewan.110 In April 1950, the Presbyterianschool at Kenora had a rubella (German measles) epidemic, with cases varying from“a mild respiratory upset with minimal rash to a rather severe attack with Herpes
Simplex, Tonsillitis, Cervical Adonitis and Bronchitis.” One student had to be hospitalized for bronchial pneumonia.111
There were outbreaks of hepatitis at the schools at Inuvik, Northwest Territories(1961); Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia (1962); Lytton, British Columbia (1962); Fraser
Lake, British Columbia (1962); Mission, British Columbia (1962); Hobbema, Alberta(1962); Portage la Prairie, Manitoba (1964); Prince Albert, Saskatchewan (1964
and 1967); Brandon, Manitoba (1964); Dauphin, Manitoba (1964); Duck Lake,
Saskatchewan (1966 and 1967); and La Tuque, Québec (1970).112 In many of thesecases, students were inoculated with gamma globulin (a mixture of blood plasma proteins that includes antibodies, given to enhance immunity). Visits to the schools might
be limited or the schools might be placed under quarantine; students were required
to dip their hands in disinfectant after using the toilet, and toothbrushes were dippedin mouthwash.113
A meningitis outbreak in 1956 led to both of the Cardston, Alberta, schools’ being
placed under quarantine.114 Two years later, there was a case of cerebrospinal meningitis at the McIntosh, Ontario, school.115 Fifty-five students came down with bronchitis
at the Roman Catholic school in Kenora in 1950. Although none were seriously ill,quarantine was put in place to stop the spread of infection.116 In 1969, an outbreakof meningitis in the community of Mistassini led to the La Tuque, Québec, school’s
being placed under quarantine. The staff and students—a total of 364 people—wereconfined to the school and provided with preventive medication.117
Trachoma (a contagious eye disease) returned to some schools. Nurse Kathleen
Stewart reported that because preventive measures had been dispensed with during
the war, there was a serious outbreak of trachoma at the Birtle, Manitoba, school in
the early 1940s. She wrote: “Thousands of sulfanilamide tablets were obtained fromthe Indian Health Services, and a campaign on the reservations found and treated thesources of infection. The results were a marked improvement in achievement in theschool and no more trachoma.”118
Poliomyelitis, more commonly referred to as “polio,” reached epidemic proportions across Canada on several occasions between 1940 and 1960. An effective vaccine
for treating the virus was not developed until the mid-1950s.119 During the 1941 outbreak, government officials considered closing the residential schools, but decided
against the measure. Medical officers were instructed to monitor the schools carefully
for the appearances of any new cases and to prohibit children from leaving and thenreturning. Restrictions were also placed on visits to the schools. Senior Indian Affairs
health official P. E. Moore argued that “children would be better in the school whereHealth: 1940–2000 • 207

they can be under supervision than running around their reserves or hanging aroundnear-by towns.”120 Despite this policy, residential schools in the prairie provinces did
not immediately reopen at the beginning of the 1941–42 school year.121 After consulting with provincial officials, Indian Affairs official M. Christianson concluded that theschools “may be kept open but visiting and mingling with the school children must
be banned.”122 The Aklavik schools in the Northwest Territories were closed for two
weeks at the beginning of the 1951–52 school year, due to the presence of a suspectedcase of polio in the community.123 In 1953, the two schools in Kenora, Ontario, wereplaced under quarantine because of a polio outbreak in the region.124 The outbreak
was so serious in Sioux Lookout that part of the school was serving as a hospital totreat students who had contracted the virus.125 Eventually, twenty-one students fromthe Sioux Lookout school were admitted to the Sioux Lookout Indian Hospital with adiagnosis of poliomyelitis.126 In 1955, Northern Affairs undertook a campaign to have
all the children between the ages of one and fifteen vaccinated against polio.127
In later years, outbreaks of serious diseases declined in frequency but did notdisappear. There were, for example, fifty cases of the mumps at the Prince Albert,
Saskatchewan, school in 1967.128 As late as 1990, an outbreak of influenza in Cambridge
Bay, in the Northwest Territories, led to a brief school closing.129

The schools as sources of illness
In some cases, it was the conditions within the schools themselves that bred illness.
In the fall of 1941, Indian Affairs inspector G. J. Buck reported that at the Qu’Appelle,
Saskatchewan, school, thetemperature of all the seven classrooms is much too low for pupil health andgood work. The average for the four days of the inspection was between 54 and
56 degrees Fahrenheit [12 and 13 degrees Celsius, respectively]. It felt really cold.
By actual count over 75% of the 264 children had colds in one form or another,and according to the Principal had had them for several weeks.

Buck said similar problems had been reported the previous year, but nothing had
been done about it.130 School principal M. Bretagne said the weather had been fair at
the time of Buck’s visit and there had been no need to heat the buildings excessively.
He said that the students had not caught colds at the school, but had been sick when
they returned to school in the fall.131
Dr. A. B. Simes, the medical superintendent of the Qu’Appelle Indian Hospital in
Saskatchewan, conducted an investigation into parental complaints about conditions at the Elkhorn, Manitoba, school in 1944. He found their concerns to be completely justified:208 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

I regret to have to report that I never anticipated finding conditions in any schoolas existed in the Elkhorn Residential School. Mr. Cornelius Bigwell’s statement,
made to Mr. D. J. Allan, sums up the situation perfectly when he says:“While it was admitted that living conditions in an Indian village were not of avery high standard, they were much less crude, much less insanitary [sic] andmuch more convenient than their children enjoyed at the Elkhorn School.”
The indians [sic] have every justification to complain. They are to becongratulated on the gentlemanly manner of action taken to have mattersremedied. This lack of supervision and interest in the school and pupils as well
as mismanagement, is not of recent origin. It has been going on for and [sic]indefinite period.132

It was not until 1949 that this school, which had a long history of problems, wasfinally closed.133
The antiquated sewage system at Moose Factory, Ontario, led to a “serious outbreak of typhoid fever among the staff and the pupils” in 1947.134 Three years later, Dr.
B. H. Harper of the Moose Factory Indian Hospital pointed out that the sewage system
was still inadequate. He wrote that in the spring and fall of 1949, fluids from the septictank were “seeping through the grounds in the immediate vicinity of the back doorof the school and the odour caused thereby both outside and inside the building wasmost repulsive.” In 1950, it was necessary to hospitalize a number of students who had“developed rashes due to uncleanliness.”135
An unnamed federal health official wrote in 1962 that there had been a steadystream of illness at the Anglican school in Fort George, Québec, over the previous five
years. He attributed the problem to poor management.
General uncleanliness, impetigo, pediculosis, scabies and everything else thatcomes along. This situation has broken the heart of every sincere nurse that
we have yet had there. I did visit the management and pointed out the shortcomings and got a promise of improvement, which for some reason or other I
must not get overly enthusiastic about ever happening.136

A federal health department official wrote in 1966 that sewage in Stuart Lake constituted a health hazard for students at the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school.
He recommended that a 1964 proposal to chlorinate the water supply at the school
be implemented as soon as possible.137 In the same year, raw sewage from theAssumption, Alberta, school was feared to be polluting the Gun River, placing families that lived downstream at risk.138 In 1966, a medical health officer gave a notice
to close the Roman Catholic school in The Pas, Manitoba, unless a sewage issue wasdealt with immediately.139 In 1968, there was an outbreak of intestinal illness at the
McIntosh, Ontario, school because the treatment system was both inadequate andoperated intermittently.140

Health: 1940–2000 • 209

An inspection of the Grayson, Saskatchewan, school in 1979 noted that some of therefrigerators lacked thermostats and other refrigerators were set at temperatures thatwere too high.141 An outbreak of salmonella (bacteria-based food poisoning) in 1989
affected forty-four people at the Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, residence. Twenty-four of
those had to be hospitalized. An investigation into the residence kitchen concluded
that the outbreak was likely the result of a combination of poor food handling, a lack ofdependable equipment (the refrigerators did not keep food cool enough), and understaffing (untrained staff were often pressed into service in the kitchen).142

Quality of care
As noted earlier, medical officials with Indian Affairs had a poor opinion of the
medical services provided at church-run facilities. In 1942, Indian Affairs official P. E.
Moore expressed his dissatisfaction with the continued operation of a small buildingreferred to as a “hospital” that was attached to the Fort Albany, Ontario, school. Moore
said that he had “no knowledge as to whether or not any of the Sisters [of Charity, whowere staffing the facility] are graduate nurses.” He was disturbed to discover that students were being diagnosed by people who were not doctors and that Indian Affairs
was paying hospital rates for students who were being cared for in this facility. He
was particularly alarmed that surgeries, including surgeries on students, were being
carried out there.143
Two decades later, an unnamed regional superintendent with the British Columbia
branch of the federal Indian and Northern Health Services expressed a similar concern about the quality of the care provided in school infirmaries. He wrote in 1960
that “the infirmaries in residential schools are not at all suitable for many of the healthactivities we are expected to carry out.”144
Principals were also critical of federal health services. The Oblate order reported
lengthy delays in receiving authorization from Indian and Northern Health Services
for needed expenses. At the Assiniboia School in Winnipeg in 1959, it took six months
to get approval to purchase eyeglasses for students. André Renaud of the Oblate Indianand Eskimo Welfare Commission felt that because of the delay, many students “failed
to progress satisfactorily during the major part of the year.”145
In May 1961, the principal of the Roman Catholic school at The Pas, Manitoba,
informed Indian Affairs that there had not been a “routine medical checkup” at theschool since 1958.146 In the mid-1960s, J. E. DeWolf, the principal of the La Tuque,Québec, school, complained that he was not able to get appropriate medical treatment for students in the school.147 In January 1965, he reported that:• the school was short on vitamins• only about half of the new students had been given a proper medical assessment210 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission• needed booster shots and vaccinations had not been given• students who required tonsillectomies had not been operated upon148
In February 1965, he wrote, “We have been without vitamin pills for nearly a month.
As you know to be without them is slow poison for these children, and it is poor economy to deprive them of these for we will pay for it with increased sickness.”149
Two years later, in November 1967, J. E. Y. Levaque, the principal of the Catholicschool at Cardston, Alberta, complained to Indian Affairs that since the start of theschool year, students had not received:• a vision checkup (which would normally be followed by the issuing of glasses tothose who needed them)• immunizations• a physical checkup• a visit from a nurse to check on sores• x-ray examinations to identify cases of tuberculosis• vitamin pills for day students• cough syrup, Aspirin, and other medicine for residents
On the last point, Levaque said he had been informed that a local doctor had given
nurses instructions not to issue any medicine to residential schools. Despite hisrequests to discuss the problem, local federal health officials had been unwilling tomeet with him. In frustration, he wrote, “I will accept no responsibility for harm thatcomes to the children under my care, because of the neglect of the National Welfare
doctors and nurses.”150
Such examples make clear that even by the late 1960s, there were still severe limitations on the range of health services being provided. The record suggests that incoming years—as the number of residential students steeply declined—the quality ofservice did improve. In the 1980s, students at the Gordon’s school in Saskatchewan
were being seen by speech and language pathologists and dentists, and undergoing
vaccination (with parental consent) and vision screening.151 In 1992, it was estimatedthat 50% of one staff member’s time at Akaitcho Hall in Yellowknife was spent on making doctor’s appointments on behalf of the students.152

Chronic ear disease in Kenora
There are also cases of school staff working determinedly to address chronic healthproblems. This was the case with chronic ear disease in Kenora. Chronic ear disease
among children was a serious medical issue both in Canada and the United Kingdom
in the first half of the twentieth century. It was common, was difficult to treat, andoften led to deafness. The disease often developed from acute ear infections. It was

Health: 1940–2000 • 211

also thought that the disease had a social dimension, being more prevalent among
the children of low-income families.153 Into the 1990s in Canada, certain ear infections
appeared to be more common among Aboriginal children than among non-Aboriginal children.154
In the 1950s, one recommended method of treatment of chronic ear infection in
Canada was termed “replacement therapy” because it involved replacing infectedfluid in the ear with antiseptic medications.155 The Canadian medical consensus in1957 was that treatment should involve antibiotics, laboratory analysis of a sample ofthe pus or discharge from the patient’s ear to identify the types of bacteria present, andsurgical measures in the most severe cases.156
Chronic and acute ear infections appear to have been particularly severe at the
Presbyterian school in Kenora. Starting in the fall of 1953, Kathleen Stewart, theschool nurse, worked with Dr. Al Torrie from the Lake of the Woods Clinic and Dr.
Chiu Whan-Ling (generally referred to as “Dr. Ling” in the documents) to address aseries of ongoing ear problems experienced by students at the school.157 Stewart hadstudied the care of ear disease in 1952 and kept very detailed records of the work thatwas carried out on children with ear disease.158
According to Stewart, the problems included “offensive odour of the children’s
breath, discharging ears, lack of sustained attention, poor enunciation when speaking
and loud talking.” These conditions are all indicative of chronic ear disease. Under
her direction, the students were taught how to irrigate their ears using warm water.
With this treatment, she reported, “Most of them cleared up in a few days and have
not repeated.”159
Specimens of pus from students who still had fluid discharging from their ears weresent to the Ontario Provincial Laboratory.160 The laboratory carried out tests to determine which antibiotics were effective in individual cases.161 In some cases, surgicaltreatment (the removal of tonsils and adenoids) was performed.162 Each of the elements of this treatment was consistent with the recommended practice of the day.
A variety of medications were used. The antiseptic fluid used to treat non-chronic
cases was Merthiolate, which contained mercury.163 Merthiolate was used mainly as
a topical antiseptic treatment and as a preservative in vaccines during this period.
Research has since concluded that it was ineffective and, due to the presence of mercury, toxic.164 As a result, it is no longer used as an antiseptic and its use in vaccines has
been limited in North America.
Those students at Kenora with perforations of the front half of the eardrum werereported to respond to treatment with ephedrine (a decongestant). It is now recognized that treatment with decongestants was not effective, although it could reduce
nasal congestion. Oil drops were used to treat students with central eardrum perforations; it was reported that within a few days of flushing with water, these perforations
would close. Penicillin and antibacterial drugs were used to treat students who were212 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

complaining of pain in the area behind the ear. By the end of the school year, Stewart
reported that most of the “ear drums appear to be almost normal now.”165
Stewart and school principal Ivan Robson placed ongoing pressure on Indian
Health Services officials to provide them with the support that local physicians had
recommended.166 That support was slow in coming and, it appears, offered only reluctantly.167 In providing this treatment, Stewart was working under the supervision ofboth doctors Torrie and Ling.168
In June 1954, Stewart wrote a report on the “experimentation and treatment of ear
disease among 165 pupils.” From September 1953 to June 1954, there had been eighty
pupils with ear troubles ranging from “slight deafness due to dry wax etc. covering theear drum to complete destruction of both ear drums accompanied by profuse discharge.” She said that there had been active disease in forty cases. “After using the
drugs recommended by the Provincial Laboratory most of them seem to have recovered completely and are in much better general health.” At the end of the school year,
the ears of all the students at the school were checked. Of these, “126 were good andcould be seen without clearing; 3 had small central perforations healing well; 10 weredischarging, 3 of these were almost deaf with no ear drums, 6 had one ear drum gone,
and one was draining through a perforation.”169 In January 1955, she reported that
there had been “constant change and improvement in the health of the children.”170
The use of the word experimentation in Stewart’s June 1954 report should not betaken to mean that the treatment at the school was part of a research project. Nothing
in the record suggests that this was a research experiment or a clinical trial. It certainly
received little support from Indian Affairs or Indian Health Services. There was no control group, no use of experimental drugs, and, as far as the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada has been able to determine, no academic or research papers
were published on the work. “Experimentation” in this context describes the process
by which the doctors and nurse were attempting to match the treatment to the illness
by having specimens of the fluid discharge from students’ ears analyzed by a laboratory. As late as 2004, a World Health Organization report noted that most approaches
to the treatment of chronic ear infections “have been unsatisfactory or are very expensive and difficult.”171 In this case, it would appear that the school staff, working in
co-operation with local physicians and laboratory staff, sought to provide students
who were suffering from a painful and potentially debilitating condition with treatment that was in accord with the standards of the day.

Dental care
In the early 1940s, most Canadians had limited access to dental care.172 In 1946,
Dr. L. V. Janes, the chief of Health Canada’s Dental Division, proposed that a dental

Health: 1940–2000 • 213

service be established within the Department of National Health and Welfare to help
reduce wastage and overlapping services. The need for such a measure was underlined by the “difficulty people across Canada are having in obtaining appointments
for dental treatment,” due, at least in part, to “an extreme shortage of dentists.”173 It was
not until the 1950s that this shortage was addressed by an increase in the number ofCanadian dental schools.174
For residential schools, the shortage of dentists was compounded by a shortageof money to pay them. Although, on occasion, Indian Affairs paid for dental services
during the war years, schools sometimes had to pay for these services out of their own
school funds. This happened in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, in 1945.175 Many schools
simply did without dental services. When Father C. E. Cameron took over as principalof the Roman Catholic school in Kenora in 1943, he discovered that “our children had
not had dental care for a long time,” resulting in most cases in a “mouthful of decayedteeth.” The local dentist refused to fill cavities unless the parents paid. Cameron
said that at other schools where he had worked, the department had covered dental
costs.176 As a result of his efforts, the local Indian agent was authorized to engage adentist to provide service at the school.177
In January 1947, W. L. Falconer, the acting assistant superintendent of Indian
Health Services, noted that the government had been trying to obtain dental services
for the Kenora Indian Agency, including the residential schools in that agency, without success. The issue had resurfaced because the principal of the Roman Catholicschool in Kenora had thirty-three children “with decayed teeth” and needed “theattention of a dentist.”178 The Indian agent, Norman Paterson, was able to make anarrangement with a local dentist, but he was not optimistic about the quality of carethat would be provided:
The local Dentists are all crowded with work and I also am aware that they
are not at all fussy about taking on the Indian work. I would also advise that if
Dr. Chernen or any other local Dentist is held down to the Departments’ [sic]schedule of fees, then I’m afraid our Indians will get very little consideration.179

A local Indian agent was given advance authority to hire a dentist to conduct a tenday clinic at the Squamish, British Columbia, school in 1946, although Health Services
officials questioned whether so much time was needed to treat eighty students.180 The
standard fee was a flat rate of $30 a day, which was intended to cover both the dentist’s
time and his supplies. In addition, Indian Health Services paid for travel expenses.181
In that year, dentists from Kenora declined to service the McIntosh, Ontario, school
unless the fees were raised to take into account the time that they spent travelling toand from the community.182
It appears the dental treatment was generally limited to fillings and extractions.183
Spanish, Ontario, principal J. R. Oliver reported in May 1946 that, according to a214 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

survey undertaken by the school infirmarian (the staff person assigned to care for theinfirmary, often someone without medical training) and the school nurse, there were
250 students in need of having teeth extracted and 185 who needed to have cavities
filled.184 The workloads could be heavy: in planning for one visit, it was estimated that
300 fillings and 530 extractions could be done in ten days.185 The McIntosh school was
not alone in being unable to find a dentist willing to provide it with service. The Sandy
Bay, Manitoba, school administration also had trouble finding a dentist preparedto hold a clinic at the school in the early post-war period.186 A Saskatchewan dentist
agreed that he might be willing to travel to the Onion Lake, Saskatchewan, school,but only in the late spring “when the roads are good.”187 When a dentist examined
the students at both the Anglican and Roman Catholic schools in Aklavik, Northwest
Territories, in the summer of 1946, she found that of fifty-seven girls, fifty-two (91%)
needed treatment. Of the fifty-nine boys she examined, forty-six (78%) needed treatment. She performed 50 extractions and 355 fillings in a total of 397 operations.188
Of the 126 procedures undertaken by Dr. H. M. McCaffery in 1947 at the Anglican
school in Brocket, Alberta, 74 were extractions and 35 were fillings.189 All forty-one procedures that he performed at the Cluny, Alberta, school that year were extractions.190
After pulling 116 teeth and filling 46 cavities at the Anglican school at Cardston,
Alberta, McCaffery wrote, “There was very little work done in recent years and thechildren were badly in need of care.”191 According to dentist O. G. Shepherd’s January
1949 report on treatment at the school in Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, only 32 of the 212
students examined did not need treatment. He reported performing 765 operations.
These included 129 extractions, 631 fillings, 1 prophylaxis, and 4 unspecified treatments. This represented “thirty-one actual working days to complete.”192
By the late 1940s, Indian Health Services was funding dental clinics at residential schools, if a dentist could be found.193 Such clinics revealed the need for ongoing
improvements in dental care at the schools. After a 1948 visit to the Alberni, British
Columbia, school, Dr. W. Ewart reported that he had extracted 419 teeth, filled 188
cavities, and performed 2 prophylaxes. He estimated:
About 60 percent of the children of this school are taking good care of theirteeth. Possibly better than I have run into so far in this respect. Of the remaindera considerable number find it impossibly [sic] to brush their teeth due to thepainful conditions such as abcesses [sic] and decayed teeth. This situation is
being corrected and these children are instructed to start brushing at once.
The rest have either lost their tooth brushes [sic] or are obviously neglecting
their teeth.194

In June 1949, P. S. Tennant, the head of Indian Health Services in British Columbia,
informed the Alberni school principal that, according to a recent dentist’s report, atthat school, “25% of pupils are cleaning their teeth while 75% are not giving sufficientattention to brushing teeth twice a day. The lack of cleanliness in the latter groupHealth: 1940–2000 • 215

results in gingivitis and dental caries.” This represented a decline from the previous
year in the percentage of students judged to be taking care of their teeth.195 At theChristie, British Columbia, school, the condition of the girls’ teeth was excellent, due
to the fact they were brushing regularly. However, according to Tennant, “The boys’
teeth have not received the same care and the results are obvious.”196
Despite the expansion of services, many schools were still left literally begging for
dental treatment. In February 1949, Fred Mayo, the principal of the Prince Albert,
Saskatchewan, school, complained to Indian Affairs that there were “64 children herethat badly need dental attention. children [sic] crying night after night with the toothache and etc.”197
National Health and Welfare official W. Barr Murray wrote to E. L. Stone, the Alberta
supervisor of Indian Health Services, in January 1950 to point out that at the Morleyschool, “the pupils [sic] teeth are in bad condition.” While he was arranging for immediate treatment of those students in the worst condition, he was also renewing his“request for a dentist to visit the school three times during the term for one day eachtime.”198 In his annual report for 1949–50, the principal of the Wabasca, Alberta, school
said there had been no dental care provided to students at his school during the previous year.199 In 1950, the principal of the Hobbema school reported, “For a couple ofyears no dentist has visited our school to examine the children’s teeth.” Students withtoothaches had been sent to a local dentist, but he did “not like to receive 5 or 6 children at the same time.”200 Spanish, Ontario, principal J. R. Oliver reported being “badly
in need of a dental clinic” in the fall of 1949. “Quite a few” of the sixty new pupils at theboys’ school and the girls’ school were in “need of care.” He was authorized to hold aclinic and pay the dentist $35 a day.201
Efforts to improve dental care often became caught in interdepartmental conflicts. In 1950, Dr. O. Leroux of Indian Health Services reported that dental care at two
Saskatchewan schools had improved after he had provided them with toothbrushes
and tooth powder the year before. He recommended that Indian Affairs continue tosupply them.202 Indian Affairs official B. H. Neary responded that although the department was prepared to provide toothbrushes, “in the past the Indian Health Services
have always supplied the dental powder.”203 A 1952 report from the Blood Indian
Reserve (where the two Cardston schools were located) noted that “dental health isanother problem, especially in the schools among the beginners.” A local dentist visited the schools annually, but “it is impossible to accomplish much with the time hehas at his disposal.”204 In 1949, a dentist visiting both the Anglican and Catholic schools
in Aklavik performed 55 extractions and 294 fillings on ninety-eight students.205
There were also disputes over fees. Indian Health Services had anticipated that all
the students at the Carcross, Yukon, school could be treated in “one fairly long day,”for a total cost of $50.206 An eventual bill of $198 brought forth a letter of complaint
from Indian Health Services and a request for more details on what had been done.207

216 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In some cases, Indian Health Services official W. L. Falconer felt that dentists were“grasping the opportunity” created by the shortage of dentists to demand what heviewed as “extortionate rates.”208
Reports of problems continued into the following decades. In 1952, Indian HealthServices official J. P. Harvey wrote to his superiors in Ottawa that 106 of the 280 students at the Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, school were in need of dental attention. It was,he wrote, just an example of a problem that he encountered throughout the province.
He asked if he should make arrangements with local dentists until a new dental officer
was appointed.209
Services were extended in the 1960s. For example, by 1965, a program of topicalfluoridation (the application of fluoride to the surface of the teeth) for children in
residential schools had been “in operation for some years.”210 However, funding limitations meant that services continued to be rationed. A dentist recently arrived in
Portage la Prairie, W. G. Hetherington, was compelled to write a letter to the federal
government in 1966, complaining about the difficulty he was having in treating First
Nations patients. Why, he wanted to know, did he have to wait a month and a half
after making a diagnosis before he could get permission to go ahead with treatment?
He did not see any point in the $25 limit on dental work, since 90% of the work wasworth more than $25. He said that in a period of four months, he could have provided
treatment to all the students in the Portage la Prairie school, but, due to government
delay, he had been able to treat only three students completely.211 In that same year,
an Indian Affairs dentist said he had never seen children’s teeth in such bad shape as
they were at the school at Cluny, Alberta. Dr. Vern Kennedy had expected to spend
four or five weeks in Cluny, but his dental service visit was stretching to over twomonths.212 Access to care in the schools would improve in the following years, but,once more, the improvements would be greatest during the period of declining residential school enrolment.213

Emotional care
The increased use of schools as child-welfare institutions (described in an earlier
chapter) created new problems for both the institutions and the children. The schools
were not established, funded, or staffed to address the complex emotional and psychological needs of the children who were being enrolled in the schools. This inadequacy was apparent to a number of principals, who began referring some students topsychiatric professionals for testing and counselling. Although the psychiatrists could
provide diagnoses and recommend specific courses of action, in many cases, there
were no available treatment facilities. The system, overcrowded and underfunded,Health: 1940–2000 • 217

contributed to the students’ stress and did little to alleviate it. In the most extreme andtragic cases, students sought relief in drugs, alcohol, and suicide.
In the 1960s, Brandon, Manitoba, principal Ford Bond approached an unnamed
federal health official with a concern about the impact of the lack of emotional carefor the students. The official later provided the following summary of Bond’s worries(which had been expressed to him orally).
You are concerned about these young children because of your small, untrained
staff, the lack of mothering and the regimentation that is required to keep theresidence operating on a schedule. You feel, I believe, that if you had more better
prepared staff, the children would be less lonely, receive more tender loving care,and have more fun and as a result be happier children and do better at school.

The official suggested that Bond get a psychiatrist to undertake an evaluation “as an
exercise in the prevention of mental illness in emotionally deprived children.”214
Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, principal P. J. Collins noted in 1963 that in the past,
the school’s greatest problem had been overcrowding or dealing with children who
were fifteen and “could not be handled at home.” But, he felt, the school now faced
a new challenge: an increasing number of “emotionally disturbed children.” He said
that he spent much of his time driving children to appointments in Truro and Halifax.
The solution lay in securing the services of a “competent (catholic) psychiatrist who
would visit the school from time to time, and advise us on the handling of so many ofthese children.”215
There were few treatment options available. Some students were judged to be ofborderline intelligence with no academic future. In the case of a fifteen-year-old boy,it was recommended that the principal simply wait to the end of the school year andsend the boy home.216 In the case of a girl who was described as needing intensive
residential psychiatric treatment, it was felt that she should not be returned to either
her home or the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school, where she had been living.
According to the doctor who had examined her, there was no government facility towhich she could be sent. The best he could recommend was to attempt to have herplaced in a private facility in Moose Jaw.217
A boy from the Kamloops, British Columbia, school was described as being“depressed to moderately seriously degree.” His mother had recently died and his
father was described as having a drinking problem. It was proposed that he be transferred to either a special treatment facility or a foster home.218 In another case, it wasrecommended that one boy, who was soon to turn nineteen and had become a discipline problem at the Lytton, British Columbia, school, be placed in a group home in
a community that had access to a mental health centre. In the past, the boy had experienced depression and expressed suicidal tendencies. Finding such a facility proved

218 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissiondifficult, even though, as the Lytton principal, Anthony Harding, wrote, “rejection is
the last thing he needs.”219
A 1959 psychiatric report suggested that a student at the Cross Lake, Manitoba,
school be returned to his home community.220 However, it was felt that because of
his physical disabilities arising from polio, the student should remain in residential
school.221 A 1962 assessment of a boy suffering from tuberculosis, who had on a number of occasions attempted to set fire to the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario,
suggested that he be placed in a foster home.222 In the 1970s, two brothers, aged elevenand fourteen, from the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school had been referred toDr. W. P. Kyne because of their disruptive behaviour. The doctor’s comments showed
considerable sympathy for the boys. He thought that they “would prefer to be at homeon the reserve and both are attracted towards a life of hunting and fishing.” Instead,they werebeing asked to conform to a life that they do not understand and do not desire.
Without making a long story of this I will strongly advise that both children to
be returned to their parents on the reserve where despite its hardships I feelthey would at least be happy. Although it is with the best of intentions, I am
sure, that they are in their present location I do not believe that they will ever be
assimilated into the culture of the white man.223

By the following year, it appears, the boys had been placed in a boarding home.224
In some cases, psychiatrists recommended that troubled children be removed
from Aboriginal communities and placed in residential schools. In 1959, a psychiatrist suggested that an eleven-year-old boy with epilepsy be sent to residential school
because he was not taking his anticonvulsant medication when he was living with hisparents. The doctor wrote, “This boy has spent part of his life in a mental institution
and a Sanatorium and is therefore, well institutionalized.”225
In 1969, J. A. Dolan, a district superintendent of education for Indian Affairs in
Saskatchewan, reported that at the Qu’Appelle school,
there has been an epidemic of glue sniffing and hair spray drinking as wellas indiscriminate pill swallowing. The Administrator of the residence, Rev. F.
Charron, feels that he, along with the rest of his staff, is incapable of coping withthe situation. In his opinion there are 60 students who are emotionally disturbed
to a greater or lesser degree and who are in need of immediate psychiatric help.

Dolan felt that help had to be provided “quickly, before there is a fatality.”226
This concern was legitimate: there were a number of suicides and attemptedsuicides throughout this period. In February 1955, a fifteen-year-old girl at the
Shubenacadie school drank disinfectant in an attempt at suicide. She took the action
after her brother received a letter from their parents that said that he would be rejoining them in the summer but made no mention of her. In reporting the attempt toHealth: 1940–2000 • 219

Indian Affairs, Principal J. P. Mackey wrote, “What are we going to do with a girl of thatkind? Her parents are at present living in West Brattleboro, Vermont, but this girl andher brother came here from Prince Edward Island. She is a very big girl and only in
Grade V. Will never go far in any school.”227 The response of Indian Affairs officials wasto recommend that the girl be returned to her parents as quickly as possible.228
In the winter of 1958–59, a fourteen-year-old Inuit girl, who, because she was anorphan, had been raised since infancy in the Roman Catholic school in Aklavik, developed what was described as a “serious behaviour problem.” After she was removed
from the school, she attempted to commit suicide. By the spring, Northern Affairs
officials were attempting to locate an institution where she could undergo psychiatric assessment.229
In June 1966, a boy hanged himself in the gymnasium at the Kuper Island, British
Columbia, school.230
An inquest and hearing were held into the death of a nine-year-old boy at theAlberni, British Columbia, school. In May 1969, one of the boy’s friends had foundhim hanging from a roller towel in a boys’ washroom. At the time, he was still alive, but
choking for breath. A supervisor got him down and began to apply mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation. Shortly afterwards, a doctor arrived and declared him dead. The boy
had been given permission from his supervisor to go to the washroom. No students
had seen him at the roller towel. Principal J. A. Andrews wrote that he believed thatthe possibility that the boy had deliberately taken his own life could “be completely
ruled out.” He immediately removed the rollers.231 At the inquest into the death, one
student said that, as a game, other students had at times wrapped the towel aroundtheir necks. The coroner ruled the death an accidental hanging.232
In 1968, a student living at the Sandy Bay Reserve in Manitoba was hospitalized
for an overdose of unidentified pills. She had taken the pills with two other girls. A
follow-up report said that she was “doing good work and is behaving well.”233
In 1977, a student from Cambridge Bay attempted to commit suicide while living at
Akaitcho Hall in Yellowknife.234
A fifteen-year-old committed suicide at the Lestock, Saskatchewan, residence inthe spring of 1981. A few months later at the same residence, a group of girls, between
the ages of eight and ten, tried to hang themselves with nooses made of knotted towels
and socks. According to a police officer, “One of the girls confirmed it was her clear
intent to commit suicide.” A staff member who alerted provincial social services tothe problem complained that there was not sufficient supervisory staff on duty at theresidence. The staff member also complained that “many staff frequently book off sickleaving children unattended.”235
A student from the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school rendered himself unconsciousin December 1981 after he attempted to hang himself with a belt. Initially, it wasthought that the boy was not suicidal, since he had made the attempt in the presence220 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissionof two other boys. However, it was noted that he was overweight and was teased about
this by other boys.236 A doctor who examined the boy felt that it could well have been aserious suicide attempt related to his treatment by his fellow students. It was decided
not to return him to the residence. However, the only home that he could be sent towas his grandmother’s. At that time, his grandmother was caring for four children, allunder five years of age, and was expecting another four children soon to be returned
to her care for the Christmas holidays.237
In 1991, a boy who had been enrolled in Grollier Hall in Inuvik in the Northwest
Territories was returned to his home community of Fort Franklin after spending sevenweeks in hospital because of what was termed “his frequent talk of suicide.” The hospital staff concluded that “much of his behaviour is because of his past and his family situation.” Arrangements were also made for him to attend a month-long alcohol
treatment program in Alberta.238
The problems persisted into the period when the schools were operated by
Aboriginal authorities. Problems were particularly persistent at the Qu’Appelleschool.239 In January 1993, a student from the Qu’Appelle residence committed suicide
while at home. During the 1992–93 school year, thirteen girls at the school attempted
to commit suicide. In response, the school put in place a policy under which any student who attempted suicide was suspended. The Qu’Appelle residence at that time
was operated by the Star Blanket First Nation. The school’s executive director, Vern
Bellegarde, told the local media, “We’re saying you—as a parent—get your house inorder and do what you have to do to deal with the problem.” Bellegarde said he did not
believe the school was responsible for the suicides. “I think in many cases the parents
send their children here hoping we’re going to change them totally, and we can’t—
we’ve got to have the support of the parents.” The school arranged to have a team ofElders and counsellors meet with the students in an effort to address the underlying
issues. One parent, however, felt that the staff members “were too comfortable in theirjobs” and were not prepared to adopt alternate approaches.240

Consent to medical care
Attitudes and regulations regarding consent for the provision of medical care andparticipation in research studies underwent significant change in the last half of thetwentieth century.241 Not surprisingly, the issue was a particularly vexing one for
Indian Affairs, which traditionally had demonstrated limited respect for Aboriginal
parents and their views. It had long been the department’s position that parents relinquished their rights to guardianship when they enrolled their children in a residential school.242 The residential school “Application for Admission” forms in use in 1940
required parents to acknowledge that their child was to remain at school “under theHealth: 1940–2000 • 221

guardianship of the principal for such term as the Minister of Mines and Resources
may deem proper.”243 That wording was still in use at the beginning of 1963 (although,in 1951, the reference to the Minister of Mines and Resources had been changed to the
Minister of Citizenship and Immigration).244
Although this wording implied a wide-ranging authority, it had no legal basis in the
Indian Act, or in other legislation. It could not be seen as a surrender of legal guardianship. At most, it may have amounted to a revocable parental grant of authority forthe principal to have legal authority to make medical and other parental types of decisions for the child while in the school. The record does make it clear that from the1940s onward, Indian Affairs officials began to seek parental granting of authority ina number of instances involving medical care.245 For example, it was the practice not
to transfer students to sanatoria without parental consent.246 In 1940, the mother ofa child at the Fort Frances, Ontario, school declined to give her consent to have herdaughter treated at a sanatorium.247 A nurse’s decision in 1946 to send children fromthe Grouard, Alberta, school to a hospital in Edmonton without prior consultation
with the parents drew criticism from Oblate officials.248 In her own defence, the nurse
said she thought she was acting in keeping with health department policy to remove
children with tuberculosis from schools quickly. Health officials instructed the Indian
agent in the region that it was department policy “not to use compulsion to procure
the removal of a tuberculous Indian to this hospital nor to bring an Indian child to thehospital without the parent’s consent.”249
In some cases, the request for consent highlighted parents’ general lack of control
over the fate of their children. In giving permission for one of his sons to be takenfrom the Chapleau, Ontario, school to Toronto for treatment for tuberculosis in 1942,
Steve Smoke wrote, “A year ago I made a visit to this school and found that in theboys’ play[room] the [water] Closet holes [toilet] open and nothing to cover themwith. The smell of the room was something terrible, no human being could live insuch a place without contracting t.b.” He asked the provincial health board to investigate the conditions at the school and also requested that his three other children
who were attending the school be returned home.250 The son in question was later
diagnosed as having a lung infection rather than tuberculosis—as a result, he was sent
to the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children. Officials gave an evasive answer to Smoke’s
request to have his other children sent home, pointing out that they had not tested
positive for tuberculosis and assuring him that “no child with tuberculosis is allowed
to remain” at the school.251 Smoke’s consent, in other words, was needed to move his
son to a sanatorium, but it was not required to keep his children in residential school.
The decision to release a student from the school, the government maintained, could
be made only by the minister of Mines and Resources.
There appears to have been recognition that consent was required for
non-emergency surgeries. In 1943, the Blue Quills, Alberta, school administration

222 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

assured Indian Affairs that it had acquired parental consent for five girls who were inneed of surgery.252 Two years later, an Indian agent was informed that he could arrange
a tonsillectomy for students at the Edmonton, Alberta, school if the parents provided
their consent.253 In recommending that the local Indian agent arrange tonsillectomies
for four students at the Shingwauk Home at Sault Ste. Marie, Indian Health Services
official W. L. Falconer recommended in 1946 that, “if at all possible,” the agent should
obtain the permission of the parents.254
Less care appears to have been shown in securing consent for immunizations. In
1945, a nurse asked if it was necessary to get parental consent prior to immunizingchildren against smallpox, scarlet fever, typhoid, diphtheria, and whooping cough.
She said that although a smallpox vaccination was mandatory for First Nations children, she could find no direction regarding the other immunizations. She noted that
it was the practice “in the White Schools to obtain written consent but it would makethe Inoculations of Indian Children very spotty and difficult.”255 Acting on what hesaid was the direction of Indian and Northern Health Services official P. E. Moore,
medical superintendent Dr. W. S. Barclay had not been obtaining the consent of parents prior to administering the anti-tuberculosis vaccine bcg at residential schools
in British Columbia in the mid- to late 1940s. He said he always obtained “the preliminary agreement of the Principal.”256 In 1955, a Northern Affairs official, who wasorganizing a polio immunization program in the Northwest Territories, agreed thatparental consent should be acquired prior to the immunization of their children, andhe prepared a form for parents to sign. At the same time, he wrote, “Where the parents
are not available to sign the consent, I do not think the child should go without vaccination, however. The medical officer will have to use his own discretion in cases ofthat nature.”257
A Canadian court decision in the early 1960s held that only a parent or legal guardian could sign or delegate responsibility for a medical procedure.258 Under this ruling,a legal guardian was either a parent “or an individual into whose care a child is placedby court proceedings.”259 Since the admission form was not a legal transfer of guardianship, a federal legal adviser recommended in 1961 that the application form be
redrafted to include the following paragraph:
I hereby make application for the admission of the above child into theresidential school shown, to remain therein under the guardianship of theprincipal for such term as the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration may
deem proper and I hereby give the principal express permission to authorize
such medical and dental treatment as he, in his discretion, deems necessary.260

A separate paragraph was eventually added to the admission form, which conformed to the legal advisor’s recommendation. A note on the form added:

Health: 1940–2000 • 223

The signature of the responsible parent or guardian on the application gives
the principal permission to authorize such medical and dental treatment as hein his discretion deems necessary, this covers both preventive and emergency
treatment, but in all cases involving an operation, an endeavour should be madeto obtain the parent’s consent.261

Since the parents of students who had been admitted in previous years did not sign
new admission forms each year, an additional form, dealing solely with the authorization of treatment, was prepared for the parents of children who were returning
to school. Indian Affairs also instructed principals to accept returning students, even
if the parents refused to sign the form.262 This worried Henry Cook, the head of the
Anglican Indian School Administration. He pointed out that the principal was not
the legal guardian and therefore could not legally authorize medical or dental treatment. He felt that no principal should be compelled to accept a student if the parents
had not signed over to that principal the authority to approve medical treatment for
their child.263
In commenting on the changes, one Indian Affairs official noted that in the caseof orphans, “some of these children have spent all most [sic] all their childhood in
Residential schools, they have no official recognized guardian and it is extremely difficult to trace any members of the family at the Uncle or Aunt level.”264 In the case of
three children at the Shingwauk school who had no legal guardian, Indian Affairs recommended that the consent form be signed by the “friend or relative” who took careof them when they were not in school. If no such person existed, the Indian Affairs
officials were instructed “to authorize ordinary or medical treatment. In the event ofemergency treatment involving an operation, presumably the medical authorities
would accept the responsibility of performing such an operation.”265
Cook had predicted that the policy of allowing children to be admitted without a signed medical consent form would give rise to problems: he was correct. By
November 1962, the Kuper Island school had admitted twenty-nine students forwhom it did not have medical consent forms.266 More than half of the students at
the Mission school did not have signed medical consents on file in 1963. As a result,school officials felt that they could not provide the students with polio vaccine, as partof an anti-polio campaign.267
In 1967, Indian Affairs introduced a second form to be completed by the parents(or legal guardians) of children applying for admission to residential school. This wascalled the “Application for Admission to Pupil Residence.” It required the parent to
entrust to the Crown Jurisdiction and guardianship of this pupil from the date
the pupil leaves his/her home officially in transit to the Pupil Residence and until
such time as the said pupil is returned to my custody or some other place as may
be authorized by me. Guardianship of this pupil can be delegated by the Crown
in providing for this pupil’s welfare, education, medical and social engagements.

224 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

I hereby delegate to the Crown authority to act so far as is necessary for thewelfare and behaviour of the pupil, and I further agree to remove said pupil
from the Pupil Residence when requested to do so by the Administrator of aContract Pupil Residence or the Regional Superintendent of Schools in charge ofa Government-operated Pupil Residence.

The form also required the parent to give “full consent to the attending Physician
and Hospital Staff to carry out any form of examination, test, treatment or operation”
on the child “that they may deem necessary and do therefore absolve them from any
consequence thereof.”268 This form granted the government guardianship and the rightto delegate that guardianship, while previous forms had granted the guardianship to
the principal. For the first time, the form absolved caregivers of the consequences of
medical treatment they provided.
The new form did not replace the old one, but appears to have been used inaddition to it. Both forms were used by the same institutions at the same time, andwere in use until 1976.269 In 1977, both forms were, rather confusingly, renamed the“Application for Admission to Student Residence/Group Home.” One form was only
slightly amended, essentially only adding the parenthetical phrase “Group Home”
after the phrase “Student Residence.”270
The other form carried a more significant change: a time limit had been placed on
the period in which the child was being placed under the administrator’s guardianship. The form read that the parent agreed to place the child “under the guardianship of the Administrator for a period of 12 (twelve) months or for such a term as the
Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development may deem proper.” The parent
also gave the administrator permission “to authorize (on my behalf ) such medical
and dental treatment as becomes necessary from time-to-time.”271
On the basis of such documents, the administrators of the student residences were
believed to have the authority to give consent for tuberculin testing and vaccination of
students who lived in residence.272
Despite the use of this increasingly detailed language in the admission forms—
and the language absolving doctors and hospital staff of responsibility for the consequences of treatment—by the early 1980s, hospitals were increasingly unwilling
to rely upon the consent of a residence administrator. A 1981 legal opinion by R. B.
Laschuk, the solicitor for the Regina General Hospital, concluded that “neither the
Indian Act nor any regulation thereunder nor any other federal statute of which we areaware provides a legislative basis for the delegation of parental rights and responsibilities of an Indian child to the Crown or any agency thereof.” The opinion observed that
although the application forms
appear to delegate to the Crown (and Crown in turn having a further power ofdelegation) jurisdiction and guardianship of the child, including the provision
for the child’s medical needs, we do not believe that any specific individual

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under the power of delegation is ‘in loco parentis’ [in the place of the parent] tothe child. While the administrator of the school may indeed have the temporary
custody and control of such child, we do not believe that he is constituted either
the parent or the guardian and accordingly, we do not believe that a consent
signed by the administrator would qualify as the consent required under s.55 of
The Hospital Standards Regulations, nor under the requirements of an informed
consent generally.273

The regulations referred to under the Saskatchewan Hospital Standards Act
required that doctors obtain written consent from the parent or the child’s legal
guardian unless a state of emergency existed. The authorization signed by the parent
on admission was not deemed to be sufficient under this regulation.274
Indian Affairs acknowledged that “the Indian Act, or any Federal statute as far as
we know, does not provide for the delegation of parental rights and responsibilities
of an Indian child to the Crown or it’s [sic] agent.”275 (Section 52 of the Indian Act did
authorize the minister to administer or provide for the administration of property towhich “infant children of Indians are entitled” and to appoint a guardian for this purpose. But this was not a guardian who would take the place of a parent in all aspectsof a child’s life.)276
The federal government instructed student residence administrators in Sask­
atchewan thateven though the administrator has been assigned temporary custody control[sic] of a child he must make every attempt to secure consent of parent [sic] incases of elective surgery. If written consent is physically impossible to obtain,
verbal consent (by telephone—dated and witnessed) should be obtainedin order that the administrator and hospital and staff can be protected frompossible legal liability where the necessity of an informed consent exists.277

The administrator of the Duck Lake residence, D. Seesequasis, pointed out that
hospitals were requiring that consents be signed on the day of elective surgery. Not
only were most parents of children at the residence unable to be at the hospital on
the day of surgery, he wrote, but also “most of our parents do not have telephones
and even if we were to pick up parents for the purposes of signing their children intoa hospital, the time and miles just to achive [sic] this are enormous.” In the previous
nine years, he had signed all consent forms for elective surgery. “Now,” he wrote, “Ireally do not know what to do.”278
By the early 1980s, many of the schools were being operated by First Nations
education authorities, especially in southern Canadian provinces. Some of theseauthorities developed their own application forms. The Duck Lake residence had aresidence-specific form by 1983. It stated that the child was to226 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

remain under the guardianship of the Administrator and delegate(s) thereof who
are hereby authorized to provide such Child’s education and welfare, including
the making of such travel arrangements and providing such discipline as may inabsolute discretion of the Administrator and delegate(s) be required, for suchterm as the administrator may deem proper.

The form also gave the “Administrator, Assistant Administrator, Nurse or Supervisor”
permission to sign, “as the lawful custodian and lawful guardian of my son/daughter
while the same is registered as a student” at the residence, “all medical forms, authorizations or releases” that are “required to accommodate the full and proper medical
treatment of my son/daughter, including without restrictions or waivers.” The parent
reserved the right to revoke this authorization in writing.279 It appears that parents
applying to have their children admitted to the Duck Lake residence also had to fill out
an Indian Affairs application form that transferred guardianship to the Crown.280 The
Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school, which was not under First Nations management,
used a similarly worded application form in the 1990s, without the section relating todoctors and hospital staff.281 Evidence suggests that in the two previous decades, it was
the practice, at least of that school, to get parental permission for most medical anddental services.282 Before students could participate in a program of fluoride mouthrinses operated by the Saskatchewan government in the 1980s, their parents had toprovide signed consent.283 The school also required parents to provide consent for visits to specialists in the 1980s and for tonsillectomies in the 1990s.284
All the same, in 1986, the administrator of the Gordon’s residence continued tostate that, as the legal guardian of the children, he was authorized to give consent for
medical treatment of students, including immunization.285
Forms for schools in the Northwest Territories differed from those used in the restof Canada. Prior to the late 1950s, students with status under the Indian Act wereadmitted using forms that employed the same language as the forms in the rest of
the country.286 The admission form for students who did not have status under the
Indian Act in the Northwest Territories in the 1920s and 1930s—usually orphans ordestitute children—committed them to the school for as long as the Department of
the Interior deemed proper. The form made no mention of guardianship or medical
treatment.287 The establishment of the large hostel system at the end of the 1950s led
to the adoption of a new form for all students. The form in use in 1960, for example,
made no mention of guardianship or medical treatment.288 Under the form in use in1971, the parent agreed that “the guardianship of this child may be delegated by theGovernment of the Northwest Territories in the course of providing for his welfare,education, medical needs and social and sports engagements, including approved
travel incidental thereto.” The parent was also required to “give full consent to theattending Physician and Hospital Staff in cases of emergency to carry out any form of
examination, test, treatment or operation that they deemed necessary for my child’sHealth: 1940–2000 • 227

welfare and therefore absolve them from any consequences thereto. Parents are to becontacted as soon as possible.”289 With only slight amendment, the form was still in
use in 1993.290

Research studies carried out on students
The issue of consent also applies to instances where students were the subject ofscientific research. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has foundevidence of a number of studies that were carried out on residential school students
during this period. The 1948 to 1953 nutrition study is described in the chapter onfood and nutrition in the post-1940 period. Seven other studies are described below.
All but the first example occurred in the period when Indian Affairs and the churches
were well aware that principals were not the legal guardians of the children in theircare. The admission form of 1963 granted principals only the authority “to authorize
such medical and dental treatment as he in his discretion deems necessary.”291 A number of the studies described below go beyond any reasonable term of “necessary,” andone of them might be described as “the withholding of care.”

The esp study
In the winter of 1940–41, fifty students at the Brandon, Manitoba, school participated in a research project intended to test their abilities at extrasensory perception(esp). The tests were conducted by the school matron under the direction of A. A.
Foster, who was described as a former staff member of the Parapsychology Laboratory
at Duke University and who was engaged in “industrial war work” in Canada. The tests
were non-invasive, making use of a series of playing cards and yes-and-no questions.
According to the author, the study was the first known esp test to specifically focus
on Aboriginal people in North America. Foster claimed the study produced resultsthat could be attributed only to extrasensory perception. According to his report, thestudents participated in the study on a voluntary basis: there is no evidence that theirparents provided permission for their participation in this research project.292

Vitamin d study
In the 1960s, the federal health department’s medical services generally opposed
the provision of vitamin supplements at residential schools, on the principle that students should be receiving an adequate intake of vitamins from the school diet. The

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exception to this was vitamin d, which was largely absent from most foods. It wasprovided in pill form. In the mid-1960s, a number of manufacturers of canned andpowdered milk had begun to sell products that had been enriched with vitamin d.
In 1966, medical services proposed that one school drop the vitamin supplement
and start serving enriched milk. Such an experiment would be accompanied by anin-school program encouraging milk consumption.293 A decision was made to test theenriched powdered milk at Breynat Hall, the Catholic hostel in Fort Smith, Northwest
Territories.294 The enriched milk was introduced in February 1967 as part of what was
described as the “Project – Vitamin d Milk.” However, the study did not involve thehalt of any vitamin supplements. Rather, it focused on determining whether enriched
powdered milk would be accepted by the students. The consumption of unfortified
milk was measured for a month (the milk that the students had been drinking to thatpoint), followed by the measuring of consumption of fortified milk. It was considered
important that the students not be informed that any change was being made to theirdiet.295 The results indicated a slight increase in milk consumption during the period
when fortified milk was being served, leading the nutritionist to comment that “itwould appear the children actually preferred” the fortified milk.296 On this basis, it
was recommended that the schools in the Northwest Territories switch to enriched
powdered milk.297 In this case, there was clearly no attempt to consult with the students or their parents. The study was relatively non-intrusive: the consumption of two
products, both deemed to be safe, was being monitored to make sure that the use ofan enriched product did not lead to a reduction in consumption and a deterioration,rather than an improvement, in student health.

Amebicide study
An outbreak of Entamoeba histolytica dysentery (amoebiasis) in the Loon Lake district of Saskatchewan in 1964 led Indian Health Services to initiate a mass treatment
program, including treatment of the students at two residential schools. The illness isspread by the Entamoeba histolytica parasite and is associated with poor sanitation.298
As part of the treatment campaign, Dr. R. D. F. Eaton of the Fort Qu’Appelle Indian
Hospital conducted what was described as a “survey and trial” of the effectiveness ofthe drug Furamide in reducing gastrointestinal parasites at the Onion Lake school.299
Furamide is the brand name for Diloxanide furoate, an amebicide (a drug that kills
amoeba) that was used in 1956.300
Twenty-eight students at the school were identified as having been infected by theparasite. The infected students who were in Kindergarten and in grades Two, Four,Six, and Eight were treated with Furamide for ten days, while the infected students inthe other grades were given the same drug, but for only five days. Since one student

Health: 1940–2000 • 229

ran away during the course of the study, results were given on twenty-seven children.
Eaton reported that there were two treatment failures in the five-day group and nonein the ten-day group. Despite this, he felt the sample was not large enough for any
weight to be attached to the findings.301 There is nothing in the records reviewed by the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada to indicate that either the students
or the parents were consulted about the use of two different treatment approaches.
The conclusion that the study did not involve a sufficient number of students to justify
reaching a conclusion raises questions as to whether the research was justified in thefirst place.

Isoniazid study
In October 1960, the Indian and Northern Health Services commenced what was
described as a “prophylactic” (preventive) program using isoniazid (inh) with children living in school residences in the Northwest Territories along the Mackenzie
River.302 (Similar studies on the effectiveness of inh in preventing tuberculosis fromdeveloping among individuals with household exposure to tuberculosis had been
carried out in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Kenya, the Philippines, and Alaska.)303 The Indianand Northern Health Services program was under the direction of Cameron Corrigan,
the tuberculosis control officer for the Foothills Region. Under the program, the children at the hostels in Fort McPherson, Inuvik, Fort Simpson, and Fort Smith were all
given a tuberculin test. Those who tested positive (meaning that they likely had inactive tuberculosis) in Inuvik were started on a treatment of inh. All students at Fort
McPherson were started on an inh treatment, whether or not they had tested positive. Those who had a negative reaction to tuberculin (meaning that they likely were
not infected with tuberculosis) at Fort Smith and Fort Simpson were treated with the
bcg vaccine. The documentation, which appears to be incomplete, does not state
what, if any, treatment was offered to those who tested positive in Fort Smith and Fort
Simpson.304 Parental consent forms apparently were prepared and distributed prior to
the testing at Fort Smith. They did not, however, indicate that the students were participating in a research project.305 In the first year, 208 children were given bcg and 403
were started on inh (278 of these were so treated because of positive reactions to the
tuberculin test, and 125 were given inh whether they tested positive or negative). In
1961, the tuberculin tests were given again. This time, all students in the Inuvik Hostel
were given inh, as were the students in the Fort McPherson Hostel. No students were
vaccinated with bcg. It is not completely clear if the decision not to use bcg applied toFort McPherson and Inuvik only, or to all four residences.
Indian and Northern Health Services had difficulty getting field staff to implement
the study as planned. According to Corrigan, during 1960 and 1961, local doctors

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and nurses stopped inh treatment of certain children without consulting his office.
Corrigan said he was never provided with a reason why the treatment was stopped.
This was significant, since, as Corrigan wrote, “inh confers protection only while it isbeing given.” The study was further disrupted when students from communities along
the Arctic coast were sent home in April due to “ice conditions.” This effectively ended
their inh treatment. These students had “absolutely no protection,” Corrigan wrote. Ifthey had been given bcg, he said, they would have “protection and continue to build
immunity.” Corrigan recommended that the inh program be discontinued. He wrotethat it was preferable to make a “concerted effort to give b.c.g. vaccine to every childin school and to all newborns down the Mackenzie River.” At the end of what Corrigan
described as a “two-year trial,” no cases of active tuberculosis had been recorded at
any of the hostels.306

Hemoglobin study
In the mid-1960s, F. Vella of the University of Saskatchewan Biochemistry
Department undertook research into the hemoglobin of First Nations people in
Saskatchewan. As a part of one study, blood was taken from students at the Qu’Appelleschool. According to Vella, that study “uncovered a previously unknown type of haemoglobin.” Vella sought to extend the research to the Gordon’s school in 1967 because
the school recruited students from across the province. Vella offered to provide theprincipal with consent forms to be filled out by the parents of the children from whom
he wished to collect blood samples.307 The principal, Noel Goater, recognized thatfor research of this nature, “parental permission should be obtained,” but he felt thatobtaining such permission “would be an administrative headache.” Pointing out thatthe school had no record of the blood type of each of its students, Goater proposed that
he, acting in his capacity as guardian of the pupils, would give consent to their participation in the study, if Vella would provide him with a listing of the blood group andtype of each student tested.308 Vella agreed to the condition and the samples were collected.309 The following year, Vella was co-author of an article entitled “Haemoglobin
Variants and Thalassaemia in Saskatchewan Indians.”310 In this case, it appears Goater
believed there was no risk in the study and that he could obtain knowledge that might
be of use in assisting students in the case of a medical emergency. To do this, however,
he felt he could ignore what he recognized as an obligation to obtain the consent of
the children’s parents.

Health: 1940–2000 • 231

Bedwetting
In the late 1960s, students from a Saskatchewan residential school were included
in a broader study of bedwetting (nocturnal enuresis). The study also involved
non-Aboriginal children from summer camps and child nurseries. The results of thestudy were not broken down on the basis of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children.
Instead, the study compared the bladder capacities of those children with enuresis
and those without it. There is no indication in the paper that was published on the
study results as to whether the consent of the parents of the children involved in the
study had been obtained.311

Dermatoglyphic survey
In 1968, R. B. Lowry, an assistant professor of the Division of Medical Genetics
at the University of British Columbia, wished to carry out a “dermatoglyphic survey of normal Indian school children” at residential schools in British Columbia.312“Dermatoglyphics” is the study of fingerprints. Medical researchers looking for the
genetic roots of a wide variety of illnesses, including Down’s syndrome, have conducted numerous studies examining differences between people with those illnessesand ‘normal’ subjects.313 Lowry received a sympathetic reception from the principalsof the Alert Bay, Kamloops, Fraser Lake, and Williams Lake schools.314 The principalof the Kuper Island school made it clear that he did not want to participate without
the consent of the parents. Neither was he interested in assisting Lowry in obtainingthat consent, since he feared the study would impair the school’s relationship with theparents.315 It appears the survey went ahead, although it is not clear from the record
how many schools or children were involved. In a letter to the Williams Lake principal, Lowry explained that he wished to take the fingerprints of one child from eachfamily at the school.316 Again, although the risk was limited in this study, there was noapparent benefit to the students. The fact that one principal recognized the need toobtain parental consent suggests that others ought to have been aware of this obligation as well.

Accidental death and injury
Disease and illness were not the only threats to students’ well-being. During thisperiod, students were also at risk of death due to injury from vehicle accidents, participation in sports and recreation activities, workplace incidents (discussed in thechapters on education), and violence (discussed in the chapters dealing with abuse).

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Several of the deaths described below underscore the schools’ inability to provide thestudents with adequate supervision and protection.
Many residential schools had been located near bodies of water. Even when they
were distant from water, swimming and boating were recreational activities. Excluding
the deaths of those who drowned while attempting to run away, there were at leastnine drowning deaths at residential schools from 1940 to their closing in the late 1990s.
Three boys wandered away from the supervisors at a picnic and swimming excursion for students from the Shingwauk Home in Sault Ste. Marie in August 1940. One of
the boys attempted to swim to a nearby island and was caught up in a strong current.
Two other students attempted to rescue him, but failed. The coroner concluded thatno inquest was required. In reporting the death, Principal Charles Hives, who had notbeen part of the expedition, wrote:
No blame could be attached to those in charge. The boys knew what was
expected of them. They knew and were told they were not to go into the water
until one hour after lunch, and by that time they would be at their objective
sandy beach, where they had been before. It is just one of those unfortunate
accidents, which, I am thankful to say we have not encounted [sic] since nearly
eleven years ago.317

A 1943 berry-picking outing at the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school ended tragically. Eighteen girls set out on the trip after dinner on August 12. They broke up into
small groups. When one of the girls returned to the school by way of a nearby lake, she
noticed two cans of berries by the shore. She ran to the school and alerted the staff.
Two staff members drove to the lake, where they could see a small boat overturned in
the water. The bodies of Doris Atquin and Mary Ginnish were recovered from the lake.
The local coroner determined there was no need for an inquest.318
In June 1947, three girls took a raft out on a lake east of the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan,
school. The lake was out of bounds to students, but the girls and a number of boys
had gone there on an afternoon walk. The raft tipped over. One girl held on to theraft and made it to shore, but the other two girls, Myrtle Jane Moostos and Margaret
Bruce, drowned.319
Dolores George, a student at the Christie Island, British Columbia, school, drownedin 1955 when the skiff that she and another girl were in overturned. The records do notindicate if the two girls were attempting to run away, although one letter describing
the incident suggests that they may have been trying to harvest kelp.320
On June 11, 1972, two boys who were living at Stringer Hall in Inuvik, Northwest
Territories, left the residence for a walk. Robert Toasi and David Kaosoni found a canoein Boot Lake, which is on the edge of the community. Using boards as paddles, they set
out in the canoe, travelling through a channel to another lake. When they attempted
their return journey, they accidentally tipped the canoe over. David Kaosoni was able
to swim to shore, but Robert Toasi, who was fifteen years old, drowned, despite his

Health: 1940–2000 • 233

friend’s attempts to save him. His body was found the following evening. An inquest
returned a verdict of accidental drowning.321
Fifteen-year-old Anthony Moses and a sixteen-year-old friend were given permission to go duck hunting at the Desmarais, Alberta, residence in 1973. One of the ducks
they shot landed in the Wabasca River. When Moses entered the river in an effort toretrieve the duck, he was caught up in the current and drowned.322
In October 1974, Charles Hunter went skating with a group of other students on afrozen lake near the Fort Albany, Ontario, school. The ice broke open and one of theboys, Joseph Koostachin, fell in. In his efforts to rescue Joseph, Charles himself fell
into the water. Other students were able to pull Joseph from the water, but Charles
drowned. An autopsy was performed in Timmins, and, without any consultation withhis parents, Charles was buried in Moosonee. The parents chartered a plane, at a
cost of $650, to travel from their home community of Peawanuck near Hudson Bay toattend the funeral. It was not until 2011, after significant public efforts made by a sister, Joyce, who had never got to meet her older brother, that Charles Hunter’s body was
exhumed and returned to Peawanuck for a community burial. The costs were coveredby a fund that the Toronto Star raised from its readership.323
There were many other sports and recreation accidents, most of which were
non-fatal.324 Others, however, were tragic, and again raise questions about the levelof supervision at the schools. A boy from the Edmonton, Alberta, school died in1942 when he tobogganed down a steep hill, onto a roadway, and into the path of an
oncoming car.325 Indian Affairs official R. A. Hoey issued an instruction to the principal that in future, the students should not be allowed to “toboggan down any hillleading to public roads.”326
A student at the Beauval, Saskatchewan, school was killed in 1942 when he was hit
by a truck being driven by the school principal, F. X. Gagnon. In the accident report,
Gagnon said he thought the boy had been struck while attempting to jump onto thetruck’s running board.327 In 1960, one of the staff of the Carcross school in the Yukon
was driving a car full of staff and students to town to attend a Friday-night movie. The
car hit an ice patch and spun out of control. One student, thirteen-year-old Douglas
Burns, and one teacher, Ewen Heustis, died in the crash.328 On February 10, 1965,
Michael Gerald Rabbit Carrier was run over by a school bus at the Crowfoot school
in Alberta. The inquest found no fault with the driver, but recommended that “there
should be an able and competent officer in charge of the loading of the buses where
so many small children are involved and the teachers should give instruction to thechildren to behave when the bus arrives.”329
One vehicle accident underscores the casual and dangerous manner in which
students were transported. In 1960, the staff of Breynat Hall, the Roman Catholic
residence in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, took two truckloads of children fora picnic. The trucks were both five-ton vehicles; one of them was carrying between

234 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

seventy and eighty children. As the trucked turned a corner, “the pressure of the number of children leaning against the sides, combined with the bouncing over a roughspot on the turn which leans inwards considerably, apparently caused the latch
between the side and the tailgate to give way.” Five children fell out; one of them,Emma Elton, died from her injuries.330 A coroner’s jury concluded that the death wasan accident, but recommended that the “transportation of standing passengers on theback of an open moving vehicle” be made illegal. Roman Catholic Bishop Paul Piché
informed Northern Affairs official R. G. Robertson that he could “rest assured that the
Hostel management will conform immediately with this recommendation.” He alsosuggested that the department provide the hostel with sufficient funds to pay for the“occasional transportation of the boarders by bus.”331
Other deaths reflect the specific dangers associated with the location of theschools. Pauloosie Meeko, a nineteen-year-old boy attending the Churchill Vocational
Centre in northern Manitoba, died after being mauled by a polar bear in 1968, not far
from the school.332 Three years later, Grant Ross, a fifteen-year-old boy attending theAssiniboia School in Winnipeg, died after being struck by a car while attempting tocross Portage Avenue.333
Several of the reports on accidental deaths stress that the children were warned of
the risks associated with the activities in which they were engaged. The implicationof this was that they were at least partially responsible for their own death. In reality,
there were often safety measures that could have been taken in advance to reduce
the risk. Seven-year-old Mary Antoinette Pascal, a student at a residential school in
Cranbrook, British Columbia, died in 1950 when ice from the school roof dislodged
and fell nine metres, and, after bouncing off a metal roof protecting the school’s
sub-basement, struck her on the head. The girl had been playing tag with her friends.
A report on the accident observed that she must have “momentarily forgotten thedanger.”334 The local coroner concluded it was not necessary to hold an inquest, “asthe children had been well warned of the danger and there did not appear to be any
negligence as far as the staff of the school was concerned.” It does appear that measures could have been taken to prevent such accidents, since the principal agreed tomake changes that would ensure that “there will be no further danger of the ice fallingon the children.”335
The reduction in the student death rate was dramatic during this post-1940 period.
It is attributable to a variety of factors: the screening of incoming students, the vaccination of healthy students, and the isolation and removal of children with active cases of
disease. The development of antibiotics meant that those who were infected no longer
faced a death sentence. However, a number of factors contributed to the continuationof compromised health and safety conditions for residential school students, beginning with the failure of Indian Affairs to address the impoverished socio-economic

Health: 1940–2000 • 235

conditions of Aboriginal people in general. This meant that students came from communities already suffering from numerous health problems.
Once an infected student was admitted to the school, the crowded, poorly ventilated buildings meant that infection could spread quickly. On-site health careremained minimal, and other services such as dental care and mental-health care
were reserved largely for emergencies. When problems were identified, services
still might not be available. Prevailing colonial attitudes led government and school
administrators to presume that they knew better than Aboriginal parents what was
acceptable for the children in residential schools when it came to health care and theuse of the children in medical research. These attitudes did not change significantly
until the 1960s—by which time the Indian residential school system was in the process of being dismantled.

CHAPTER 37

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000

Parents, children, school staff, and government inspectors had been raisingconcerns about the poor quality of residential school diets since the nineteenth century. Staples such as milk and bread were often in short supply;and meals were monotonous, poorly prepared, and limited in nutritional value.1 Onemight expect that these issues would have been overcome in the post-1940 period.
Improvements in knowledge about the benefits of nutrition should have given an
additional incentive to provide better diets, and growing economic prosperity after
1945 meant that Canada had the resources to fund such improved diets.
During the 1940s, Canada also had developed standards for school diets. In 1942,
the government of Canada issued Canada’s Official Food Rules. A product of the workof the newly established Nutrition Division of the federal Department of Pensions andNational Health (later the Department of National Health and Welfare), the publication also had the approval of the Canadian Council on Nutrition.2 Canada’s Food
Rules are significant to the history of residential schools for two reasons. First, they
represent an expected standard of care against which residential school diets canbe assessed. Second, Canada’s Food Rules—along with ongoing debates about thepotential impact of the addition of certain vitamins and minerals—played a role inshaping certain nutritional research projects that were carried out at six residential
schools in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Despite these developments, it would not be until the late 1950s that Canada put
in place a funding system that would allow the schools to meet Canada’s Food Rules
recommendations. In the following years, reports of inadequate diets continued asgovernment funding failed to keep pace with the cost of living. This chapter demonstrates that Indian Affairs, the branch of the government responsible for the schools
during this period, was well aware of this failure to feed students adequately. Parents,
students, administrators, missionaries, and federal government health officials all
regularly reported to the government on the schools’ inability to feed children a dietthat was in keeping with its own nutritional guidelines. It is likely that few, if any, of theschools were funded at a level that allowed them to fully meet students’ nutritional orenergy requirements.

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The Nutrition Division and the Food Rules
In 1941, the Canadian government established the Nutrition Division as a branchof the federal health department. The creation of such a division reflected a growing
official recognition that creating a guideline for diet was a national responsibility.3 It
was also part of an international trend in several industrialized countries to develop
expertise that could advise governments and the general population on nutritional
issues. Some of the first attempts to establish scientifically based dietary standards
were made during the First World War. In 1932, Hazel Stiebeling of the United States
Department of Agriculture developed recommendations for the first national foodallowances that included recommendations for mineral and vitamin consumption.
The food budgets that Stiebeling suggested (with the exception of those for an emergency diet) were intended to furnish “not only the minimum requirements of the body
but an ample margin of safety as well.”4
The federal government established the Canadian Council on Nutrition (ccn) in
1938 in response to prompting from international agencies to create a dietary standard.5 This standard was intended to represent “the amounts of essential nutrients
considered adequate to meet the needs of practically all healthy persons.”6 Studies thatthe ccn carried out in four Canadian cities in the late 1930s and early 1940s concluded
that a large percentage of the Canadian population was not consuming a nutritionallyadequate diet.7 Although there were no data on rural Canadians, Dr. E. W. McHenryof the ccn wrote, “With regard to urban diets we can make a prediction with somecertainty: that the average picture among those families with the lowest incomes is
one of under-nutrition.”8 However, when the ccn established its first national dietary
standard, it had to contend with government pressures to ensure the standard could
not be used as a justification for significant increases in relief payments.9 With theoutbreak of the Second World War, there was a greater emphasis on improving diet toensure the health of recruits and the wartime workforce. This led to the adoption of a
dietary standard, whose goal was more than simply warding off malnutrition: the goal
was to identify the optimal level of nutrients an individual required.10
Canada’s Official Food Rules were issued in 1942. They identified six different foodgroups that were described as “health-protective.” Canadians were advised to consume the prescribed minimum portions on a daily basis. The six groups were milk (halfa pint [.24 litres] for adults, more than a pint for children, and “some cheese”); fruits(one daily serving of tomatoes or citrus fruits or juices, and one serving of anotherfruit); vegetables (a daily serving of potatoes, plus two servings of other vegetables);cereals and bread (one serving of whole-grain cereal and four to six slices of Canada
Approved bread); meat, fish, or meat substitutes (one serving a day, with a serving ofliver, heart, or kidney once a week); and eggs (at least three or four times a week). In

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 239

addition, “Some source of Vitamin d such as fish liver oils, is essential for children,and may be advisable for adults.” Due to wartime shortages of some foods such as
milk, the Food Rules were inadequate. It is estimated that a diet based on the Food
Rules would equal 70% of the dietary standard that had been established in 1938.
In 1944, the Food Rules were revised with an intention to meet the 1938 dietary
standard. The new rules adjusted the levels of milk consumption from a half-pint toa pint for adults and one and a half pints to a quart (.94 litres) for children. It wasalso recommended that bread be consumed with butter. Heart and kidney (in short
supply) were removed from the Food Rules, and iodized salt was added to the recommended diet. Because of their protein content, cheese and eggs were includedin the meat and fish group. In 1949, the words “at least” were added to the milk
recommendation, fortified margarine was listed as an alternative to butter, the reference to Canada Approved bread was dropped from the bread provision, and a specific dosage of vitamin d was recommended. The Food Rules remained unchanged
until 1961, when they underwent slight adjustment (and were renamed Canada’s
Food Guide).11

The situation in the schools in the early 1940s
The imposition of wartime cuts in the per capita grants to the schools had a negative impact on the food supply in residential schools. Parents regularly voiced theirconcern over the poor quality and limited supply of food at the schools. In September
1941, five children were not returned to the Mount Elgin school in Ontario at the
beginning of the school year because their parents believed that the food at the school
was poor.12 A 1944 inspection of the Elkhorn school in Manitoba by Dr. A. B. Simes, themedical superintendent of the Qu’Appelle Indian Hospital, concluded that 28% of thegirls and 70% of the boys were underweight. Indian Affairs official R. A. Hoey wrotethat the results supported the contention of a number of parents that “children werepoorly clad and poorly fed at the institution.”13 Mrs. W. Sinclair came away from a visit
to her grandchildren at the Elkhorn school in the following year very dissatisfied with“the way the children are cared for and fed. While at the School I ate the same food as
the children, which is unnourishing [sic] for any child.” She pointed out that they did
not get butter and were given milk only in the morning. “Those two things they getplenty at home [sic].” She informed an Anglican Church official that she was going to
ask to have the children returned home.14 The two girls appear to have remained in theschool for another four years. They were not discharged until 1949.15
In 1941, Dr. Cameron Corrigan, who practised medicine in northern Manitoba,
wrote to Indian Affairs, “In all boarding schools that I know of, lard is supplied to all240 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the children in place of butter.” He recommended that the government order an end to
the practice. He said that at the Norway House school, at his initiative, lard had been
replaced by peanut butter.16 After a week-long inspection, a nutritionist rated the dietat the Port Crosby, British Columbia, school as “poor” in 1944. In particular, the fruit,
vegetable, cereal, and meat servings were judged to be insufficient.17

The Red Cross inspections: 1944–1946
In light of such negative reports, in the fall of 1944, R. A. Hoey, by then the directorof the Indian Affairs branch, asked the Canadian Red Cross to undertake a nutritional
survey of the Chapleau, Ontario, school.18 Before the Red Cross completed its report,
local physician G. E. Young alerted Indian Affairs officials that “conditions havebecome unavoidable [sic] worse” since the survey team visited the school. The milkration had declined to half a cup a day per student and monthly egg production had
declined to “the extreme zero.” He said that the children were exhibiting symptoms ofavitaminosis [any disease caused by long-term vitamin deficiency] andmalnutrition with the general symptoms of tiredness, fatigue, irritability, generalpoor health and loss of weight. A daily compulsory rest period for the children
regardless of age has been found necessary in order that the children securesufficient rest to carry them through their daily routine. During the past year atleast six cases of Tuberculosis has [sic] been diagnosed and required Sanitorium
treatment. These cases developed and spread throughout the school in spite of
the intensive routine check-up and the bi-annual x-ray examinations.19

A follow-up investigation by Indian agent F. Matters concluded that there was a
shortage of milk and eggs, a need to store a greater supply of vegetables for the winter,and a need for greater variety in the school menu.20
The Red Cross undertook a number of additional surveys. Its March 1945 study ofthe food at the girls’ school at Spanish, Ontario, reported that the calcium content was
46% of the requirement for girls aged ten to twelve. There were also marked deficiencies of ascorbic acid (vitamin c) and riboflavin (vitamin b2), and a very low level ofvitamin a. He added, “Attention should be drawn to the low thiamine level in relation
to the recommendations for adolescence.” It was estimated that it would cost $10.54
a day to get the diet up to the standard set in Canada’s Food Rules. (This would workout to an additional eight cents a day per student, or about $1.09 per student per day,in current terms.) A survey of the diet at the boys’ school at Spanish concluded thatthe vitamin a content was 25.5% of the recommended allowance for boys aged ten
to twelve, and ascorbic acid was 80% below the recommended level for boys of thatage. The total calories, although sufficient for younger boys, did not meet the needs ofDiet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 241

older boys. Older boys also were not getting the recommended amount of riboflavinin their diet. The daily cost of bringing the boys’ diet up to Canada’s Food Rules standards was $14.08. The report concluded that “existing conditions are due primarily to(a) lack of money, (b) lack of facilities, (c) the unavailability of certain foods, and (d)insufficient knowledge of the nutritional needs of children.”21 As future inspections
demonstrated, these problems were common.
In late 1945 and early 1946, the Red Cross surveyed the menu at the schools in
Sault Ste. Marie (Shingwauk), Muncey (Mount Elgin), and Kamloops. The Shingwauk
school diet did not meet the dietary recommendations of ascorbic acid, thiamine(vitamin b1), vitamin a, riboflavin, or calcium. The children over twelve years of age
also required a higher caloric intake than they were receiving. A larger quantity ofgreen and yellow vegetables, whole-wheat bread, milk, and tomato juice was suggested, along with recommendations to supplement lunches with raw vegetables,
and to offer more canned vegetables. The vitamin a, calcium, and riboflavin amounts
at Mount Elgin were deemed to be adequate. However, the menu was low in calories, thiamine, ascorbic acid, and iron. Because of the generous portions served at
the Kamloops school, it appeared the children were “receiving more than the recommended allowances except ascorbic acid.” The children appeared to be “optimally
healthy, happy and well developed.”22
In 1945, Indian agent R. S. Davis investigated parental complaints about the food at
the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school. On his first visit, the dinner consisted of one sliceof bologna, potatoes, bread, and milk. When he visited again, the dinner was a ladlefuleach of beans, corn, potatoes, and “very little meat.” Many children requested second
helpings, but there was not enough to provide seconds for all. The bread was staleand served without butter, the milk was thin, and there was no dessert. The principal
could not tell him if the milk was being skimmed, referring Davis to the farm instructor. From him, Davis learned that all the milk was skimmed, and “what cream that was
not used on the staff’s table, was made into butter.”23
The nutritional quality and energy sufficiency of school meals were closely linked
to the success of a school’s farm. In 1945, Fraser Lake, British Columbia, principal
A. R. Simpson warned Indian Affairs that “we had a great deal of extra expense dueto the crop failure of last year; and the prospects for a good crop this year are not very
bright.”24 In November 1948, Shubenacadie principal J. P. Mackey wrote to Bernard F.
Neary, the superintendent of Welfare and Training at Indian Affairs, expressing concern over the financial situation at the school: “We have had the poorest year yet as far
as the farm is concerned. We are obliged to buy potatoes, carrots and other vegetables
except turnips and beets.”25
Although he thought that the students at the Sioux Lookout, Ontario, school werereceiving “a fair supply of vegetables, jam, syrup, honey and dried fruit,” Indian Affairs

242 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

inspector A. G. Hamilton reported in 1945 that he doubted they were getting “enoughmeat.”26 The winter of 1946 saw a “continuous epidemic of sore throats, temperatures,
and a resulting loss of weight on the part of several pupils.” By April 1946, eighteen
boys and twenty girls had lost weight since the start of the school year. In some cases,
the weight losses were only up to a kilogram, but, in other cases, were up to four orfive kilograms. In 1946, the school had an authorized pupilage of 135. Principal A. B.
Cheales believed an inadequate diet had contributed to both the illness and weightloss.27 Anglican Church official H. A. Alderwood instructed Cheales to “do what wasnecessary for additional meat and eggs.”28
A 1946 survey of the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, school concluded that the “servings fell markedly short in respect to milk, cheese, eggs, citrus fruit and tomatoes.” Italso noted that the “childrens’ [sic] and staff menus differed and a variety of extras
were allowed for the staff.”29 A reinspection in later 1947 showed an improvementin the milk supply, but commented that citrus fruits and tomatoes were served only
twice a week.30
The churches recognized that school diets were deficient and sought additional
government funding. When Indian Affairs commissioned the Red Cross to assess
school diets, L. A. Dixon of the Anglican missionary society reminded the government that “recommendations involving additional expenditure should be accompanied by the assurance of additional government assistance.”31 A 1945 request for an
increase in the funding allowed for food from the principal of the Fraser Lake schoolin British Columbia was turned down by Ottawa Indian Affairs official Philip Phelan,even though it had the support of a regional British Columbia Indian Affairs official.
Indian Affairs did agree to provide the school with one month’s funding for ten extra
students; the principal had enrolled them above the allowed pupilage.32
The 1946 report of the Anglican Church’s Indian Work Investigation Commission
into the condition of residential schools observed that a “physician associated with
the Indian Department” had told them that he did not “consider that the diet given to
the children is sufficiently varied or balanced. In view of the high incidence of tuberculosis, he recommended that the milk ration be increased.” The Anglicans recommended that the ration be increased at once, noting that, in some cases, it needed
to be doubled or tripled. The report stated that at one Anglican school, the food was“unsufficient [sic] in quantity and extremely poor in quality.”33 At the hearing of thefederal joint committee studying the Indian Act in 1947, the Protestant churches
made it clear they were not receiving sufficient funds to feed students according tofederal standards.34 Aboriginal organizations appearing before the committee madethe same point.35

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 243

Indian Affairs involves the Nutrition Division: 1945–1947
In early 1945, P. E. Moore, the acting superintendent of medical services for IndianAffairs, decided to develop “a recommended diet” for the residential schools.36 To aid
him in this project, he asked Dr. L. B. Pett, director of the Nutrition Division of therecently renamed Department of National Health and Welfare, to supply him withmaterial on institutional diets.37 Dr. Pett offered to provide the “basic menus for Healthbased on Canada’s Food Rules”; to supervise or inspect the “arrangements for foodservices [and the] methods of sharing, preparing, and serving foods”; to make recommendations “from time to time” regarding the purchase and preparation of food; andto check monthly food purchases.38 The following year, in a letter to Moore, Pett offered
to assign a Nutrition Division staff member to assist in discovering a solution to the“problem” of providing “continuous assistance in regard to serving nutritious meals at
low cost [to residential schools] in different parts of Canada.”39 Moore was open to theoffer, but reminded Pett that, while the newly created Indian Health Services division
was responsible for “health in schools, [the] administration of the schools [was] underthe Indian Affairs Branch and the Churches.”40 By July 1946, Indian Affairs had agreed
to Pett’s proposal to establish a nutritional service for residential schools. The service
was to be made up of two dietitians who would not only visit the schools and identify problems, as the Red Cross team had done, but also assist the kitchen staff andprincipals by suggesting menus, creating shopping lists adapted to the “possibilities ofthe locality,” recording recipes, offering cooking instruction, providing assistance withbudgeting, and “coordinating health education with the actual menus.” Nutritionist
Alice McCready would begin the service in Ontario.41
The service’s early reports continued to confirm what parents and children had
been saying for decades. A 1946 report of the quality of food at schools in northwestern
Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan concluded that, in the case of the Protestantschools, “unqualified staff (often elderly) were paid a mediocre salary to carry out thework in a careless and uninterested fashion. The result was that the food quality was
not good, cleanliness was neglected, the Indian girls were not receiving proper training and there was lack of coordination of efforts.” In the Catholic schools, the nuns
were properly trained, and since “their salaries were of no consequence,” they were
“genuinely interested in their work.” The result was better-quality food, clean kitchens,a higher level of training, and coordination of effort.
The study was critical of the poor dishwashing facilities (which contributed tothe spread of tuberculosis), dingy and poorly ventilated kitchens, utensils that werebeyond repair, and poor refrigeration. It called for pasteurization systems for milk
to be put into all schools. The overall conclusion was that the students’ diets were
inadequate. It was felt that, even with the inclusion of the value of the food raised on

244 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the farms, the schools were spending between twenty and thirty cents a day on eachchild at a time when it would take an expenditure of at least thirty-six cents a day
to provide a minimally adequate diet. The survey was also critical of the quality offood being purchased: too much use was made of puffed cereal, non-iodized salt, andnon-fortified flour. As well, the cooking process often led to considerable losses in the
nutritive value of the food.
The report contained an eight-point list of recommended improvements to theschool diets.
• A milk ration of between one and a half pints and one quart a day (up from one
pint or less).
• A daily serving of citrus fruit or tomatoes (up from none to two servings a week).
The nutritionist noted, “The present budget could not possibly provide the recommended servings.”• A daily serving of one additional fruit, fresh, canned, or dried. While most schools
served one fruit in this manner, “the size of the serving is seldom average. This is,again, the reflection of budget restrictions.”• Purchase of additional potatoes for the Sioux Lookout, Ontario, school. Most
schools served adequate portions of potatoes. However, the Sioux Lookout
school had limited farmland, so potatoes were served only three times a week.
• Two daily servings of other vegetables, preferably leafy, green, or yellow. The
nutritionists acknowledged, “The children seldom receive two servings per day,since they do not like and will not eat most vegetables.”• One serving of a whole-grain breakfast cereal and at least four slices of “Canada
Approved Vitamin b Bread” with butter per day. In some schools, refined cereals(non-whole grain) were served one or two times a week. Not all schools wereusing bread made from Canada Approved vitamin b flour. “At the most, butter
was served to the children once a day or 2 to 3 times a week. In some cases it
was not served at all, because of the expense. Butter is a good daily source ofVitamin a.”• Additional servings of meat alternatives. “One serving of meat, fish, poultry ormeat alternatives such as beans, peas, nuts, eggs, or cheese should be served
daily. Eggs and cheese should be served at least three times a week and liver
frequently. The children receive one serving of meat daily, but often in the caseof stew the serving is very small.”• Additional servings of eggs. “Eggs are served ‘none’ to 2 times a week. Cheese(when available) is served ‘none’ to once a week. It should be possible to keep
enough hens to have a good supply of eggs.”42
In essence, it was recommended that the schools serve meals that were in keepingwith Canada’s Food Rules.

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 245

One of the schools surveyed was Cecilia Jeffrey, the Presbyterian school in Kenora.
It was reported:
The kitchen was not completely supervised by anyone. The laundry matron, aprevious cook, relieved the present cooks on off-duty days. The first cook wasseventy years old and employed temporarily, due to the difficulty of obtaining acook this year. Both cooks lacked training and experience in quantity cookery.

There was no long-term menu planning. The day-to-day menus “lacked variety andthe children’s supper was not always adequate in quantity.” It was also noted that thestaff members were served a different menu, one that included “extras.”43
After the surveys, the Nutrition Division made recommendations to
Indian Affairs Branch and Indian Health Services on the particularimprovements which are needed (i) for health (e.g., extra servings of certain
foods, better trained cooks, replacement and addition of worn and cracked
utensils, careful dress of food handlers, pasteurization of milk) and (ii) for betteruse of facilities and better training (e.g. equipment i.e. potato peeler—lighting
and ventilation facilities, relocation or enlargement of certain units).44

Overall, McCready concluded that the “nutritional inadequacy” of the school diets
could be “attributed to financial limitations, kind and amounts of farm produce, foodpurchasing (e.g. refined cereal) and nutritive losses in cooking.”45 These were essentially the same issues that the Red Cross inspectors had recently identified.
The assessment of nutrition in the schools had been based on an application of
Canada’s Food Rules, but Dr. Pett thought it would be “better to use as a basis the
foods that will be obtained when on the nearby reserves, and add only those foods
that can be economically obtained.” If this could be done, it might create a healthy
diet that students could follow when they left the schools. In concluding, he noted,“But this involves a big question, not for me to answer, of what you are trying to dowith the Indians.”46

The 1947 surveys
Another round of inspections was held in 1947. A January 1947 report on the
Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, identified the usual catalogue of issues. The
cooks were inexperienced and overworked, and found it difficult to communicate
with children. The meat grinder was “old and unserviceable,” and the vegetable slicer
had been made in the school workshop. Kettles were in short supply, and the few
existing ones were old and worn. The dishes were chipped, and the cutlery was old
and rusty. There were no table knives.

246 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The main storeroom was far from the kitchen and was “dark and dingy.” The
unpainted shelves were “too narrow and inadequate.” A “current supply storeroom”
was closer, but cluttered with kitchen utensils and cleaning materials, “since there
were no facilities for such items in the kitchen.” A temporary storeroom had no cupboards, shelves, or windows. The bread was kept “improperly” in cardboard boxes. The
refrigerator was inadequate for meat, dairy products, leftover food, and other perishables. The dining-room tables and benches were old, badly worn, and unpainted, andthe tables were covered with a “stained, worn, white oilcloth.” The concrete flooringin the kitchen and dishwashing room needed to be replaced with a covering that waseasier to keep clean. The report also suggested installing windows in the storerooms
and dishwashing room, and opening the windows in the dining room to address theinadequate ventilation. The main storeroom had inadequate lighting. Although “goodattempts” were made to keep the rooms clean and tidy, the lack of storage facilities,
the worn floors, the old equipment and utensils, and the lack of proper help proved tobe “handicaps,” and good results were not obvious.
The inspector did not have “complete assurance that the food handlers did nothave t.b.” The cattle were tested for tuberculosis periodically, but the milk was notpasteurized, and the facilities for washing and storing dairy utensils were inadequate.
Poor garbage-disposal practices had led to the presence of rats, and the school itself
was infested with cockroaches.
Due to a lack of proper refrigeration facilities, beef had to be stored in the city ata cost of three cents a pound. The rest of the food supplies were purchased, and theapproximate food cost per person per day was twenty cents. Although the matroncompiled a two-week menu pattern, it did not “reflect an adequate diet and was notfollowed consistently.” The children’s and staff menus differed: “extras” were allowed
for the staff, while the meat and fruit servings for the children were usually too small.
Servings of citrus fruit, vegetables, and whole-grain breakfast cereals fell short of thoserecommended in the Food Rules, limiting the intake of iron and vitamins a, c, and b.
The report deemed the servings of stew in particular “too small for growing children.”
The meals were lacking in quality and variety because the standard methods of preparation and cookery were not in use.47
In reviewing a proposed Indian Affairs ration scale, based on Canada’s Food Rules,
Henry Cook, the principal of the Moose Factory school in Ontario, noted in 1947 thatmany students “did not like certain vegetables,” but had been raised on tea sincechildhood. He wondered if he might “ask for fewer vegetables and use the credit of
the remainder for extra tea?”48 Dr. Pett responded, “If the children do not like certain
vegetables, then vegetables they do like should be increased in quantity rather thanusing those extra credits for tea.” He also stressed, “No central ration list can hope tosatisfy the local needs of any institution. It can only be a guide.”49

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 247

At the Delmas, Saskatchewan, school, an inspector noted that instead of getting
between one and a half pints to a quart of milk a day, the students were getting between
one and three cups; instead of a daily serving of citrus fruits, they were getting them
only on Catholic feast days; instead of daily servings of other fruits, they were getting them only when available; instead of a daily serving of whole-grain cereal, they
were served non-whole-grain cereals three times a week. Although they were getting
at least six slices of bread, it was not vitamin-enriched bread. They had no cheese, andgot cod liver oil only during the winter.50
In early 1947, Inspector McCready inspected six schools in Alberta. Overall, she
concluded that “at no school does the variety of diet meet the requirements in respect
to Vitamin content, and that no school principal has sufficient revenue to enable him
to provide a wholly satisfactory diet, especially in fresh fruit or fruit juices.”51 Her
inspection of the Morley, Alberta, school kitchen underscored the problems withwhich school cooks struggled. Working conditions were judged to be awkward andcongested because of the narrowness of the kitchen; there was no place near the
kitchen for the proper storage of food supplies; the refrigerator was inadequate andwas located in a pantry next to the kitchen; other than the windows, there was no
ventilation. The meat grinder and the hand slicer were worn out, and there was notenough hot water to wash all the dishes in the one sink in the kitchen. For several
months, it had been impossible for the school to purchase lard, cheese, or any dried
fruits other than prunes, and the fresh milk supply was judged to be “too low.”52 The
diet at the Hobbema, Alberta, school produced a similar and disheartening picture.
According to the inspector, “Variety was lacking, since large amounts of dishes wereprepared for the noon meal and the left-overs were served (as such) for the evening
meal.” When the servings were assessed in light of the recommendations of the Food
Rules, they fell “very short in respect of milk, citrus fruit or tomatoes, other vegetables, the use of whole wheat or Canada Approved white or brown bread, butter, eggs,
cheese (non-available) and iodized salt.” The students were “pale, expressionless,and thin.”53
In 1947, an investigation discovered that the Anglican Missionary Society of the
Church of England in Canada was not using all the money it received from the federal
government for the Alert Bay, British Columbia, school for school purposes. Indian
agent M. S. Todd wrote, “Wages are so low that it is impossible to get efficient help,”
and the “preparation, serving and quality of food given to the children and staff of thisinstitution is one of the dark pages in the history of this school.”54 Three days later, asecond Indian Affairs official, J. Coleman, filed an equally critical report of the school.
The noon meal at the school consisted of boiled salmon, potatoes, raw turnip, johnnycake (a flat bread), and water. According to Coleman:
The fins had been left in some of the fish, some of which was nearly raw. Before
serving it had cooled off in metal bowls for nearly half an hour and was quite248 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

cold. The “johnny cake” appeared soggy and improperly cooked. Baked fishheads and roe in insufficient quantity were served for the evening meal, with asmall dab of apple sauce and a slice of bread.
The next day liver, raw carrots and potatoes with bread were served for lunch, but
as only a spoon was allowed each child, they had difficulty in dividing the meat
into edible portions. The dessert was a stodgy boiled pudding, not fit for food,with water for beverage. The evening meal was rice pudding boiled with water,
with about two prunes per child, bread with a smear of peanut butter and cocoa.
It was noticed that some of the pupils dishing out the food at the tables were left
without an adequate serving and had no reserve to fall back on. It is doubtful
if the children receive a total of more than a third of a pint of milk per day andno butter. There is no evidence of their being given citrus fruits or tomato juice,other than on very rare occasions.

He doubted that the diet would meet “half the children’s nutritional requirements.”
Since many of the children came from “well-equipped homes with a high standard ofliving, it is easy to understand their revolt against these conditions.”55
Other schools reported that they could provide satisfying meals only by overspending on food. In December 1947, the principal of the Mohawk Institute, W. J.
Zimmerman, informed Indian Affairs:
With this matter of food I am running into real difficulty. To maintain the present
type of meals being served I cannot remain within the budget. Mrs. Davies istrying to give the children a balanced diet. One of the boys said the other day
that one of the things which keeps him at the school is the good food. He plainly
stated that if there was a return to the former meals as served a number of years
ago he would not stay.

Cutting down on food costs would, he wrote, only drive up truancy.56
In the summer of 1947, the Nutrition Division offered a course for residential school
cooks.57 For the course, Dr. Pett brought both school cooks and female students to the
Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, school. At the course, he said, “the variety of food and thesize of servings of most food was greater than served in the schools. No difficulty was
encountered in getting the girls [meaning the female students] to eat any of the foods
essential to health.” This observation was intended as a refutation to those who said
the students would not eat healthy food. It was Pett’s position that students would eat
healthy food when such food was properly prepared. The daily food cost during thecooking school was forty-six cents a student. While this was double the amount thatwas budgeted at the residential schools that his staff had visited in the past two years,
he observed that “46¢ is not a high food cost considering the price of food today andcomparing it with the cost in other institutions.”58

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 249

In the fall of 1947, McCready visited seventeen schools in Manitoba, Saskatchewan,
Alberta, and northern Ontario. Her report on these inspections painted a disheartening picture. McCready found that although “basic 100 quantity recipes and weekly
menu patterns” had been supplied, they were not being used. In fact, she said, “Veryfew of the cooks are applying many of the teachings from the course.” Most of theschools used recipes occasionally for desserts, but failed “to see the necessity” inusing recipes for soups, meats, and vegetables, and at only one school were the supplied recipes being used consistently. One cook stated that “she did not plan a menu
ahead of time because she would have to change it.” In one case, McCready helped acook plan a weekly menu. Given the lack of school resources, the menu still did nothave citrus fruit, vegetables, eggs, liver, and butter.
In her sessions with cooks, McCready observed that there was a need to train cooksin the importance of• serving vegetables;• cooking unpeeled potatoes to save time, effort, and vitamin c;• cutting food into similar sizes to ensure that the children receive the sameamount (It was reported that the “cook seldom sees the food after it leaves the
kitchen and scarcely realizes that one child is only getting perhaps half as muchas another.”);• cooking vegetables in the shortest possible time;• recognizing that jam did not count as a serving of fruit; and• overcoming the children’s food dislikes through “gradual introductionand explanation.”
Some improvements had been made in “most of the schools” since the first inspection; in particular, schools served increased portions of beef, purchased more fresh
fruit, supplemented their fresh milk supplies with powdered milk, and used morewhole-wheat bread.
But, McCready wrote, it was hard for principals to stay away from two topics
of discussion:
1)

The financial limitations and the fact that if Indian Affairs Branch demandhigher standards they must provide the means.

2)

How much better the children are fed in school than they ever are before they
enter and after they leave.

The principals told McCready they would
welcome a Government policy which would set forth what [was] expected ofthem, and at the same time provide the means whereby a standard could be
met. As the situation is now, it is difficult to convince the Principals that we can250 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

help them or that they can improve very much when they are so acutely aware ofbeing limited by financial means, supplies, essential equipment and staff.59

The negative assessments that McCready produced for Dr. Pett were distributed
to federal health officials responsible for First Nations people. In March 1947, E. L.
Stone, the Alberta regional superintendent of Indian Health Services (Departmentof National Health and Welfare), sent a letter to his director (Percy Moore), outlining the findings of McCready’s survey of six Alberta schools from earlier in the year.
He concluded:1)

That at the better schools the pupils are reasonably adequately nourished, so
far as quantity of food goes.

2)

That at no school does the variety of diet meet the requirements in respect
to Vitamin content, and that no school principal has sufficient revenue toenable him to provide a wholly satisfactory diet, especially in fresh fruit or
fruit juices.

3)

That some schools could do better than they are doing with theircurrent resources.

4)

That the goodness or badness of feeding corresponds to the quality ofmanagement of the several schools in other respects.

Stone ended his letter with this observation:
The only way I can think of by which residential school feeding can be madereally satisfactory is by the Department laying down scales of food issues,
providing the schools with menus, carrying out effective inspection, andpaying the cost of the food. This, I believe, would be welcomed by every
school principal.60

Pett, as the director of the Nutrition Division, further communicated directly to
Indian Affairs. In a July 1947 letter to B. F. Neary, the superintendent of Welfare andTraining for Indian Affairs, Pett wrote:
I do not believe that it has been established yet by making these reports thatany actual benefit is ultimately received by the Indian children. Since this is our
objective, we can not continue such service indefinitely without some evidenceof results. Unfortunately results await action by various people in various
agencies; there must be improvement of certain facilities before our advice canbe effective; there seems also to be financial adjustment needed if adequate
food supplies are to be available; and finally there must be sufficient interest andintelligence on the part of the entire staff of the school to make use of further
advice in the matter.61

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 251

The Nutrition Division had clearly informed senior officials that there was a serious
problem with nutrition levels in residential schools that could be addressed only by afunding increase.
In addition to carrying out inspections, the Nutrition Division prepared a list of
publications on nutrition that was circulated to residential school officials, who weretold they should request the publications they wanted from their provincial healthdepartments.62 Menu patterns, recipes for servings of 100, and educational posters
were also prepared.63 To learn more about children’s attitudes towards food, the division also organized a contest in which children in residential schools created posters
relating to food and nutrition.64
In December 1947, Pett summarized the work the Nutrition Division had conducted over the past two years, and reached the following conclusion: “Practically no
improvement has been found.” On the basis of the inspections, he reached the following conclusions:a)no school was doing a good feeding job;b) a lack of mechanical equipment makes necessary the use of much student
time on other than instruction;c)a lack of coordinated plans for the farm to supply the school meals hascaused the purchase of foods which could have been raised; this increases
the costs of an adequate diet and makes our recommendations result in ademand for money, when the need is actually for a policy that combines thefarm both with training and the food supply;d) the cook frequently lacks training and is not thus able to take advantage of
our assistance; efforts to correct this by a cook’s course were not successful;e)the methods used in Indian Residential Schools as reflected in theirfood services do not appear to be fitting Indians for their usual returnto the reserve, (e.g. ignoring local foods and food habits) nor for proper
understanding of white procedures.

He saw no benefit in continued visits, since “there is no value in knowing that
another school is below standard nutritionally, and little benefit can be measured
from these visits.” He thought it had been a mistake to focus on cooks. Instead, hethought, it would be necessary to arrange conferences with principals and farm managers to discuss food and other problems. “One of the purposes of such discussions
would be to evolve with their help sets of menus and tests of foods to be provided
which could be priced locally and covered by a sufficient money grant in relation to
the development of the farm.” His final recommendation was: “Make a demonstration
project of at least two schools provided the cooperation of the Indian Affairs Branch
and all others concerned can be secured.”252 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The project would be a long term matter involving several years. A complete
nutrition survey of all children would be carried out. Any essential renovationof the kitchen would have to be carried out, as well as assurance of money forthe menus so as to get first-class feeding. Further clinical and statistical studies
would be carried out at 6 month or yearly intervals.

He thought that in one of the schools, it would be possible to study the “effects
of foods containing added vitamins and minerals,” and noted that food fortification was being undertaken across the United States and in other countries “without
such study.”65

The nutrition studies: 1948–1953
These final recommendations in Pett’s December 1947 letter served as the basis fora series of nutritional experiments involving six residential schools in the late 1940s
and early 1950s. In April 1948, Pett distributed an outline for a five-year nutritional
study of the effects on the “physical, dental and mental health of children, aged 7
to 16, of an institutional feeding program extending over at least 5 years.” It would
involve the “comparisons of different curative and preventative measures, such asproviding foods or capsules containing minerals, vitamins etc that observation shows
to be needed.” The schools were to serve as “demonstrations of what can be done incertain directions by adequate financial assistance and full cooperation by federal
departments and the churches and schools involved.” It was expected that the “study
would thus provide a basis for whatever improvement is needed in other schools.” Asdefined, the project was a considerably scaled-down version of what he had proposed
in 1947.
Pett initially recommended that the study be undertaken at the Alberni, Edmonton,
Prince Albert, Kenora, and Shubenacadie schools. In the case of Kenora, he recommended that the study be carried out at both the Roman Catholic and Presbyterianschools in that community. He also wished to see the study extended, if possible, toresidential schools in Kamloops, Spanish, and Brantford.66

The purpose of the studies
According to an April 1948 document that appears to have been prepared forschool principals expected to be involved in the study, the project was to be “especially concerned with the effects that can be produced by special feeding programs,
having due regard to cost, convenience, availability, etc.” Pett assured them, “Any extra
cost or arrangements will be met by the government departments concerned.” TheDiet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 253

main purpose of the “long term nutrition study is to explore various dietary methods
that could be employed, as economically as possible, to maintain and improve thehealth of Indians.” Residential schools were ideal places to carry out such a study:
adult dietary troubles were seen to “really begin in childhood.” It was more convenient
to conduct such studies in schools rather than in the general population; the schools
were prepared to co-operate and provided a stable population that could be studied
for several years.67
Pett wrote that the project was designed to answer the following questions:1)

Are conditions observed in Northern Manitoba found elsewhere in Canada?
[The northern Manitoba study is discussed at a later point in this chapter.]2)

What type of food service in residential schools will economically provide
the best maintenance of health and carry over desirable food habits to
the reserve?

3)

Will foods fortified with vitamins and minerals provide demonstrable resultsover the course of 5 years?

4)

Can health educational methods be introduced effectively in these schools?68

Although Pett identified four questions, most of the research centred on issues
raised in the third question. This arose from, and related to, ongoing debates overnutritional issues in Canada.

The debate on vitamin-enriched flour in Canada
Pett’s interest in question 3—whether foods fortified with vitamins and minerals
would provide “demonstrable results”—was raised in response to an ongoing debate
among nutritionists of the day. By 1948, nutritional researchers in Canada and government regulators outside Canada had concluded that adding vitamins to flour
would improve public health in general, and the health of undernourished populations in particular. The possibility of enriching or fortifying flour (and the bread madefrom it) was relatively new. It was not until the mid-1930s that it became possible tosynthesize and commercially produce vitamins. The first vitamin so produced was
ascorbic acid (vitamin c) in 1934.69 Thiamine (a b vitamin) was synthesized in 1936.70
Flour was seen as a logical product to which vitamins could be added, for two reasons.
First, conventional milling practices of the day, by removing the germ and the outer
coat of the wheat kernel, eliminated from the flour the eight interrelated vitamins collectively known as the “vitamin b complex,” and minerals such as iron and calcium.
Enrichment was seen as largely a matter of adding synthesized versions of these vitamins and minerals back to the flour. Second, because bread and other cereals played

254 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

a central role in Canadian—as well as European and American—diets, such fortification could easily improve the general population’s consumption of these vitamins
and minerals.71
Prior to the 1940s, Canadian nutritional experts were doubtful of the benefits of theaddition of specific vitamins to the general Canadian diet.72 It was felt that if they were
granted sufficient income, Canadians could meet their nutritional needs through thepurchase and consumption of a properly prepared variety of foods.73 Concern over thenutritional status of Canadians increased after the release of surveys carried out by
the Canadian Council of Nutrition. These indicated extensive deficiencies in vitaminsa and b, iron, and calcium.74 Concern had also been raised in 1943 over the ascorbic
acid levels in the Canadian diet.75
Similar findings in Britain and the United States had led to the adoptionof flour-enrichment policies in those countries. The United States adopted
flour-enrichment standards in May 1941, and, by mid-1942, three-quarters of thewhite bread and family flour sold in the United States was enriched with thiamine, drymilk, niacin (vitamin b3), and iron. Riboflavin (another b vitamin) was added in 1943.
Bread enrichment was made mandatory in the United States in 1943.76 In 1940, theBritish government mandated the addition of thiamine to bread, but this was delayed
due to wartime conditions. In 1943, the addition of calcium carbonate to flour was
also made mandatory.77
Rather than mandating the addition of vitamins to flour, the Canadian government preferred to encourage the use of milling processes that retained the natural
vitamin levels. It was thought that this would provide greater health benefits than theAmerican or British processes, which added only some of the complex of b vitaminsthat milling removed. New “high-extraction” milling processes would retain two to
three times more thiamine (part of the vitamin b complex) than the regular milling
method. Flour milled in this fashion could be labelled “Canada Approved vitaminb white flour” and “Canada Approved vitamin b flour.” Using this milling process
remained optional—although the early Canada’s Official Food Rules recommended
the use of Canada Approved flours. As such, the Nutrition Division regularly recommended that residential schools serve students bread made from Canada Approved
flour. It was often the case that students were not served such flour.
The 1941 Order-in-Council that conferred the Canada Approved designation onthese flours also made it illegal to add synthetic vitamins to flour or bread. The measure was intended to prevent manufacturers from adding vitamins to bread without
knowing what impact that might have. The Canada Approved flours did not gain wide
acceptance: after two and a half years on the market, they amounted to only 7% of theflour sold in the country.78 This meant it was likely that, when it came to breads, more

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 255

than 90% of the Canadian population was not eating a diet in keeping with Canada’s
Official Food Rules.
A series of studies conducted in the 1940s all placed increased pressure on thegovernment to either mandate the enrichment of flour in general, or at least toensure it was provided to members of undernourished communities—particularly
Aboriginal communities.
The first four studies took place in Newfoundland, which, until 1949, was still a
British colony. A health study of the general population of Newfoundland carriedout in 1944 identified evidence of “nutritional deficiencies due to lack of vitamin a,riboflavin, and ascorbic acid” in “great frequency.” It also identified deficiencies ofthiamine and niacin.79 Prompted by the information in the study (the report was not
published until 1945), the Newfoundland government in 1944 required that all flour
imported to the province be enriched with thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, iron, and calcium (bone meal).80 According to a study published in 1948, many of the signs ofmalnutrition in the general population of Newfoundland had declined during theprevious four years (in other words, after the introduction of enriched flour). It wasreported thatthose signs and symptoms of malnutrition which could have been expected todecrease in prevalence as a result of the fortification of margarine with vitamina and the enrichment of flour with riboflavin, niacin and thiamine were lessfrequently encountered and less severe in 1948 than in 1944, whereas theprevalence of lesions which could not have been affected by these measuresremained unaltered or actually increased.

A general increase in the “alertness” of the people was thought to be possibly
attributable to increased intake of thiamine. The authors recommended that flourand margarine enrichment continue, and that public health training emphasize theimportance of milk consumption by children, and the importance of the consumption of citrus juice or fruits and greater use of uncooked vegetables.81 Two studies of
the Newfoundland community of Norris Point, one carried out in 1944 and the otherin 1948, concluded that there had been definite improvement in the “symptoms andsigns commonly associated with vitamin b complex deficiency” over that four-year
period (again, this was the period following the introduction of enriched flour). The
improvements were judged to be “consistent with the increase of nutrient intake provided by enriched flour.”82
Research was also being undertaken into nutrition and Aboriginal people in
Canada. In 1941, Dr. Cameron Corrigan, who provided health services for IndianAffairs in northern Manitoba, recommended that Dr. Frederick Tisdall be asked tocarry out a nutrition study in Norway House to determine “any deficiencies that the256 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Indians may be suffering from.” At the same time, Corrigan recommended that vitamins be added to the flour that was provided to the First Nations people in Norway
House.83 The recommended study was carried out in 1942. It concluded that the“dietary intake failed to meet the recommended daily allowances for most nutrients.”
In some cases, the “diet was markedly deficient.” The high infant mortality rate, highgeneral mortality rate, and high death rate from tuberculosis were linked to the “highdegree of malnutrition arising from lack of proper foods.” The report also noted thatflour was a major component in the First Nations diet.84 These study results are the“conditions observed in Northern Manitoba” that Pett referred to in the first of his fourquestions listed above.
At the same time, a study was also undertaken into the potential benefit of vitamin treatment. Of 300 First Nations people, 125 were given vitamins. Corrigan examined the participants and a nurse monitored compliance. A follow-up study in 1944
concluded that it was “too early to expect definite signs of improvement.” Of the 300
people being studied, 102 were schoolchildren, ranging in age from seven to sixteen.
All that is known of them from official reports is that their “ocular condition was excellent with almost no severe disease.”85 It is likely that many, if not all, of these students
attended the Norway House residential school. The principal of the Alberni School,
A. E. Caldwell, had been at the Norway House school in the early 1940s. In 1948, he
described how, when he was principal of the Norway House school, he
undertook at the request of the Doctor, to establish a diet and a control group,
each of twenty children, at the school. The vitamin content of the diet was
reduced in the control group and augmented in the diet group. However, thisproject was only carried on for some three months at that time and the findings
could not have been very conclusive.86

This is the only account of the experiment that suggests that the vitamin intake ofthe control group was reduced. Unlike other accounts, it was written several years after
the time period of the study. It also suggests that the period of study was shorter thanis indicated in the official reports. However, if it is correct, it represents a serious abuseof the health of the children involved. Given Pett’s 1947 observation that “no school
was doing a good feeding job,” any reduction of the vitamin content of the food given
to the students can only be viewed as an unjustifiable act of negligence.87 If Caldwell’s
description of the study is accurate, then he had certainly abused his guardianshipby authorizing the reduction of vitamin intake. A more proper approach would havebeen for Caldwell to have sought and received consent from the parents for the participation of their children in this research project. It should be noted that the studies
that Pett directed in the late 1940s and early 1950s did not involve any similar reduction in the vitamin content of student diets.

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 257

Despite the lack of clear results, the Nutritional Expeditionary Committee, which
carried out the study in northern Manitoba, recommended in 1944 thatcertain basic articles of food habitually eaten by the Indians be used as a vehicle
to carry these food substances which have been found to be lacking in their diet.
For example, all flour used should be “Canada Approved” flour, which is high invitamins, to which should be added Thiamin (Vitamin b1), Riboflavin (Vitaminb2), Niacin, Calcium, and Iron Salts.88

In essence, the committee was recommending the introduction of something very
similar to Newfoundland flour.
A 1948 paper on health conditions among First Nations people in the James Bay
region concluded that, in addition to increasing the use of locally available foods,
it would be “desirable to improve the vitamin and mineral value of the staple foods
which the Indian must purchase. It is entirely feasible to do this by incorporating thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin d, calcium and iron in the flour.”89
Pett had reservations about the effectiveness of flour that was enriched throughthe addition of synthetically produced vitamins. After the publication of the James
Bay study, he wrote to the paper’s chief author of the report, Dr. R. P. Vivian of the
Department of Health and Social Medicine at McGill University, noting that in “allthe long years of controversy on fortifying flour and other foods with vitamins andminerals I have maintained a somewhat neutral attitude. I want to see some evidenceof actual value in such a procedure, as well as freedom from harm, before I would
encourage its application to large groups of people.” In his opinion, no study had everdemonstrated the benefits of “adding certain vitamins to flour.” Neither, he wrote, “hasit been clearly shown that the iron or calcium sometimes added are even absorbed.”
He asked Vivian if he had “found some direct evidence that such additions are really‘improvements’ or whether it is entirely inferential.”90 Vivian responded that “someinteresting information has been obtained in the most recent survey of conditions
in Newfoundland.”91

The spring 1948 dietary survey
Before the final selection of the schools to be included in the residential school
nutrition study, Pett instructed his nutritionists to inspect the schools under consideration for inclusion in the survey. This inspection, later referred to as a “dietary
survey,” took place in the spring of 1948.92 The purpose of these visits, according toPett, was to obtain “a record of the menus being served and some information about
individual food habits of the children.”93 Based on existing reports, it appears that at
each school they visited, the nutritionists carried out the same sort of inspections

258 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

they had made in 1946 and 1947, and made recommendations for improvements
based on Canada’s Food Rules. Of her inspection of the Shubenacadie school, Alice
McCready wrote:
The nutritional adequacy of the children’s diet was estimated by comparison
with the number of daily and weekly servings of each important food group as
recommended by Canada’s Food Rules. The servings are low in respect to citrus
fruit or tomatoes, vegetables other than potatoes, the use of brown or Canada
Approved Vitamin b white bread, butter or other fat, cheese, liver and iodized
salt. This will reduce the intake of vitamins a, b and c, iron and iodine.

Although McCready’s report on Shubenacadie did not make formal recommendations, it very specifically laid out the differences in the school menu from the recommended standards and what needed to be done to bring it into compliance with
Canada’s Food Rules.94 According to the inspection of the Alberni school, the diet atthe school was judged to be low “in respect to milk, citrus fruits or tomatoes, vegetables other than potatoes, the use of whole wheat or Canada approved Vitamin b whiteflour, eggs, cheese, and iodized salt. This will reduce the intake of Vitamins a, b, c,and iodine.”95
Therefore, the diet was low in five of the six Food Rules categories. The report concluded with a page of recommendations for improvement in both health and sanitation. The food recommendations included calls for:• milk—approximately one more pint (.47 litres) daily;• citrus fruits or tomatoes—six more servings weekly;• vegetables, other than potatoes—one more serving daily;• the use of whole-wheat or Canada Approved vitamin b white flour forbread baking;• increased use of eggs and cheese; and• use of iodized salt.96
The reports on both the Presbyterian and Roman Catholic schools in Kenora,
Ontario, referred to previous reports and observed that “any further recommendations and conclusions are discussed in this report.” The reports identified the ways inwhich the diets at the school were not in keeping with Canada’s Food Rules.97
The report on the school at Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, was highly critical of justabout every aspect of the food services, and concluded that the “amounts of milk, citrus fruit or tomatoes, vegetables other than potatoes, eggs and cheese served are still
low in comparison with Canada’s food rules.” The introduction in the report made it
clear that it recommended the school address these deficiencies.98
The reports on the Shubenacadie and Edmonton schools (which were not eventually included in the nutrition survey) were largely positive.99 The assessment of theEdmonton school, for example, noted the improvement that had been made in recent

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 259

years and made recommendations for additional improvements.100 The difficulty thata number of institutions generally had in hiring and keeping kitchen staff, and thepoor quality of kitchen facilities, were remarked upon in several instances.101 It wasalso noted that, at the Presbyterian school in Kenora, the “supper menus lack variety
and often do not provide sufficient food; this can be largely attributed to financial limitations.”102 This was, of course, the underlying problem.
Indian Affairs sent copies of these reports to church officials, to principals, and to
local Indian agents in the fall of 1948. It instructed the recipients to review the reports
and prepare comments on the recommendations contained within them.103 It would
appear from the record, then, that the dietary surveys carried out as part of the nutrition study produced documents that recommended improvements in diet at theschools, and that these recommendations were distributed to organizations responsible for the schools in the fall of 1948. In the documents it has reviewed, the Truth
and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has located no document containing an
instruction from Pett or his staff that, as a part of the survey, dietary deficiencies not
be addressed in 1948 or that diets be held at their pre-1947 levels to serve as a baseline
for the study. (As will be seen, nutrition clinics in the fall of 1948 and the spring of 1949
were used to establish student health baselines.)
Of course, without a funding increase from Indian Affairs, improvements were
all but impossible. In October 1948, J. O. Plourde of the Oblates office in Ottawa
responded to the criticisms of the Catholic school in Kenora by observing that anincrease in the school’s per capita grant was needed if the school was to “supply thevaried foods asked by your dietician.”104 The 1948 dietary surveys had generated thesorts of results that Dr. Pett had predicted in his December 1947 report; and there had
been little improvement. Recommendations to feed children diets in keeping with theFood Rules had been met with protestations of underfunding from the schools, andIndian Affairs did not provide significant increases to the per capita grant.
Upon review of the nutritionists’ reports, Pett excluded some schools that he hadoriginally selected for participation in the study. Conditions at the school in Prince
Albert were too “unsettled” during the period that a new school was being set up to
include the school in the study.105 The Edmonton school had been selected because of
its similarity to the Prince Albert school; when Prince Albert was dropped, a decision
was made to drop the Edmonton school as well.106 The final decision on which schools
to include in the study was not made until July 1948, when it was decided to drop
both the Edmonton and Prince Albert schools from the study and replace them with
the Anglican and Roman Catholic schools near Cardston, Alberta.107 A January 1948
assessment of the Anglican school near Cardston had stated that “the sanitary andhygenic [sic] conditions are very clean and tidy and that the food quality is good. The
report shows that the foods are suitably prepared and cooked for immediate service.”108

260 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The study begins: 1948 nutrition clinics
Once the schools were selected, Pett then supervised two nutrition clinics. At
these clinics, doctors and dentists conducted medical and dental examinations of
all students, and took blood samples to determine the levels of protein, hemoglobin(an iron-containing protein in the blood), and certain vitamins. From these tests,
he would develop his baseline of student health.109 At the Shubenacadie school, as
part of the nutrition clinic, the students were given a dental prophylaxis treatment.
(“Prophylaxis” is a medical treatment or medication intended to prevent an undesired
outcome. In the dental context of the period, it would be the removal of a buildup ofminerals on the teeth, usually called “tartar,” and the polishing of teeth.) It is not clear
if such a treatment was provided at the other schools in the survey. It was requested
that no dentist visiting the schools outside the survey provide prophylactic treatment.110 Films, filmstrips, and slide-show presentations were also included in theclinics.111 Although there is no report of which films were shown, in his correspondence from this period, Pett recommended that the Why We Eat filmstrips be used in
educational work among Aboriginal people.112 The nutrition study had a significant
communications component that was directed at both staff and students with theintention of informing them about the benefits of vitamins and minerals in certain
foods. However, there is no indication that, at any point, the parents of the children
were contacted to see if they would provide consent for participation in the study.
The first nutrition clinics were completed by October 1948. Pett wrote that he had
examined 824 students. He noted, “This group is not a statistically ‘random’ sample,
but it may approach a fair ‘average’ because it contained both bad and good influences. At least half the children examined came from broken homes: broken by death,destitution, disease, desertion, etc.”113
The second set of dietary surveys was held early in 1949; the second nutrition clinics were conducted in April and May 1949.114 From this, reports were prepared of “thebasic conditions observed at each school.” On the basis of these reports, Pett developed a course of action for each school for the following four years.115

The nutrition clinic results
Pett prepared statistical tables that summarized the results of the nutritional clinics
in the fall of 1948 and the spring of 1949. He also had summaries of menus and servings for two months in the fall of 1948 and February 1949. This information played asignificant role in the decisions he then made about which changes to incorporate ateach school in the fall of 1949. Through this process, Pett was attempting to identify
both dietary deficiencies at the school and health conditions that could be addressedby the addition of vitamins and minerals to the diet. Then, the dietary interventions

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 261

would serve as a form of treatment. The diets were examined according to the degree
to which they conformed to eight Canada’s Food Rules categories. Diets that were at
the minimum or below the minimum in one to three of eight categories were categorized as “borderline” diets; a borderline diet would be above the minimum in five of
the eight categories.
At the Anglican school in Cardston, the percentage of students with hemoglobin,
ascorbic acid, and niacin deficiencies increased from the fall 1948 to the spring 1949
nutritional clinic, and the percentage with vitamin a deficiencies decreased. The
percentage of students identified with poor posture and enlarged tonsils increased,
and the percentage of cases of students who were underweight and thin decreased.
Pett described the results as “one of the best showings in this project.” In reviewing
the reports of meals served at the school in October, November, and February of that
school year, he observed that “no poor diets” were reported. In two months, 100% of themeals were described as being borderline, and, in the third month, 99% of the meals
were described as being borderline. Over 75% of the meals were at or below the minimum for at least two Food Rules categories in October, November, and February.116
During the winter, the percentage of students with a low hemoglobin condition,and riboflavin, vitamin a, ascorbic acid, and niacin deficiencies increased at the
Catholic school in Cardston. The percentage of students with sensory abnormalities (poor reflexes) increased from 1.8% in the fall to 6% as well during this period.
(This was associated with a possible thiamine deficiency.) Problems with dental
caries (cavities), gingivitis (inflammation of the gums), and posture also increased.
The percentage of students with protein deficiency decreased, and the percentage ofstudents who were underweight or had blood-pressure problems decreased. In thethree months for which meals were assessed, 94%, 95%, and 97% of the meals weredeemed to be borderline (the rest of the meals in each month were deemed to bepoor). Fifty per cent of the meals in each period were at or below the minimum inthree food categories.117
At the Catholic school in Kenora, the percentage of students with deficiencies in
the following categories decreased over the winter: hemoglobin levels, riboflavin,vitamin a, ascorbic acid, gingivitis, and posture. During the same period, the percentage of students with protein deficiency in their diet decreased. A review of the mealsummaries indicated that 100% of the meals reviewed in October and November of1948 were of borderline quality. However, in February 1949, 44% were deemed to bepoor. In each period, over 90% of the meals were at or below the minimum in at least
two Food Rules categories.118
During the winter, the percentage of students at the Presbyterian school in Kenora
with low hemoglobin levels increased from 21.2% to 63.3%. The percentage of students
with deficiencies in riboflavin and ascorbic acid, and the percentage of students withpossible niacin deficiencies, also increased, as did the percentage of gingivitis cases.

262 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Eleven per cent of the meals reported on in October and November were assessed as
being good, and 20% of the meals assessed in February 1949 were assessed as being
good. The rest of the meals were borderline. In the two fall assessments, over 50% of
the meals were at or below the minimum in two Food Rules categories. In February
1949, 20% of meals were at the minimum in all groups, and 76% of meals were at or
above the minimum in all but one Food Rules recommendation.119 This was the bestrecord for meals of the six schools. At no other school did any of the meals rise above
the borderline level.
At the Shubenacadie school, the percentage of students with ascorbic acid deficiency increased from the fall to the spring, and the percentage of students withhemoglobin and niacin deficiencies decreased. The percentage of students with what
was defined as “possible” protein deficiency fell from 9.8% to zero. The percentage ofstudents with gingivitis increased from 50% to 68%. There were improvements to thepercentage of students deemed to be underweight or thin, or to have blood-pressure
problems. All the meals were in the borderline classification. In September, 62% of themeals were at the minimum or below in two Food Rules categories. In November andFebruary, this had improved: 95% of the meals were at or above the minimum in all
but one Food Rules category.120
At the Alberni school, the percentage of students with riboflavin and ascorbic aciddeficiencies increased over the winter, and the percentage of students with gingivitis
also increased. There was improvement in hemoglobin levels, in niacin and protein
deficiencies, and in reductions in the percentage of students judged to be thin, underweight, and having poor posture and enlarged tonsils. These results were described as“possibly the best showing of any school in the project.” The percentage of borderline
meals ranged from 97% in September, to 96% in November, to 93% in February 1949.
Three per cent of the meals in September were poor, 3% of the November meals werepoor, and 7% of the February 1949 meals were poor. Over 70% of the meals in eachof September, November, and January were at or below the minimum in at least two
Food Rules categories.121
From the above it is apparent that during the period before Pett introduced changes
to the school diets, school diets were subject to fluctuation. The fact that only one of
the schools was ever able to provide more than borderline diets (above the minimumin five of the eight categories) to the students makes it clear that none of these schools
were feeding students diets that were in keeping with Canada’s Food Rules.

The interventions
With the establishment of starting points for each school, it was Pett’s intent tochange “one aspect of the food supply in each school,” and to study the effect of that

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 263

change. He began determining those changes in June of 1949.122 The decisions weremade on the basis of the surveys described above, and logistics.
He settled on the following interventions.123

1. An increase in milk consumption at the Alberni school
The objective of the Alberni school intervention was: “Double the milk consumption, so that average is clearly above 1 pint per child per day, using skim or whole
dried milk.” The Alberni school had the “highest incidence of riboflavin deficiency
signs” in the six schools covered by the survey. (Milk is a major source of riboflavin.)124
Pett noted that although “nutritionists so frequently recommend increased milk consumption,” there was “very little evidence of the exact health values to be obtained
thereby.”125 (Eventually, the milk servings were tripled.)

2. Test benefits of ascorbic acid (vitamin c) tablets at the Shubenacadie
schoolHalf the students at the Shubenacadie school in Nova Scotia were to be given 100
milligrams of ascorbic acid a day.126 This was in response to a “considerable increaseduring the winter in the number of children showing low blood levels of ascorbic acid,and in the amount of gingivitis.” (Studies of Canadian airmen had concluded that diets
containing seventy-five milligrams of ascorbic acid a day retarded the occurrence ofgingivitis more effectively than diets with lower levels of ascorbic acid.)127

3. Introduce Newfoundland flour at the Roman Catholic school in Kenora
Newfoundland flour was to be introduced at the Roman Catholic school (St.
Mary’s) in Kenora. This decision was made due to the “high incidences of riboflavindeficiency” among students at the school. (Newfoundland flour was enriched withriboflavin.) The fact that a flour mill near Kenora was already milling flour for the
Newfoundland market contributed to the decision to introduce Newfoundland flourat this school.128

4. Introduce educational measures at the Presbyterian school in Kenora
Students and staff at the Presbyterian school in Kenora (Cecilia Jeffrey school) were
to be given education on the benefits of certain foods. The decision to introduce educational measures was due to the fact that the school administration was seen to be
co-operative and the school was comparatively accessible to Ottawa. The educational
measures would focus on the benefits of foods containing iron and ascorbic acid. (The264 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

nutrition clinics had identified low hemoglobin and ascorbic acid levels in students
at this school.)

5. Introduce flour with a high natural b vitamin content at the Roman
Catholic school in Cardston
This flour (Canada Approved vitamin b flour) was to be introduced at the Roman
Catholic school in Cardston. Although the students at the school had not shown ahigh degree of thiamine deficiency, they showed “as much or more sensory changes
as any other school.” (This refers to the increase in the number of students with poor
reflexes between the fall and spring nutrition clinics.)

6. Use the Anglican school at Cardston as a control for the Roman Catholicschool at Cardston
Because the health of the students at the Anglican school in Cardston “was reasonably maintained or improved during the winter,” it was selected as a control school.
Pett advised the principal that he wanted “things to go on much as they have been,
without any change in diet or menu or cooking.”129
Although it was termed a “control school,” the Anglican school at Cardston wasused as a control only for the nearby Roman Catholic school. Pett actually used a variety of controls. In all cases, the health of the student population (based on a series oftests) over the five-year period was compared against the results of the health clinics
that were held prior to the introduction of diet interventions. In this way, the students
served as their own controls. This was the only form of control at the Alberni school. In
his writings on the Alberni school, Pett did not test results from that school with results
at any other school.130 At the Shubenacadie school, the students who received a placebo served as a second form of control. In his published paper on the Shubenacadie
school, Pett never compared test results from that school with results at any otherschool. The Kenora schools were used as controls for each other. In his paper on the
results of the introduction of Newfoundland flour, Pett compared the results from the
Catholic school with the Presbyterian school in Kenora (although he did not namethe schools).131 Pett never published the results of the study at the Cardston schools.
However, it is clear from the other papers that he never compared the results from theAnglican school in Cardston with those from schools in other provinces. He did not
explicitly state this, but it is apparent from his other writing that Pett recognized that
schools in different regions of the country fed students very different diets. Therefore,
it would have been meaningless to use a single school as a control for schools acrossthe country.132
Pett sought to have the schools receive additional funding for participation in the
program.133 He appears to have succeeded in doing so for at least some of the schools.134

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 265

For example, the Alberni school was able to spend $4,137 on milk in the first year of
the program. The value of the previous year’s milk supply had been $2,000.135 Pett also
requested and received special assurance that the use of Newfoundland flour would
not violate Canadian food and drug regulations that prohibited the addition of synthetic vitamins to flour or bread outside Newfoundland.136
To summarize: at the Alberni school and the Roman Catholic school in Alberta, thechanges that Pett introduced (increasing the milk serving and introducing Canada
Approved vitamin b flour) were completely in keeping with the existing national
dietary standard—Canada’s Food Rules. At the Roman Catholic school in Kenora,
he introduced an enriched flour that had been tested on the entire population of
Newfoundland for the previous five years. Researchers both in Newfoundland andCanada had recommended earlier that such flour be provided to members of communities who were malnourished. Since all three of these schools were regularly at
the minimum or below in at least two Food Rules categories, the interventions, on
their own, would still mean that the schools were serving borderline diets that were
not in keeping with the country’s dietary standard. At Shubenacadie, half the students received an increased dosage of ascorbic acid to see if that would improvetheir resistance to gingivitis. This was in keeping with the recommendations fromrecent Canadian research that had suggested ascorbic acid retarded the development of gingivitis. The provision of vitamin supplements to half the students would
not lift the school out of the borderline category. The types of interventions that Pett
was testing would not, on their own, have addressed the underlying nutrition problems of the schools, which were created by lack of food supply, poorly trained staff,
and inefficient equipment. These problems could be overcome only by substantially
increased funding.
The Anglican school in Cardston and the Presbyterian school in Kenora had been
judged to have the fewest issues with nutritional deficiency. As such, they wereselected to serve as controls for the Catholic schools in their community, although
the Presbyterian school was made the subject of an educational campaign. As a result,diets at these schools would remain in the borderline category. The potential existed
for the Presbyterian school to move beyond this category, if, as a result of the education
program, the administration were to institute improvements in the menu. However,no extra money was provided for such purchases. The changes were introduced at the
beginning of the 1949–50 school year. This was less than two years after the program
had been proposed. Three of the schools were selected only in the spring and summerof 1949, one year before the changes were introduced. Until the fall of 1949, recommendations from the Nutrition Division on diet at the schools had called for the useof menus that were in keeping with Canada’s Food Rules. As will be discussed later inthis chapter, once the changes were implemented, Pett requested that the schools notchange their diets without his knowledge.

266 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

What the schools were expected to do
Other than switching flours, increasing milk servings, or providing students withvitamin tablets (or placebos), the major expectation of the schools was the maintenance of food records that were to be forwarded to Ottawa. According to the document outlining the program:
It is important for this study to get as good a record as possible of:(a) The kinds and amounts of foods served—i.e. the children’s menus—for a 7
day period each month throughout the school year. Once in the Fall and oncein the Winter these will be recorded with the help of a nutritionist. Other times
these menus will be mailed to the Nutrition Division by the school.
(b) The extra foods between meals (candy, soft drinks, oranges, etc.) and second
helpings at mealtime eaten by each individual—for a 7 day period about fivetimes throughout the school year. This will be recorded by a nutritionist.
(c) Foods purchased and farm produce.
Special forms have been worked out to simplify the work of keeping theserecords, and the help of a nutritionist will be available, but a good part of thework on these records will have to be done by the school staff. For the school
year 1948–49 no changes in menu will be suggested [this referred to the typesof changes that would be introduced in the 1949–50 school year, such as theincrease in milk or the switch to enriched flour], but some standardization ofservings will be attempted. On the basis of what is recorded plus the clinicalexaminations, it may be necessary to get special equipment, foods, etc. These
will be bought and installed by the government at no cost to the school.
Therefore the work on the school records is the only direct help asked of theschool staff.137

There was also an intent to carry out intelligence and aptitude tests at least once
during the study.138 These do not appear to have been carried out—there is no reference to them in any of the available correspondence.139
School staff had additional responsibilities at the Presbyterian school in Kenora,
which Pett had selected for “testing educational work, both in the kitchen and in theclassrooms.”140 Junior classes were to engage in activities such as drawing, colouring,and mounting pictures of fruits and vegetables.141 Songs were also used to educate
children.142 Intermediate classes would discuss what effects fruits and vegetables haveon the body; and senior students would discuss medical test results, and learn aboutvitamin c and iron.143 In early November 1949, a school staff member concluded that
educational materials provided by the Nutrition Division were having an impact. She
wrote that the primary class students had memorized the poster messages, and thereDiet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 267

was a noticeable improvement in the senior class students’ attention to brushing theirteeth. Many students had been taking it upon themselves to buy their own toothpaste.144 The fact that students had been convinced to purchase their own toothpaste
not only underscored the benefits of the educational program, but also demonstrated
how poorly supplied the schools were.
In September 1951, Pett provided this summary of how the educational program
had been structured at the school.
An attempt has been made to study the effects of the educational method. Visits
have been made every year by one or more nutritionists from the Nutrition
Division, usually for a one-week period, for the purpose of explaining thoroughly
to the Principal and the entire staff the nature of the study and the results to date.
With this basic understanding, the teachers have explored with our nutritionists
methods of introducing instruction into the classroom on the two health aspects
that particularly need attention. According to the preliminary survey, these twohealth aspects of the Cecilia Jeffrey School were the number of children witha low hemoglobin that might be influenced by adding more iron-containing
foods, and, two, the number of children in need of extra vitamin c, or ascorbic
acid. Each year the teachers have evolved some new ways of presenting the facts
about these two classes of food stuffs, and the farmer and the principal havecooperated in making the necessary foods available insofar as possible.145

Improvements to schools
Pett lobbied for a number of improvements to school facilities. As part of the study,
a dishwasher was installed at the Shubenacadie school.146 For the Roman Catholicschool in Kenora, Pett provided the government with specifications for an improved
kitchen sink that would meet the Ontario public health regulations for eating establishments.147 In 1948, the Anglican school at Cardston required a new bake oven,bread mixer, potato peeler, bread slicer, electric mixer, and walk-in refrigerator. The
need for several of these items had been identified by previous Nutrition Divisioninspections.148 In June 1949, Indian Affairs provided funding for the purchase of anindustrial potato peeler.149 In October 1949, Superintendent R. D. Ragan reminded
Indian Affairs that the “provincial health inspector urges immediate steps be taken to
give this school proper refrigeration.”150 In that same month, Indian Affairs submitted
a requisition for the needed refrigerator.151 Indian Affairs officials also argued for theprovision of a potato peeler for the Roman Catholic school at Cardston.152 A new bakeoven was installed in the school in 1950.153
Pett also spoke out in favour of the hiring of a second cook at the Alberni school, thereplacement of that school’s antiquated bread slicer, and the purchase of an electric268 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

mixer. He argued that without an additional cook, the study would be jeopardized,
since the current cook would not have time to both prepare all the meals and maintain proper records. A proper bread slicer was needed to ensure that the children allreceived uniform slices of bread. The mixer would relieve the staff and student workload. “It is impossible,” he wrote, “for women or children to mix or beat the quantity offood that is required for 240 children.”154

Problems that arose during the course of the study
The research projects did not run smoothly. Although school administrators
often expressed interest in the project, it never became a high priority in schools thatwere struggling with underfunding, deteriorating buildings, poor relations with the
Aboriginal community, and truancy.
High levels of staff turnover also created ongoing problems for the nutrition
study. At the Presbyterian school in Kenora, the focus was intended to be on providing nutrition education to students and staff. Throughout the entire period of thestudy, it appears that the school did not have a competent cook. The 1948 nutrition
survey had reported that the elderly cook was expected to resign soon.155 In January
1950, school principal T. C. Ross wrote that although the school was trying to follow
Pett’s instructions,
we have been very conscious of the handicap of unqualified personnel inthe kitchen. During most of last year we allowed Mrs. Carey to do her best as
Kitchen Matron for lack of having someone better. During November it became
necessary to let her go. We have been without a Kitchen Matron for almost twomonths, and have had to depend on the services of other members of staff—
none well qualified for the task.156

Despite Ross’s commitment to the nutrition program, in May 1950, Nutrition
Division staff wrote to Ross, asking for food records and menus that he had promised
to send in March.157
It is not hard to discover why the records had not been sent. In a letter to the
Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Society (pwms) in March 1950 (the society handled the administration of the school on behalf of the Presbyterian Church and raised
funds to support its operation), Ross wrote that “the way in which we have been torn
between our desire to keep up a high standard of planned menu, and at the same time
keep within our budget I can not describe. I have so often felt like saying: it can’t
be done.”
Although he was clearly discouraged, he had begun to think that matters were
improving.158 But, by the beginning of May, the school was once again without
kitchen staff.159 A month later, Ross announced he had just fired the latest cook. He

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 269

wrote that “she is a good cook (when she gets around to it) and she is a hard worker(although she has so little to show for hours of work). But she hasn’t got the slightest
idea of planning her work and making use of the girls; and it is worse than useless to
try to tell her anything.” The final straw was a staff dinner that consisted solely of soup
and cake.160 Ross was authorized to pay the cook only $80 a month. His proposal thatthe salary be raised to $150 was rejected by the pwms.161 By December 1950, Ross hadconcluded once more that it would be “better to consider having someone else incharge of the kitchen.” He informed the pwms, “During not one of our twenty-sevenmonths have we had an entirely satisfactory kitchen staff here. For most of that time
we have had much friction in the kitchen, some very wasteful methods, and somevery poor cooking; for months we had no one capable of handling the job.”162 He did
not fire the cook at that time, but she had given notice by May 1951.163 Ross resigned
in June.164 His replacement, R. S. MacCallum, reported in October 1951 that “we haveno regular cook, and so the meals are not planned to a systematic programme.” He
hoped to have a regular cook by December.165 A report from January 1952 indicatedthat a Miss Scott had come back to the school as “first cook” after an absence of
two years.166
As Ross’s resignation implies, the Presbyterian school at Kenora was also having
trouble keeping principals. When the initial dietary surveys took place in the springof 1948, D. S. Pitts was the principal.167 In September 1948, T. C. Ross took over.168 Ross
resigned in June 1951, expressing frustration with the pwms.169 In September 1951,
Ross’s replacement, R. S. MacCallum, had to write to Pett for information about thenutrition survey. MacCallum said, “I can not find any information in our files concerning the details of carrying on this investigation, and I would like any help you cangive me in keeping it going forward.” He added that “no one has passed on to me any
instructions relative to this project.”170 It is clear that Ross had not briefed MacCallumon the nutrition program. It would also appear that the staff members were either
unable or unwilling to provide him with any information on the program. This might
not have been so serious if the program simply involved the substitution of one typeof flour for another. But at the Presbyterian school at Kenora, the program depended
on the staff’s being educated about the benefits of nutritional eating and passing
this knowledge on to the students. Three years into the program, it appears, neither
the staff nor the new principal had any information on the program. There was further turnover. MacCallum left the school at the end of the 1951–52 school year.171 His
replacement, J. E. Andrews, came in the fall of 1952 and was gone by October 1953.172
Initially, Pett believed that the turmoil at the school would not have a negative
impact on the study. In December 1951, he wrote that overall results from the school
seemed to “illustrate the fact that purely informational activities to [sic] the schoolstaff and to the pupils can result in an increased appreciation of certain foods in thediet and an actual demonstrable improvement in health over the course of a couple of270 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

years.”173 By 1952, Pett had to acknowledge that factors beyond his control had interfered with the implementation of many of the “teachings” at the Presbyterian school.174
Similar problems emerged at the Anglican school in Cardston. In January 1949,
Pett asked Principal S. H. Middleton why the school had not forwarded the expected
information on school menus.175 It turned out that Middleton was dealing with morepressing issues. As recently as November 1948, Indian Affairs official Ralph Ragan had
felt the conditions at the school were so poor that it might be necessary to simply
close it. There was, for example, only one qualified teacher at the school. Discipline
was poor, truancy was high, and parents were reluctant to return runaway children toa school without teachers. Both the cook and laundress had quit. The stenographer
had been put in charge of the kitchen, while the matron had taken charge of the laundry. In November, Ragan said both were “overworked terribly” and “near the breaking point.”176 At the beginning of January 1949, the stenographer was still in charge ofthe kitchen.177
In 1949, Middleton resigned. He was replaced by D. S. Pitts, the former principalof the Presbyterian school in Kenora.178 Truancy remained high.179 Pitts was not a
popular principal; parents thought he was too rough with the students and underfed
them.180 In November 1950, Ragan reported that parents of children at the school had
complained that “the children were not getting enough to eat and also that a mode ofpunishment was to make the children go without meals and wash all the dishes.”181
In 1952, in the face of continuing criticism, Pitts resigned his position at the school.182
In this case, as at many other schools, the staff turnover meant that the benefit of any
previous training and guidance provided by the Nutrition Division had been lost. Thechange in cooks also meant there was no continuity in food preparation at the school.
The high level of truancy meant there was no certainty about how many of the school’s
enrolled students were actually at the school, let alone eating school-prepared meals.
Menu records not only came in late, but they were also sometimes incomplete. The
1949 spring report from the Alberni school came in with “no entry in the spaces forschool, number of children, number of staff, month, year—or for the specific dates
and days when the menu was kept.” In addition, “For both dinner and supper, estimated sizes of servings were omitted.”183
The investigation into the use of Newfoundland flour suffered a serious setback
when, in the autumn of 1951, the principal of the Roman Catholic school in Kenora
did not purchase the enriched flour. It appears that Pett was not notified of this until
February 1952. At that time, Pett advised the principal to continue using the regularflour for the rest of that school year and the one following.184 The fact that the principal
decided to stop using the flour without any consultation with Pett—and went months
before informing him of the decision—is strong evidence that the study was a low
priority at this school.

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 271

For the 1954–55 school year, Pett was able to secure a supply of Newfoundland flour
for the school. His staff continued to inspect students who were being fed bread madefrom that flour into the spring of 1954.185 The final nutrition visit was held at the schoolon June 1, 1955.186
After he discovered that the Catholic school in Kenora had stopped using
Newfoundland flour, Pett made two unsuccessful attempts to have the flour introduced at other schools. At the end of the 1951–52 school year, when he discontinued the provision of ascorbic acid tablets at the Shubenacadie school,187 he sought tohave the enriched flour introduced there at that time.188 To do so would have required
special authorization from the federal government, since existing federal legislation
did not allow for flour to be enriched. It does not appear that such authorization was
granted or that the flour was supplied.189 In January 1953, Pett asked the principal of
the Presbyterian school in Kenora to attempt to obtain “the new bread baked withflour containing vitamins, iron and bone meal (as made for Newfoundland in a millin northwestern Ontario). It would be a real help to the nutrition project to test thisbread.”190 The principal did not respond until April. When he did, it was to say that hewould ask the school nurse to make inquiries about the type of flour used in the schoolbread when she visited it—in June 1953.191 By then, the project was effectively over.

Maintaining diets
As noted earlier, the 1948 diet survey reports recommended changes to school
diets in keeping with Canada’s Food Rules. The federal department of health sent
these recommendations to Indian Affairs, which shared them with the schools in thefall of 1948. School officials responded that they could not afford to implement therecommendations. Prior to the introduction of the specific changes that Pett wishedto see studied, he sent a memorandum to the schools stating that during the course of
the nutrition study, it was “especially important that no changes be made in the usual
feeding procedures or menus without informing this office, except those changes
that have been directed by the Nutrition Division.” Although this memorandum isundated, it is likely it was sent out between June and September 1949.192 Pett wanted
to be informed of contemplated changes in diet, since they could affect the results of
his research projects.
This does not mean that additional improvements and changes were not made todiets after September 1949. Pett recognized that “the food served varies a little bit fromyear to year in all these institutions.”193 In 1951, the principal of the Roman Catholicschool in Cardston reported that unspecified improvements had been made to theschool diet.194 Similarly, Pett noted that before health improvements at the Alberni

272 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

school could be attributed to an increase in the milk supply, it was necessary to “besure that the diet has not changed in too many other directions as well.”195
Although the survey did not mandate a change in the diet at the Presbyterian schoolin Kenora, through the education process instituted at the school, Pett sought toencourage the staff to increase the offerings of foods that were high in iron and ascorbic acid. Such encouragement could be fairly direct. In January 1951, Pett reminded
Principal Ross of “the dietary plan to improve the meals generally and particularly theintake of iron and vitamin c which were recommended.”196 Despite the disorder at theschool, it appears that the school acted upon Pett’s advice. In 1953, a report on the
Presbyterian school noted:
Food expenditures particularly have risen both absolutely and as a percentage
of total expenditures; this may partially be the result of a recommendation of the
Nutritional Division of the Dept. of Health and Welfare which indicated that theconsumption of fresh fruit, citrus juices, etc. should be increased.

Spending on fruits and juices had contributed to the school’s developing a$2,843 deficit.197
In May 1952, H. G. Cook, of the Indian School Administration of the Anglican
Church, wrote to Pett with a proposed menu change for the Cardston school. He
sought to increase the milk serving, to substitute puffed wheat and rolled oats forcracked wheat for breakfast twice a week, to increase the use of eggs “while they arecheap,” and to drop Welsh rarebit (toast with a cheese sauce), which was both difficult to make and unpopular. Overall, he said, “the menu is very close to what wehave been giving the children, with the suggestions of the health clinic. Most of theabove changes would be a matter of local management and not upsetting to the general plan of a balanced diet.”198 In his letter of response, Pett raised no objections tothese changes.199
Given ongoing staff turmoil, it is clear that in several schools, there was no longterm planning of menus and no institutional memory of what had been served during
the previous year. The only constant would be the amount of money available tospend on food. And the principals agreed there was not enough money. The greatest
risk to Pett’s studies was not that diets would be improved in a way that would make it
impossible for him to determine the cause of the eventual outcome, but that the diets
would deteriorate. Rising costs presented a threat to both the health of the students
and to Pett’s study.
During the study’s initial phase, D. S. Pitts, the principal of the Presbyterian schoolin Kenora, wrote to Pett to remind him that he “should take into consideration thematter of costs (and also rising costs). Some excellent ideas are impeded by the costsof putting them into operation. (Ex. Fruit juices for all children every morning.).”200
Alberni school principal A. E. Caldwell wrote to Pett in the spring of 1951, expressing

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 273

his concerns over rising food costs. He informed Pett, “We have maintained the same
standard of diet in spite of rising costs … but no increase in revenue. This matter ofcost must, I am afraid, enter into our continued maintenance of our present standardof diet.” Since 1949, whole milk prices had increased by 12% and skimmed milk costsby 42%. Caldwell was seeking Pett’s assurance that the federal government would
continue to provide a special grant to cover the additional milk purchase. Caldwell
went on to say, “Since 1945 our per capita meal costs have doubled, from 7½¢ to 14¢
figuring to the end of 1950, and the increase in the c. o. l. [cost of living] has accelerated since then.”201
Due to rising costs, Caldwell was eventually forced to increase the portion ofskimmed milk being served to students. Where, initially, two-thirds of the school milk
supply had been whole milk and one-third was skimmed milk, by November 1952, thebalance was reversed to one-third whole milk and two-thirds skimmed milk.202
Pett monitored the diet forms and the results of the nutrition clinics, and alerted
school officials to problems he identified. In August 1951, he noted that “the protein
levels in all schools have been declining. When the food records are taken this winterspecial attention to protein servings will be needed.”203 Pett informed the principal of
the Presbyterian school in Kenora of his concern over “a drop in the consumption of
citrus fruits and tomatoes” in 1952.204 He was also disturbed by a drop in milk consumption at the Roman Catholic school in Kenora in that year. He advised the principal, “Milk is too important nutritionally to allow this downward trend to continue.”205
These problems were not limited to the schools involved in the study. Table 37.1
indicates that Canada did increase its residential school funding during this time.
Over a five-year period, residential school funding increased, on a per student basis,by 76%. After adjusting for inflation, this is an increase of 51%.206
Table 37.1. Indian Affairs funding of residential schools, 1948–49 to 1953–54.
Year

Number of residential
school students

Amount federal government
spent on residential schools

Amount spent per student

1948–49

9,368$2,917,743.80$311.46

1949–50

9,316$3,354,920.20$360.121950–51

9,357$3,928,238.38$419.82

1951–52

9,844$3,771,509.01$383.12

1952–53

10,112$4,563,472.19$451.29

1953–54

11,090$6,080,359.07$548.27

Source: Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1949, 199, 214; Canada, Annual Report of
the Department of Indian Affairs, 1950, 68, 85; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1951,
17, 33; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1952, 55, 73; Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1953, 81–83; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1954,
87–89.

274 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

As is demonstrated by correspondence from the administrators of schools not
involved in the nutrition study, this increase was not sufficient to allow the schools
to meet Canada’s Food Rules. In responding to a dietician’s recommendation in 1949
that the Morley, Alberta, school enlarge and renovate its kitchen, and install a walk-in
refrigerator, George Dorey of the United Church’s Board of Home Missions said thatIndian Affairs should pay for such improvements. He wrote:
We also note that suggestions are made for the purchasing of certain foods andthat the Principal is doing his best to get these items; but, as a matter of fact, wehave to draw the attention of the Department again to the fact that oranges are
not grown in British Columbia nor in Alberta. They have to be imported fromthe United States and they cost a good deal of money. I might say that the samequestion of cost no doubt applies to the matter of getting another cook; but solong as Department of National Health pays the salaries that they do to cooksin their hospitals and the Department of Indian Affairs does not increase thegrants so that the Schools can at least compete with this other Department of theGovernment, I am afraid that very little improvement can be made.207

A 1951 survey of the Sioux Lookout, Ontario, school by Pett’s office raised concerns
about the use of lard at the school, since it contains no vitamin a. The inspector also
noted that consumption of vegetables and milk was low at the school. It was recommended that the school use margarine fortified with vitamin a. Pett’s office also recommended increased consumption of fruits or fruit juices, cabbage and turnip, andpotatoes cooked in their peels; the substitution of fortified margarine for lard; and anincrease in milk consumption through the addition of skimmed-milk powder to various foods.208 The superintendent of the Anglican Indian School Administration, H. G.
Cook, noted, “Our big problem is, of course, finances and this angle of the matter will
have to be taken up with Indian Affairs Branch.”209
A 1951 review of the diet at the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school concluded
that the menu appeared to be nutritionally inadequate—particularly in the provisionof protein, calcium, thiamine, and riboflavin—and lacked variety.210 The Nutrition
Division issued a recommended menu, based on Canada’s Food Rules. Once again,
Anglican official Cook pointed out that the menu was beyond the financial reach of
the schools.
I must be honest with you and state that with the present high cost of meat
there’s not a hope in the world of our being able to give the youngsters all
the meat the diet sheet recommended. As for giving the children meat twiceon the same days as the sheets suggest some of our Principals have found it
necessary to institute meatless days to remain within the school budget. If
however Indian Affairs could increase our percapita [sic] grants to allow for therecommended diets being put into practice we would be only too glad to follow
the diets recommended.

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 275

In thanking the Nutrition Division officials for their advice, Cook wrote, “It must
be disconcerting to such people as yourself and Miss Macbeth to make honest recommendations and then be told that it is impossible for us to carry them out but I do
hope you appreciate our financial position.”211
Despite warnings from public health officials, Indian Affairs was unwilling tospend money to ensure that the food supply in some schools was healthy. In 1948, it
was reported that the milk at the Mohawk Institute dairy had high bacterial counts. As
a result, local health inspectors were considering ordering an end to “the milk service
until improvements in the handling of it are made.” Indian Affairs was also informedthat at the Mohawk Institute, “children get the skim milk” while the butter fat was
sold. Ice for the school was being taken from a canal “which had been condemned forthe use of drinking water.”212 Three years later, the students at the Mohawk Institutewere still being served unpasteurized milk. The medical officer for the school, Harold
Palmer, wrote that he had raised this issue many times in the past with Indian Affairs,
but the department had been unwilling to come up with the $2,400 a year needed topasteurize the school’s milk.213
It is impossible to state with any assurance how consistent diets were at the six
schools involved in the study, given the gaps in the record and the lack of menu planning at several schools. However, the schools’ ability to improve the quality, variety, or
amount of food they served would have been governed by funding. All the evidence
indicates that underfunding led to deterioration of the diet at some points during
the course of the studies, and that this deterioration was—at least in some cases—
observed by Pett and drawn to the attention of the principals.

Results
Pett’s work suffered in a number of ways because of the limited nutritional knowledge of the time. For example, his work did not take into consideration the way that
inadequate diet affects the human metabolism, or the growth stages of the students.
Pett does not appear to have prepared a single, overall report on the nutrition project.
An academic paper, co-written by Pett, was published on the Shubenacadie study.
In addition, he made conference presentations on the results found at the Roman
Catholic school in Kenora, Ontario, and at the United Church school in Alberni,
British Columbia.214

276 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

AlberniAn abstract of the presentation Pett made on the Alberni school reported on the
results of the tripling of the milk supply at the school.
Riboflavin, vitamin a and niacin deficiencies were dramatically reduced to alow level 1/8 that of the base. Other specific deficiencies were halved. Generalweight levels improved. There was no improvement in haemoglobin, ascorbic
acid nutrition, or protein levels, all of which were average to start. Respiratory
infections, enlarged (or infected) tonsils, and various minor illnesses declined.215

Shubenacadie
In the paper they published on the Shubenacadie results, Pett and his co-author,
G. H. Ogilvie, estimated that all students at the school received about fifty milligramsof ascorbic acid a day from their diet. In addition, half the students received an additional 100 milligrams of ascorbic acid as a supplement, while the other half of the student body was supplied with a placebo. Eighty-nine students were followed for four
years. During the course of the study, the mean ascorbic acid level of those students
who received the supplement rose from .45 milligrams per 100 millilitres of serum(blood) to 1.76 milligrams per 100 millilitres of serum. The group receiving the placebo also saw an increase, from .45 milligrams to .88 milligrams. Pett attributed theincrease in the control group’s ascorbic acid levels to “improved facilities for foodpreparation and more care taken in menu preparation.” However, the study could findno difference in the hemoglobin levels or in the development of gingivitis between thestudents who received the ascorbic acid tablets and those who received the placebo.216
One of the purposes of the study at Shubenacadie had been to determine if ascorbic acid could retard the occurrence of gingivitis. In a 1954 memorandum, Pett notedthat “there is still a tendency among some nutritionists as well as some dentists toascribe considerable virtue to ascorbic acid in the treatment or the prevention of gingivitis.” He believed that the Shubenacadie research raised questions about the benefit of such a treatment.217
Pett also reviewed the Shubenacadie data results to see if there was any indication that ascorbic acid (at the doses provided) could be linked to a reduction in
respiratory infections. He reported that while there were differences in the group thatreceived the vitamin supplement and the group that did not, the differences showedno strong pattern.

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 277

The Roman Catholic school in Kenora
The results of the study at the Roman Catholic school in Kenora were particularly
confounding. It was at this school that Newfoundland flour had been substituted for
non-enriched flour. Prior to the switch to enriched flour, 16% of the children were
judged to have a low hemoglobin count. In the first year of use of enriched flour(1949–50), the percentage of students with a low hemoglobin count increased to52%. In the second year of use of enriched flour (1950–51), the percentage of children
with a low hemoglobin level declined to the still-elevated level of 39%. Pett wrote, “Ifenriched flour caused the increase in anemia that was found, the explanation may
rest in an interference with iron absorption by the calcium or phosphate in the addedbone meal.”218 When the school returned to the use of white flour, the anemia ratefurther declined.219
Even if the enriched flour did not cause the increase in anemia, it could be linked tono positive benefits. Pett concluded that the results emphasized “the danger of adding
chemicals to foods on theoretical grounds without studying the physiological effecton humans, even though this is time-consuming.”220 In a paper he presented on thisstudy to the American Institute of Nutrition in New York City in 1952, he was more
explicit, concluding that the “benefits or hazards of adding chemicals to foods cannot,
in the present state of knowledge, be judged on theoretical grounds or on limited animal experimentation, but need physiological testing on humans.”221
These statements make it clear that at least some components of the nutrition survey amounted to “physiological testing on humans.” It is also clear that Pett had cometo view the results at the Roman Catholic school in Kenora as being negative. For
example, the 1954 annual report of the Department of National Health and Welfare
referred to the studies in passing, describing them as an investigation into “the possible harmful effects of bone meal in flour on hemoglobin formation.”222 This is a considerable change from the original stated goal of the studies, which was to “provide abasis for whatever improvement is needed in other schools.”223
Several doctors who had been involved in assessing the benefit of enriched flour in
Newfoundland were at the conference where Pett made his presentation. They argued
that their studies showed no ill effects from the flour and suggested there was someother element in the flour that had led to the results. Pett left the meeting still of theopinion that the bone meal in the flour was interfering with absorption of iron.224
In 1952, Pett corresponded with Grace Goldsmith, a professor at Tulane Universityof Louisiana, who had conducted before-and-after studies on the impact of flour
enrichment in Newfoundland. Goldsmith questioned whether the increase in anemia
could be linked to the flour, saying “it is practically impossible to find any two schools
which are entirely comparable.” She also questioned whether the differences in the278 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

results were statistically significant. As well, she noted that the determination of “theeffect of dietary changes on this [childhood] anemia is an extremely difficult undertaking,” with many variables that could skew the results.225
Pett defended his study, stating that his project was “as adequately controlled as
any project can be on human beings.” He noted that the “schools were studied withregard to their hemoglobin levels for a full year before the experimental period.”226
The potential implications of Pett’s research at the Kenora schools were serious.
However, they had limited impact on government policy. In 1953, Canadian foodand drug regulations were amended to allow for “calcium carbonate or edible bonemeal in an amount that will provide in one pound of enriched flour not less than 500
milligrams and not more than 650 milligrams of calcium.”227 (This was the same minimum requirement for Newfoundland flour.)228 At least one study was carried out specifically to test Pett’s finding. Using non-human subjects, it concluded that a diet ofenriched bread led to higher hemoglobin regeneration (higher iron levels) than dietsof non-enriched bread. There was no significant adverse effect in hemoglobin regeneration when bone meal was added to the enriched bread.229
After the 1953 change in regulations, many milling companies stopped processing Canada Approved vitamin b flour, offering instead vitamin-enriched flours.230 The
degree to which bone meal or other calcium sources impact the absorption of ironcontinued to be a subject of research and debate into the late twentieth and earlytwenty-first centuries.231

The Presbyterian school at Kenora
As noted above, Pett concluded in 1952 that factors beyond his control—likely theconstant staff turnover—had frustrated many of his efforts at the Presbyterian schoolin Kenora.232 Despite this, it appears that there was an improvement in some healthconditions at the school. In the spring of 1949, 63.3% of the students had low hemoglobin levels. By the following year, this had fallen to 19.9%, and to 14.2% by the springof 1951.233 In 1953, Pett informed the principal that the average hemoglobin level inthe students at the most recent visit was 11.9 grams.234 However, the variability in thesestatistics is reflected in the fact that in October 1948, before any educational measures
were introduced at the school, 21.2% of the students had low hemoglobin levels.235 In
other words, the hemoglobin rates may well have risen and fallen independently ofPett’s research. There does not appear to be a full report on the impact of the nutrition
education program carried out only at this school.

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 279

The Cardston schools
Neither does there appear to be any formal final reports on the results of the studies at the two Alberta schools. The decision to introduce Canada Approved vitaminb flour at the Roman Catholic school in Cardston was made on the basis of potential deficiencies in thiamine among the students. In a letter from August 1950, Pett
informed school principal Maurice LaFrance that “our records for 1950 show a definite improvement in health in your pupils in certain specific ways over the records
for 1949.”236 Records from the May 1950 nutrition clinic do not report on thiamine,
but they do show high deficiency levels of riboflavin and vitamin a in students at theschool.237 The results from that same clinic show that the Anglican school at Cardston
had few nutrition-related health problems.238 In the documents it has reviewed, theTruth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has located no further reports fromthese schools, although assessments of the Alberta schools were scheduled for thespring of 1953, the last year of the research project.239
In the wake of the diet studies, Pett remained a supporter of Canada Approved
flour. When asked for his views on the type of flour that should be served in residential schools in 1955, he recommended it over other types of enriched flour, adding,“Where proper attention is paid to balancing the diet with respect to all food groups,
the exact kind of flour used does not make much difference to the health that can be
expected.” He went on to state that in “Indian schools where a good deal of bread is
expected and is used and where some of the other foods may not be eaten fully by all
the children concerned, it is important that the flour make the maximum possible
contribution to nutrition.”240 Pett continued to be skeptical of the overall benefit ofvitamin supplements. In 1959, he wrote that although
it is easy to hand out little or big bottles of liquids, or pills or capsules, andsalve one’s conscience that some of it undoubtedly does good to some of therecipients, I have seen no proof of much good from supplements that they might
be considered as more suitable than proper social and economic services. The
wishful thinking of 10 or 20 years ago that a few dollars worth of vitamin pills
would act like a tonic, keep people working, give people initiative and keep themout of hospital, is disappearing.241

The withholding of dental care
The nutritional study was accompanied by a request from the federal governmentthat certain sodium fluoride dental treatments not be provided to the students attending the schools included in the study. This stipulation was not included in Pett’s initial280 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

description of the study. In April 1948, H. K. Brown, the chief of the Dental Health
Division, Department of National Health and Welfare, requested that Indian HealthServices in Edmonton “refrain from using any sodium fluoride topical applications
on the teeth of the children” in the Edmonton school, since it was thought at that timethat the school was to be part of the nutritional study. Brown’s rationale was that the
study might “possibly involve nutritional factors containing fluorides.” There is nothing in this correspondence to suggest that a topical fluoride dental service was actuallyplanned for students at the Edmonton school.242 The Edmonton school was eventually
excluded from the study.
Pett had been under the impression there would be no sodium fluoride programat any of the schools selected for the study. He was surprised to learn that a sodium
fluoride treatment was planned for the students at the Roman Catholic school in
Kenora in the fall of 1949. Pett objected, feeling that such treatment would make it difficult to assess the results of the introduction of Newfoundland flour at the school.243
Brown requested that the dental program be suspended until it could be determined
if sodium fluoride was being used.244 Brown explained that the planned sodium fluoride treatment and dental prophylactic treatment “would have the effect of obscuring
both the gingival and the caries [tooth decay] picture.” He wrote, “During the years
while the nutritional study is in progress it is important that the schools included in it
receive only their fair quota of the regular extraction and fill services that is provided
for the average school in that area.”245 As noted earlier, as part of the annual nutrition
clinic, the students, at least at Shubenacadie, were given a prophylactic treatment.
In the following years, a dentist—on some occasions, Brown himself—participated in
the annual nutrition clinic at the schools involved in the study.246
In October 1949, Brown also issued instructions to P. S. Tennant, the regional
superintendent for Indian Health Services in British Columbia, that “no specialized
over-all type of dental service should be provided, such as the use of sodium fluoride, dental prophylaxis or even urea compounds” at the Alberni school. Since dental caries and gingivitis were factors in assessing nutritional status, measures that
affected them would also affect the ability to measure the impact of the increase inmilk consumption. Brown wrote, “It is probable that Dr. Ewart fully realizes this fact
and I am writing to you concerning it only as an extra precaution and lest an oversightshould occur.” Brown stated that the “regular filling and extraction service” would notinterfere with the nutritional study. Brown’s letter to Tennant appears to have beena pre-emptive move, since there is no mention in the correspondence of a planned
sodium fluoride treatment at the Alberni school.247 In January 1950, Brown also wrote
to Dr. O. Leroux, the assistant director of Indian Health Services: “If your Directorate
employs a dentist to render service in the Shubenacadie school or in any other school
included in this study, it is requested that the dental service be limited to fillings andDiet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 281

extraction and that the use of sodium fluoride and dental prophylasix [sic] be specifically excluded.”248 There was no indication in the letter that such a treatment wasplanned for the students.
Prior to the provision of ascorbic acid supplements to half the students at the
Shubenacadie school, Pett did arrange to have a dentist resurvey all the students atthe school.249 In addition, “a dental prophylaxis to remove calculi [tartar] was done oneach child, in order that physical causes of gingivitis should be as equal as possible inboth groups.”250 In March 1949, Brown asked that Indian Health Services provide himwith a sufficient number of toothbrushes and toothpaste to give each student involvedin the nutrition study a toothbrush.251
As the previous chapter on health in the schools in the post-1940 period has
demonstrated, there was little in the way of dental care provided to residential school
students during this period. In 1947, Indian Health Services had been unable toobtain dental services for the Kenora Indian Agency, including the residential schools
in that agency.252 The services that were available were usually limited to fillings andextractions, but did on occasion include prophylactic treatment. For example, in 1947,
a dentist who treated students at the Anglican residential school at Brocket, Alberta,
billed for seventy-four extractions, thirty-five fillings, and nine prophylactic treatments.253 A dentist who visited the Alberni school in the spring of 1948, before theschool was included in the nutrition survey, extracted 419 teeth, filled 188 cavities,
and performed 2 prophylactic treatments.254 The record suggests that prophylactic treatment was not provided to any residential school students on a general basis
during this period.
Sodium fluoride treatment was new at the time of the nutrition studies. The firstsignificant article outlining an effective sodium fluoride treatment technique had
been published only in 1948, the year before the nutrition study was implemented
in Canada. In that article, American dentist and public health official Dr. John W.
Knutson wrote:
Initial reports concerning solutions of sodium fluoride applied topically to theteeth as a prophylactic measure against caries have been confirmed by extensive
clinical experience. Furthermore, the results of clinical studies designed
specifically for the purpose of developing and refining one topical fluoride
technic have demonstrated that four applications of a 2 per cent solution of
sodium fluoride to the teeth of children effect a 40 per cent reduction in theincidence of dental caries.

It was a complicated and time-consuming process. The first application of sodium
fluoride had to be preceded by a dental treatment in which the teeth were cleaned,
preferably with a fine pumice paste and using a motor-driven rubber cup. The teeth
to be treated were then isolated with cotton rolls, and dried with compressed air. A

282 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

solution that was 2% sodium fluoride was then applied to the teeth. It would take four
applications, a week apart, to complete the treatment. It was recommended that thisseries of treatments be given to children at the ages of three (for the treatment of baby
teeth), seven (treatment of incisors and first molars), ten (treatment of bicuspids andcuspids), and thirteen (treatment of second molars).255
This form of treatment was not widely adopted. During this period, dental care formost Canadians was provided on the basis of a patient’s ability to pay. The range ofcare ranged from what was termed “luxury” to “charity.”256 Veterans Affairs fee schedules for dental work from this period provide rates for routine treatments such as fillings, extractions, and dentures, but have no rate for sodium fluoride therapies.257 This
was a period in which the causes and treatment of cavities and gum disease were still
open questions. For example, into the 1940s, there was still debate over whether toothbrushing actually prevented cavities.258
It appears that sodium fluoride treatment was used in public health settings in the
United States, but was not widely used in private practice.259 In Canada, it does notseem to have been used in public health programs, likely since the public health focus
turned to community water fluoridation.260 Comparative studies in the fluoridationof water supply had commenced in 1945, when sodium fluoride was added to theBrantford, Ontario, water supply. The dental records of children from that community were compared with the dental records of children from Sarnia, where sodium
fluoride was not being added to the water supply. The result of these studies led theCanadian dental profession to call for the fluoridation of water supplies in 1952.
Fluoridation of water spread slowly: by 1969, only a third of the Canadian population
had access to fluoridated water.261 A review of the professional literature of the period
suggests that sodium fluoride was also not part of routine dental care in private practice in Canada.262
As noted above, H. K. Brown, chief of the Dental Health Division, Department of
National Health and Welfare, requested that this treatment not be provided at theschools involved in the nutrition experiments. However, it is also apparent that by theearly 1950s, he questioned whether these treatments would provide effective treatment at any Canadian residential schools.
When a dentist in British Columbia sought permission to provide sodium fluoride treatment to children at residential schools on Vancouver Island in 1951, Brown
pointed out that unless the sodium fluoride was applied by a trained dental technician using proper equipment, “no appreciable benefits are obtained.” He said that theuse of this treatment had to be “related to a good over-all dental health program.”263 It
would appear that the treatment was not provided. (It was not until 1951 that courses
for the training of dental hygienists were offered in Canada.)264

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 283

The proposal to provide sodium fluoride treatment in British Columbia residential schools was revived in 1954 when W. S. Barclay, the regional superintendent for
Indian Affairs in that province, sought the federal health department’s advice about
whether to introduce such a program in residential schools. Under this proposal, thetreatment was to be applied by a dentist and a nurse.265 Brown continued to express
doubts about the value of such a treatment. He presented the following arguments:(1) While “topicals” of 2% sodium fluoride when used under research conditions
have been shown to give a 40% reduction in the incidence of tooth decay, there
is much doubt regarding their effectiveness in the hands of other than speciallytrained operators.
(2) Topicals are not widely used in the practice of dentistry. The average dentist
believes that he can render a more lasting, effective, and economic service byfilling teeth while the cavities are small. He is probably right in this estimate.
(3) The only topical programs in operation in Canada (Prince Edward Island andSaskatchewan) are operated by dental hygienists. These girls have two years of
training in oral hygiene and health education. In Prince Edward Island topicals
are given only to children who have already established good oral hygiene, as
they are regarded as wasted time in other cases. This principle is followed bythose members of the dental profession who use them in office practice—andfavourably regarded here.

Again, he stressed, “If the technic is not meticulously followed the work is a total
loss.” He believed that, in a few years, a simpler and more effective treatment would
become available. For all these reasons, he said, Barclay “would be well advised not
to undertake a topical application program at the present time.”266 Brown was correct in that the method developed by Knutson in the 1940s was superseded by what
was termed the “stannous fluoride method,” which required fewer treatments.267
Brown was equally resistant to proposals made in 1949 to treat residential school students’ teeth with dentifrices (a paste or powder to clean teeth) containing urea compounds. He said that the benefits of the product were still at the experimental stage atthat time.268
To summarize: in the late 1940s and early 1950s, sodium fluoride treatment was a
new form of treatment that was not available to most Canadians. Due in large measure to lack of sufficient funding, the dental care provided in residential schools in
Canada in this period was limited and inadequate. In the documents it has reviewed,
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has not located any example ofresidential school students’ being given sodium fluoride dental treatment during thisperiod. Dental treatment of any sort at residential schools was often unavailable for284 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

years at a time.269 It also appears to be the case that prophylactic treatment was rarely
provided to any students at any residential school during this period.270
The preceding information provides a context for understanding the nature of prophylactic treatment and its general availability. However, it appears that in 1949, a
dentist in Kenora was prepared to provide residential school students with sodium
fluoride treatment, and that Canadian government officials blocked this treatment.
They blocked not only sodium fluoride treatment, but also prophylactic treatment
in general. They blocked the treatment not because they judged that, given existing
dental health conditions among the students, priority should be given to fillings orextractions, or because they believed that the treatment would be ineffective due to alack of ongoing dental health care (reasons they were to give in the 1950s for opposing
the treatment). The given reason for blocking the provision of preventive treatment
at Kenora—and for recommending that it not be provided at other schools that wereparticipating in the study—was that it would make it impossible to assess the impactsof the dietary interventions that the study was introducing. A benefit treatment was, inshort, being denied the students for the sake of the study. Prophylactic care was being
denied to all other residential school students, largely for the sake of economy.

Withholding vitamin and iron supplements
There is one other example of the nutrition study’s leading to the denial of medical
treatment. In January 1953, J. E. Andrews, the principal of the Presbyterian school at
Kenora, informed Pett, “Indian Health Services here would like to see all the children
on iron tonic or vitamin pills, and I would like to have your approval or advice on thismatter before any action is taken.”271 Pett opposed the idea, saying that he preferredthat Andrews “give the children no such medication (except for cod liver oil) until
the end of this project—which will be another year or 2 yet. The average hemoglobin
level in your school in the recent visit was 11.9 grams % compared with 11.9 grams lastyear, showing no deterioration.”272 Pett’s argument would appear to be that anemia
was being effectively controlled by diet. In this case, the government did not block theprovision of vitamins and iron supplements, but simply recommended against it. It is
not clear from the record what steps the principal took. Pett’s opposition was consistent with his skepticism of the effectiveness of vitamin supplements.
Both these issues give rise to the question of the type of consent that should havebeen sought and received before students participated in this study.

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 285

Parental consent
The questions that Pett was seeking answers to were not irrelevant to the health ofchildren in residential schools. As noted above, a variety of studies had recommended
the provision of Newfoundland-type flour to Aboriginal people. Studies had also suggested that ascorbic acid would retard the development of gingivitis. There would be
little grounds for criticizing Pett if he had recommended that the residential schools
use Newfoundland-type flour. The measures introduced in Alberni and the Catholicschool in Cardston were in keeping with Canada’s Food Rules of the day and did not
represent an innovation. There is little that could be considered controversial about
the measures introduced at the Presbyterian school in Kenora: educating staff andstudents about the benefits of certain fruits and vegetables. No changes were made at
the Cardston school, but neither were any made at the rest of the sixty-plus schools inthe system.273
But, instead of simply introducing these measures, either in one school or acrossthe system, Pett, acting on behalf of the Canadian government, had organized aresearch study. He did this in part because he had reservations about the recommendations the experts were making on behalf of Newfoundland flour. As noted above,
he had written in 1949 that he wanted to “see some evidence of actual value in sucha procedure, as well as freedom from harm before I would encourage its application to large groups of people.” In his opinion, no study had ever demonstrated thebenefits of “adding certain vitamins to flour.” Neither, he wrote, “has it been clearlyshown that the iron or calcium sometimes added are even absorbed.”274 Much of thenutrition survey was intended to answer questions regarding the benefits and risksof certain kinds of flour. In two schools, he introduced enriched flours: at one, thenaturally enriched flour that he preferred; and, at another, the artificially enrichedflour about which he was skeptical. Two other schools essentially served as controls
for these schools.
That study transformed students into research subjects. The goal of the study was
not simply to improve the health of each student, but to advance medical knowledge;
albeit with the intent of determining which dietary changes would improve general
health. Measures required to protect the integrity of the research data can, in suchcases, come into conflict with a physician’s responsibility to provide the best possible
care to her or his patient. They can also involve risk. There is a long medical history ofquestionable research being carried out without patients’ having provided their consent.275 Historically, the most well known of these are the experiments carried out by
German physicians on the inmates of concentration camps and death camps during
the Second World War.276 The post-war trial of these physicians led to the developmentof what has come to be known as the “Nuremberg Code” in 1948. The first provision of
the code reads as follows:286 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.
This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent;
should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without
the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching,or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficientknowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved,
as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision. Thislatter element requires that, before the acceptance of an affirmative decisionby the experimental subject, there should be made known to him the nature,
duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it
is to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonably to be expected;
and the effects upon his health or person, which may possibly come from his
participation in the experiment.
The duty and responsibility for ascertaining the quality of the consent rests
upon each individual who initiates, directs or engages in the experiment. It
is a personal duty and responsibility which may not be delegated to anotherwith impunity.277

The studies carried out by Pett involved two risks. First, it was the intent of theorganizers to deny students beneficial medical treatments if such treatments would
make it difficult to interpret the study’s results. This led to the denial of sodium fluoride treatment. Pett’s 1949 letter quoted above makes it clear he believed that nostudy had yet demonstrated that consumption of Newfoundland flour did not have
harmful effects. For such a reason, he stated he would not recommend its consumption by large groups of people. In the specific instance that Pett was writing about, he
was referring to large groups of Aboriginal people. It is clear from the context that Pett
felt that the Newfoundland government’s decision to insist that all flour imported to
Newfoundland be enriched with specific vitamins and minerals was not justified byresearch. To test his hypothesis, Pett was providing Newfoundland flour (and otherflour) to small numbers of people.
Second, Pett did not seek the consent of the parents of students involved in his
study. Instead, it appears he relied on the consent of the principals. Such a practice was not out of keeping with the approach that other researchers took in dealing
with residential schools into the 1960s.278 For their part, the principals chose to grantconsent rather than seek the consent of the parents, even though there was a twomonth period between the time the specific interventions for each school were identified and the time they were put into practice. It also appears the principals were notinformed in advance that the nutritional study was not compatible with certain dental
treatments and that there were potential harms as well as benefits to student health.
Without such information, they could not have given informed consent.

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 287

Principals may have thought they had authority to grant approval for the study.
As discussed in the previous chapter, in the 1940s and 1950s, when parents enrolled
their children in residential school, they were required to sign an admission form
acknowledging that the child was to remain in the school “under the guardianshipof the Principal for such term as the Minister of Mines and Resources may deem
proper.”279 The 1953 Indian Residential School Regulations stated that the principal
was to “assume the responsibilities of parent or guardian with respect to the welfare
and discipline of the pupils under his charge.”280 Most medical treatment provided to
students during this period was provided solely on the basis of the principal’s consent. Indian Affairs did not, however, use this provision as a complete authority. For
example, in 1940, children were not transferred to sanatoria without the permissionof parents.281 Similarly, in 1943, Blue Quills, Alberta, school staff acquired parental
consent for five girls who needed surgery.282 In 1957, the principal of the Gordon’s
school in Saskatchewan, in giving his consent for students to participate in a researchstudy without having consulted their parents, acknowledged that “parental permission should be obtained” before students took part in such research.283

Impact
The health impacts of the nutrition surveys appear to have been limited. Pett’s
research identified a benefit for those who received an increase in milk rations. He
could identify no benefit (or harm) from the increase in vitamin c at Shubenacadie.
There were no reported results from the Cardston school. The results from the Roman
Catholic school at Kenora led Pett to hypothesize that bone meal in the flour contributed to increased anemia. The increase in anemia was reversed by 1953. Other
researchers who reviewed the material at the time questioned whether the increasethat Pett identified was statistically significant or attributable to the changes that Pett
had introduced. At the Presbyterian school in Kenora, Pett reported no negative healthoutcomes and did report a reduction in anemia.284 The outcomes at these schools
could also have been the result of the children’s growth patterns and unrecordedchanges in diet in the school. The principal of the Roman Catholic school stopped
using Newfoundland flour without informing Pett of his decision, and it may well be
the case that there were other, unrecorded, changes in diet at that school. Similarly,
the constant changing of cooks at the Presbyterian school in Kenora could hardly havecontributed to consistency of diet at that institution.
The studies also did not have much impact on government policy. Before the studies were undertaken, it was the position of the Nutrition Division that the schools
should be feeding the students in accordance with Canada’s Food Rules; that did
not change after the studies. The Alberni study demonstrated that there was a clear288 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

benefit in providing the amount of milk recommended in the Food Rules. There was,however, no special program immediately introduced to ensure that there was an adequate milk supply at all schools. There appear to have been no results arising fromthe use of Canada Approved flour at the Cardston Catholic school. However, in 1949,
the Food Rules had ceased to specify the use of this flour.285 There was no program
developed to introduce it to other schools. The results of the study of Newfoundland
flour at the Roman Catholic school in Kenora did lead to additional study of the rolethat bone meal might play in the absorption of iron.286 In 1953, the Canadian government adopted new regulatory measures that allowed for the voluntary enrichment offlour with iron, thiamine, riboflavin, and niacin. The enrichment of flour remained
mandatory in Newfoundland.287 Under these provisions, the sale of flour milled to the
Newfoundland requirements was legalized throughout the rest of Canada, but notmade mandatory for the residential schools.288 In other words, Canadian policy onflour enrichment was not affected by Pett’s residential school studies.
The Shubenacadie study had demonstrated no additional benefit in ascorbic acidsupplements, so it could be argued that the absence of a national program to provide
such supplements is attributable to that study. The limits of introducing nutrition education in an underfunded system, characterized by inadequate food supply and highstaff turnover, were demonstrated by the study at the Presbyterian school at Kenora.
A number of points must be made in concluding this discussion of the nutritional
study. The first is that most of Pett’s residential school work during this period wasintended to improve the health of students. He recommended that the schools feed
students to the same standard that he had recommended for all Canadians. He identified the government’s failure to meet this standard. The nutrition assessments madeby his staff were used by the churches as a basis to request additional funding. In 1947,
Pett proposed that the government undertake a series of demonstration projects thatwere intended to improve nutrition at a number of schools. This project would haveincluded a series of tests of the effectiveness of foods that had been enriched withspecific vitamins and minerals. He included these in part because he was skepticalof proposals that attempted to address dietary deficiencies through the introductionof artificially enriched foods. It was his view that it was best that students (and all
Canadians) have access to diets that provided them with needed vitamins and minerals that occurred naturally in foods. The vitamin and mineral study was the only
portion of his proposal that was approved and funded. The changes that Pett introduced in this project were all in keeping with the Food Rules or expert recommendations. During the period that a student health baseline was being developed, Pett’s
staff recommended improvements to student diets. During the course of the study,
Pett requested that schools inform him of any proposed changes in student diet. Thereis no record of his opposing changes—and there are examples of principals changing
the diets without consulting with Pett.

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 289

Against this record, one has to balance the fact that the nutritional study was anexperiment conducted on human subjects without appropriate consent. It may wellbe the case that if parents were provided with all the information required to make an
informed decision, they would have given consent. In many cases, the risks were low,and, in some cases, such as at Alberni, the benefits were considerable. Parents might
have been willing to have their children forego sodium fluoride treatment, which
was a brand-new treatment whose effectiveness required access to specially trained
staff. But parents were denied the opportunity to weigh the benefits and drawbacksof participation in the study. The decision not to seek consent is a reflection of oneof the underlying failures of residential school thinking: the belief that the views ofAboriginal parents were, at best, irrelevant, and, at worst, a barrier to progress. This
paternalistic attitude is also a reflection of the colonial origins of residential schooling,and expressed itself in dozens of ways, the most obvious two being the lack of parental
choice as to whether children would attend residential school, and the lack of parental
input into what students would be taught. In the case of diet and nutrition, however,
the major scandal of this period was not the survey that Pett oversaw in six schools
from 1948 to 1953. It was the failure of the government to act on Pett’s recommendation to provide the schools with the food, facilities, and staff required to feed thestudents at a level in keeping with Canada’s Food Rules.

The early 1950s
The overall problems that the Nutrition Division had identified in the late 1940s
continued to prevail into the early 1950s. During the final years of the nutrition study,
Pett also worked with the Anglican schools in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, and Alert
Bay, British Columbia, in an effort to improve school diets. It was an ongoing challenge to find a way to provide meals that were nutritious, filling, and affordable. At the
Prince Albert school, a Nutrition Division menu was also introduced in the spring of1952. Principal A. J. Scrase indicated that during the first week, “children complainedthat there was not enough to eat and that they would be starved by the end of the
week!” According to Scrase, “the children are used to more bulk such as bread andpotatoes.” It was also thought that the meat rations were too small for the older children.289 During the second week, potatoes and bread were supplemented to meals
that had been judged to be “too light.”290 In June 1952, Pett thought the menus at
the Alert Bay and Prince Albert schools were finally comparable with the Canadian
dietary standard for twelve-year-old boys.291 This work contributed to the development of new ration lists for the schools that were distributed in July 1952. The lists
provided guidance in the purchasing of the needed amounts of food items per person
per quarter-year.292

290 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Although Pett clearly found the work to be frustrating, H. M. Jones, the directorof Indian Affairs, concluded that the “intensive inspection and study of residential
schools” that the Nutrition Division had conducted a few years earlier had “resulted
in significant improvements in the equipment and operation of these institutions.” In
December 1953, he asked Pett to “enlarge the scope of attention” given to residential
schools, by having a number of recently opened or renovated schools inspected.293 In
his response, Pett noted that the Nutrition Division had largely lost touch with residential schools in the previous years. He wrote that he and his staff
have never felt that we had the authority to arrange visits to schools on asystematic basis. While there has never been any rudeness from schools, there
have been occasions when the reception made it clear that our position in
relation to the Indian Affairs Branch and even to Indian Health Services was
not sufficient in the eyes of the school to justify our intrusion. In contrast to thiswhere there had been specific problems brought to our attention usually by yourBranch, these have been attended to as rapidly as we could arrange to do it.

Pett also noted that the decline of the regular inspection of residential schools was
also due to the “curtailment of budget and by staff turn-over. It has been difficult tokeep any one girl travelling the length and breadth of the country.” He recommended
that regional officers be hired with full authority to inspect both the residential schools
and the hospitals operated by Indian Affairs.294
After the request from Jones, the Nutrition Division carried out an inspection of the
newly constructed school in Sept-Îles, Québec, and identified the need for training forthe cooks, additional kitchen equipment, improved menu planning, and nutritional
improvement in the food that was being served.295
Pett also worked with P. E. Moore of Indian Health Services to develop a biscuit thatwould supply “all of a child’s requirements for minerals and vitamins, as well as a basic
minimum of protein and some calories.”296 The formula was based on a military rationand contained “calcium, iron, vitamin a, thiamine and riboflavin, as well as usefulprotein and calories.”297 These biscuits were distributed to schools and intended as anutritional supplement.298 Although Pett believed that such “‘doctored’ foods are inmany ways only crutches to be used until better food habits are developed,” the vitamin biscuits were still being provided in the 1960s.299
Into the mid-1950s, schools were still failing to feed students at a level consistent with Canada’s Food Rules. A 1956 evaluation of the Norway House, Manitoba,
school menu found that the amounts of citrus fruits, vegetables (other than potatoes),and eggs were “considerably lower” than the amounts recommended by Canada’s
Food Rules. The evaluation report stated that the older children were not receiving
enough milk.300

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 291

According to a 1954 report on the Shingwauk Home at Sault Ste. Marie:
The serving of the meals is terrible, particularly as regards hot dishes. These
are all put out on the tables starting about 15 minutes before the youngsters sit
down with the result that the so-called hot dishes are cold or lukewarm witha scum over the soup, etc, etc, when the children get to them. I impressed on
Phillips the importance of instituting the system of having a server at the end ofeach table whose duty it is to serve the children at his or her table after they
are seated.301

There were regular complaints about the quality and quantity of the food at the
Brandon, Manitoba, school when Oliver Strapp was the principal in the early 1950s.302
After a November 1956 visit to the Brandon school, Indian Affairs Superintendent of
Education R. F. Davey was “convinced that the children were not properly fed, andthat several members of the staff were incompetent.” He noted that Strapp’s successor
as principal, G. R. Inglis, had not honoured commitments that he had made during
Davey’s previous visit, and observed that pupils were “not permitted to have second
helpings.”303 When Indian agent Ralph Ragan conducted a follow-up visit, Inglis told
him that he had not instituted second servings because “he felt he could not do so. He
did state that extra meat and other foodstuffs were being provided but indications did
not substantiate this.”304
In 1956, Davey suggested to Strapp, who was by then the principal of the Edmonton
school, that he not be “too reticent about spending money on food and clothing.”
Strapp requested he put the instruction in writing, since he did not wish to be held
responsible for any shortfalls. Comments of this nature led Davey and Indian Affairs
official R. F. Battle to conclude that while Strapp was “an able accountant and business manager,” he was not “the ideal Principal for a school of this type.”305 When he
was later criticized about the quality of the food at the school, Strapp pointed to theinadequate per capita grant. He admitted that the school was “feeding and clothing
the children to a price and not to a reasonable standard according to the pamphlets
sent out to us by Indian Health Services, Citrus fruits, Tomato Juice, Cheese, Honey,etc.”306 On another occasion, he reminded Indian Affairs that while the school taught
Canada’s Food Rules in its home economics class, it could not afford to feed the students a diet that was in accordance with the rules.307 The federal audit of the school for1959 showed that the school had overspent the food allowance by $874.84, an amountthat would be deducted from the authorized allowance.308 Strapp was incredulous: “Ifind it rather difficult to believe that you really intend that we should follow Canada
Health Rules as laid down by the dietitian from Indian Health services who visited us
last year, when you reduce so drastically the amount we may spend on food. In ourmarkets it is not possible to buy without money.”309

292 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Students and their families also voiced their complaints. In 1957, Betty-Marie
Barber, an employee of the Social Welfare branch, reported that a student at the
Lytton, British Columbia, school (also known as St. George’s) had told her she would
like to return to the Kamloops school. There, she said, the students “got butter on theirbread” and “stew with stew meat in it rather than macaroni and dry bread of which
they seem to have an abundance at St. George’s.” According to Barber, the Indian
Health nurse felt the children were “undernourished and do not get sufficient of theright type of food.” There was, she said, a steady decline in the children’s weight fromChristmas on to June.310

The establishment of a food allowance
Until 1957, schools were expected to feed their students out of the per capita grant.
In that year, the government adopted a new system; schools were to be reimbursed fortheir actual expenditures. However, to control costs, a food allowance was establishedthat operated on a per capita basis.311 Schools were given a food allowance that was
not to exceed thirty-four cents a day per pupil in Grade Six and below, and thirty-eight
cents per day per pupil in Grade Seven and above.312
In 1958, in response to a request from Indian Affairs, Pett proposed a food-cost figure of thirty-eight cents a day for younger students (twelve-year-olds) and fifty-three
cents a day for older students (sixteen-year-olds). The costs were based on wholesale
prices, and were judged to be sufficient to provide for meals that were “fully adequate
nutritionally.” They did not, as Pett made clear, incorporate the cost of transportingfood to the schools, which would vary dramatically, depending on the location of theschool. He proposed the rates be increased “by an arbitrary amount for the lack oftrained help, and expert guidance in the school.” Pett further qualified the proposed
prices by noting “these prices depend on so many variables that it is difficult for us to
see their application on a fair basis for all residential schools in Canada.” Therefore, hestressed, they were “put forward in a tentative way.”313
More than ten years earlier, in 1946, the Nutrition Division had estimated that with
the inclusion of the value of the food raised on the farms, the schools were spending
between twenty and thirty cents a day on each child, at a time when they should be
spending at least thirty-six cents a day to provide a minimally adequate diet.314 Pett’s
1958 recommendation regarding older students was not far from the 1946 estimate of
the amount needed to produce an adequate diet: in 1957, fifty-six cents was equivalent to thirty-six cents in 1946.315
Pett also recommended that the rate be adjusted annually in response to changes
in costs, shipping, and the availability of wholesale food supplies.316 A food allowancebased on Pett’s tentative proposal was adopted: it would be thirty-eight cents a day

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 293

for students aged twelve and under, and fifty-three cents a day for students aged thirteen and over.317 Initially, the food allowance did not apply to the hostels in northern
Canada. These were funded on a contract basis by Northern Affairs. In 1961, the department was still in the process of developing a funding rate for those institutions.318
Despite Pett’s recommendation, the food allowance was not increased annually.
The daily rate for pupils aged twelve and under was increased to forty-two cents a dayin 1960.319 The Nutrition Division recommended in 1962 that the residential school
food allowance be forty-nine cents a day for pupils up to twelve years of age andsixty-six cents a day for students twelve and over. However, due to reductions in theappropriation for Indian education in that year, the rate was not increased.320 In 1963,
Indian Affairs received Treasury Board approval to provide funding of up to “49¢ per
pupil per day for children of less than 13 years of age and 66¢ per pupil per day forchildren of more than 13 years of age” if the school or hostel had “serious difficulties
in providing an adequate diet.”321 It was not until the 1964–65 fiscal year that the rates
were increased to forty-nine cents a day for students up to twelve years of age, andsixty-six cents a day for those aged twelve and over.322
In 1966, the rate for students up to twelve years old was increased from forty-ninecents to sixty-six cents a day. But the rate for students thirteen years of age and overalso remained at sixty-six cents.323 A survey of Anglican principals and residence
administrators said that between January 1, 1965, and September 1, 1966, there had
been an average 44% increase in the cost of “nine items of meat, fish, and eggs.” For
five items, including bread, canned vegetables, canned fruit, and white beans, theincrease had been 12%.324
The food allowance for students thirteen years of age and older was increased toseventy-two cents a day as of April 1, 1968.325 By 1969, the food allowance was eighty
cents per day per pupil and $50 a month for meals for each staff member living in
the residence.326

Living with the food allowance in the 1960s
The new food allowance did provide for improvement in both the quantity andquality of food served at residential schools. From the Edmonton school, a dietician
wrote in 1959, “The diet seemed to be adequate in protein and carbohydrates. The
children do receive ample portions of protein foods and are allowed to drink as much
fresh milk as they wish.” There was not enough of citrus fruits, tomatoes, vegetables,or whole-grain cereals. But the dietician noted that when these foods were served,
the children “do not like them.”327 A 1960 report on the food at the Hobbema, Alberta,
school, which had been harshly criticized in 1947, was more positive. The kitchen andcafeteria, which had to serve lunch for 560 day and residential students, were described294 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

as being well organized, and the diet was “fairly adequate.”328 In a 1961 report on the
Roman Catholic school at Kenora, the dietitian commented on the “cleanliness, good
food, and pleasant atmosphere of this school.”329 An inspection of the Crowfoot schoolin Cluny, Alberta, in 1963 reported a need for more milk for the older students, but
concluded, “Generally speaking, the menus are quite good.”330
Despite the increases, many problems remained. Although, in many cases, the newallowance represented an increase in funding, principals found it difficult to adhere to
Canada’s Food Rules and stay within budget. In 1959, Oblate Provincial L. K. Poupore
admonished Williams Lake, British Columbia, principal Alex Morris for the amount
he was spending on food. He pointed out that the principal of the Kootenay school
spent below the budgeted amount on food, “and yet he says he fed the children well. I
notice that he buys more hamburger, baloney, etc than you do. The Dept dietician willprobably recommend you use cheaper cuts.”331
A 1960 inspection of the Norway House, Manitoba, school noted that although“the pupils here are quite well fed,” the servings of eggs and fruits should be
increased. According to the dietician, the difference between the food allowance forstudents under twelve and those twelve and over was “unrealistic.”332 A 1960 reporton the Anglican school at Fort George, Québec, found that the diet was deficient in
the supply of vitamin c and did not meet Canada’s Food Rules recommendations
for servings of eggs, cheese, liver, and fruit. Indian Affairs responded that the “fresh
food supplies could only be obtained through the use of air freight, the cost of which
would be prohibitive.”333 The director of Indian and Northern Health concluded that“although there is very little food wasted or extravagance in buying food, the present
food allowance is not adequate to provide a diet which follows Canada’s Food Rulesin every respect.”334 A 1961 inspection of the Anglican school at Cardston, Alberta,
reported, “Generally, the menus did not offer much variety and the servings of foodseemed small—especially the protein food. However, seconds were available. Somerequirements were met but some were not.”335 According to a 1961 inspection reportof the Morley, Alberta, school, “On the whole the menus were quite well balanced
except for the lack of eggs and cheese and some lack of milk in the high school students’ diet.336 At the Fort Chipewyan school in northern Alberta, a dietician reported
in 1961, “Fresh fruit and vegetables are a big problem. Air service is very unreliable
and expensive.”337 A 1961 survey of the food at the Cluny, Alberta, school noted thatstudents were not drinking as much milk as they should, foods containing vitaminc were not served daily, there was only a single serving of vegetables daily, and thewhole-grain cereals were served infrequently. So much bread was being consumed
that the inspector worried that some children “must be eating nearly a loaf a day.”338
A 1962 report on the school recommended more milk, less bread, and more iron-rich
food.339 The call for increased milk consumption at this school was repeated in 1965,
1967, and 1968.340

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 295

In the early 1960s, some schools were still serving students unpasteurized milk. In
1962, Indian Affairs issued an instruction that unpasteurized milk was not acceptable.
Instead, given the cost of pasteurized milk, it was recommended that schools serve
powdered milk.341 A 1966 inspection of the Hobbema, Alberta, school noted the milk
was still not pasteurized.342
It does not appear that the food allowance took into account the regional differences that Pett had identified. Also, while it may have met the students’ nutritional
needs, it did not guarantee they left the table feeling full. In 1962, Kuper Island, British
Columbia, principal H. Dunlop reported that he was feeding students servings thatwere “in excess of those recommended by the Nutritional Division. I hope, however,the shade of Oliver Twist will never fall upon us making it a crime to ask for seconds
or even thirds, and I will not send growing children to bed hungry. It is very difficult tomake 42 cents stretch over three meals and two lunches.” He pointed out that his costs
were much higher than those at another Oblate school in British Columbia, which
never paid more than $40 a ton for potatoes; at Kuper Island, he never paid less than
$60 a ton.343
The basic problem of quantity remained unresolved at many schools. At a meetingof United Church and Presbyterian Church school principals with Indian Affairs officials in Winnipeg in 1964, Birtle, Manitoba, school principal M. Rusaw said that the“older children, especially boys who are really young men need so much more foodthan we can provide. They are constantly hungry.”344 Roland Chaput, the principal of
the Assiniboia school in Winnipeg, complained in 1966 when there was no increasein the food allowance for students aged thirteen and over. Since all the students in his
school were thirteen years or older, the food allowance for his school had remained
static. “The auditor’s report for the year 1965 shows clearly that the food allowance forthat year was not high enough. Without any increase this year I do not see how it could
be sufficient to keep us going and even absorb last year’s deficit.”345
At the Roman Catholic school at Onion Lake, Saskatchewan, in 1959, breakfast andlunch were “planned immediately prior to preparation. The cook seems to think she
does not have time to take an inventory of available food in order to plan her meals in
advance.”346 In the fall of 1966, the cook at the Assumption school in Alberta was notusing a written menu in preparing the school meals.347 In 1966, M. Matas of Medical
Services for the federal Department of Health in Alberta concluded, “Most of the cooks
in Indian Residential Schools in Alberta have little or no training and it is thought ashort course for these people would be of value.”348 As late as 1968, there were reportsof schools operating with no written menus.349
By the 1960s, inspectors were also critical of the existence of separate meals anddining rooms for staff. In a 1961 report on the Cluny school, the inspector commented
on the fact that the staff ate different meals from those eaten by the students. Whilehe thought this might be necessary for morale, “great differences will be noticed by296 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Indian staff and by the children. This way some of the staff will never know what thechildren are eating.”350 A year later, the inspector observed, “Staff usually receive similar meals to the children with an added choice of items.”351 A 1961 report from thePortage la Prairie, Manitoba, school commented, “It is good to see Staff meals very
similar to those of the pupils.”352
After initial delays, the general food allowance was also applied to the hostels innorthern Canada. Because the food allowance did not fully account for price differences, facilities found it difficult to feed students adequate meals and stay withinbudget. A 1966 dietician’s report on Yukon Hall in Whitehorse observed that although
Canada’s Food Guide (as Canada’s Food Rules had come to be known by then)353
requirements were being met, because of “the appetite of this age group, the staff are
finding 66¢ per day per student is limiting.”354 In 1969, an official at Coudert Hall inWhitehorse wrote,
The $0.80 alloted [sic] per student for food is not sufficient. In the north wefind prices sky high. Every year the price of food goes up, especially meat. Also
students are in their teens and need a large amount of food … especially for awell balanced menu. We find that some growing boys will eat twice and threetimes as much as adults.

To cope with the problem, the residence sometimes had to “cut down on amount offood given to the students … leaving them on their appetite. We have had to cut lunches
between meals. We’ve bought less meat and served maccaroni [sic] products.”355

The 1970s and beyond
Many of the problems that inspectors identified in the 1940s were still being
reported in the 1970s. Many administrators found the food budget was simply too low.
The food services manager of the Alert Bay, British Columbia, residence said in 1970
that the school “could manage adequately on the 80 cents a day food allowance were
it not for the freight charges on the food.”356 The administrator of the Christie, British
Columbia, school made the same point, referring to the “high cost of transportingfood to the school due to its isolated location.”357 At the Alberni, British Columbia,
school, it was estimated that the food allowance of eighty cents a day per student wasten cents too low.358
There were also reports of residences struggling to buy adequate supplies of food.
A November 1970 inspection of the Dauphin, Manitoba, school noted that the “menuappears to be short of the recommended two servings of fruit per day.”359 Two years
later, John Parker, the deputy commissioner of the Northwest Territories, wrote to
the director of the Department of Education, saying he had received many accounts

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 297“suggesting that the quality and quantity of the food” at the Frobisher Bay [now known
as Iqaluit] school “leaves much to be desired.”360
Underfunding led to calls for the fortification of food. Given the lack of vitamin d inthe students’ diet, a dietitian called for the introduction of fortified milk and fortified
cereals at the Roman Catholic and Anglican schools in Cardston in 1970.361
In some residences, there still was little or no menu planning. For example, in 1970,
the Roman Catholic residence at Cardston was not using a menu.362 That same year,
the cook at the Sechelt, British Columbia, school was planning meals only one day inadvance.363 Also that year, the meals at the Dauphin, Manitoba, residence were judged
to be repetitive. It was suggested that there be at least two weekly menus in rotation sothat students would not be served “the same meal on the same day of every week.”364 In
1973, a federal health inspector recommended that the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan,
school introduce a “cycle menu.” One of the goals was to introduce “more variety ofmain courses and dessert items.”365
Recruiting and keeping qualified cooks was also a problem. In 1970, the cook at the
Dauphin residence had to be advised about the loss of nutrients that resulted fromprolonged soaking of potatoes.366 A year later, the potatoes at the residence were still
being peeled a day in advance of being cooked.367 In 1973, an inspector recommended
that the Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, residence staff cook vegetables “in as small anamount of water as is practicable and as quickly as possible” so as not to reduce foodvalue and destroy their “colour and flavour.”368 In 1970, an inspector reported that
although the students and staff of the Sechelt school appeared to be “well satisfied
with their meals,” he was disturbed because many students were drinking cocoa twice
a day, which did not have the same nutrients as milk.369
When Gary Black, the assistant superintendent of education for the Northwest
Territories, visited Fort Simpson in early 1973, he found that the three cooks at the
LaPointe Hall hostel were “threatening to leave on the next plane.” He said the major
source of complaint was the administrator’s numerous “petty rules.” He persuaded
the cooks to stay on, and to promise to give two weeks’ notice if they did decide to quit.
But, before he left the community, the problem had flared up again. One of the cooks
showed up at work drunk, continued to drink for the rest of the morning, and spentmuch of his time “pestering some of the Senior Girls.” Black thought it was going to
be necessary to hire two new cooks, but doubted there was anyone in the community“who could take the position.”370
Cooks still struggled with poorly designed and poorly maintained kitchens. A 1971
assessment of the Prince Alberta, Saskatchewan, school commented, “It is quite surprising that the school has been able to offer the variety of foods as found on the menu
with the available equipment that was inadequate in repair, variety and amount.” It
was thought to be “remarkable that no serious results have occurred from the many
unsanitary conditions existing.”371

298 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Separate dining facilities, with special meals for staff, slowly disappeared because
they created additional work for the cooks. It was also apparent that if staff members
were served the same meals as students, they would put additional pressure on theadministration to improve the general quality of the meals. A 1970 inspection of theCatholic school at Cardston concluded that the cooks’ workloads could be reduced if
the staff were served “a menu more similar to the childrens [sic].”372 In her report on
the Churchill Vocational Centre in 1970, Inspector M. Thomson noted that supervisors at the school were fed a different menu from the menu fed to the students, wereserved their food on china dishes, and had a right to break into the food lineup. She
suggested, “If they had the same menu and dishes as the students, the students [sic]food would tend to be better because the supervisors would complain if the food service slipped up. The students [sic] morale would be better if they saw the food they ate
was good enough for the supervisors.”373
The Akaitcho Hall residence in Yellowknife had done away with staff meals. There,according to Thomson, the hostel staff ate the same food as the students, with few
complaints. She thought the chief cook was “always searching for variety within thelimitation of the foods available and the students [sic] taste.”374 By 1971, the staff roomat the Dauphin residence had been eliminated and everyone was “eating the same
food.”375 By 1972, the Qu’Appelle residence had instituted a single menu for staff andstudents. An inspector noted that “it is felt that students are entitled to meals that areequivalent to those served to the staff.”376
In 1973, a Health and Welfare Canada inspector provided a generally positive
assessment of the food in the residences in Saskatchewan. At the Gordon’s residence,a “generally high food quality with adequate menu variation is provided. Food handling practises [sic] are quite good.”377 At the Beauval residence, “a well planned menu
continues to be offered.”378 At the Grayson residence, it was reported, meals were nutritionally adequate and a good variety of foods were provided.379 An inspector wrote thatat Onion Lake, the menu “generally meets the standards of Canada’s Food Guide.”380
It was reported that at Fleming Hall in Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, thestudents were being served “satisfactory amounts of milk, eggs, cheese, fats, breads
and cereals,” compared with Canada’s Food Guide. The inspector noted approvingly:“Native foods such as fish and caribou are served often. This benefits the students in
two ways; they get familiar foods they like and these traditional foods are given a special emphasis as ‘good’ foods because they are served by the institute.”381 After many
years of disparaging Aboriginal cultures and traditions, the schools were belatedly
recognizing how damaging such a message had been.
The failure to provide adequate meals, which marked the early years of the residential school system, continued in the post-war period. In 1942, the federal government
established a set of guidelines for nutrition. It is completely reasonable to expect that
the Canadian government should have seen to it that the schools were funded so that

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000 • 299

residential school students could be fed in keeping with these national guidelines.
Canada did not do that. Yet, in 1971, when discussing the transfer of responsibility forresidential schools to First Nations organizations, Canada took the position that thosetaking over had to run the schools in keeping with Canada’s standards. When it cameto food services, these standards were stated to be found in Canada’s Food Guide.382(Canada’s Food Rules were renamed the Canada Food Guide in 1961.)383 This was thesame standard that the federal government and the churches had themselves failed tomeet on a continuous basis for the previous thirty years.
It is very clear that, in many cases, students went hungry, and were fed meals that
led to serious deficiencies in vitamins and minerals. During the 1940s, the majority ofCanadians were not eating diets that met the Canada’s Food Rules standards, largely
for financial reasons related to wartime. They were not, however, living under government compulsion in church-run, government-financed schools. The federal government knowingly chose not to provide schools with enough money to ensure that
kitchens and dining rooms were properly equipped, that cooks were properly trained,
and, most significantly, that food was purchased in sufficient quantity and quality forgrowing children. The government made this decision in order to save money. It wasa decision that created or contributed to numerous health problems. It also deprived
thousands of Aboriginal children from starting lives with an optimal level of nutrition
needed for their physical development and educational success. This can be seen only
as a massive failure to provide the essentials needed for health, and a deep betrayal of
Canada’s responsibility to children as their primary caregivers while the children werein the institutions to which they were assigned.

A 1945 investigation into parental complaints at the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school reported that one dinner consisted of
one slice of bologna, potatoes, bread, and milk. The bread was stale and served without butter, the milk was thin, and there
was no dessert.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, M2008-10-P78.

A 1944 inspection of the Elkhorn, Manitoba, school concluded that 28% of the girls and 70% of the boys were underweight.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P7538-901.

Dining hall, Edmonton, Alberta, school. In 1947, the head of the federal government Nutrition Division concluded that of theresidential schools his staff had surveyed “no school was doing a good feeding job.”
United Church of Canada Archives, 93-049P871N.

Alberni, British Columbia, school student being examined as part of the nutrition study in 1948.
F. Royal, National Film Board of Canada, Library and Archives Canada, e002504649.

Sparks from a torch being used by maintenance staff during a repair job ignited a fire in the engine room of the Sturgeon Landing,
Saskatchewan, school in 1952. The fire quickly spread and burned the school to the ground.
St. Boniface Historical Society Archives, Fonds, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Keewatin – Le Pas, N3637.

The Lac La Ronge, Saskatchewan, school was one of the ten schools to burn down between 1940 and 1949.
R. D. Davidson, Canada, Department of Mines and Technical Surveys, Library and Archives Canada, PA-020295.

In 1946, Indian agent J. P. B. Ostrander wrote that if a fire broke out at the St. Alban’s school in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan,“there would be a great probability of considerable loss of life because of narrow corridors filled with dry inflammable material
and not easy access to fire escapes or the stairway.”
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P75-103-S7-286.

A 1958 inspection of the North Vancouver, British Columbia, school concluded that the school was “over crowded” and a “FireHazard.” North Vancouver Fire Warden A. H. Abbott estimated that if the school caught fire at night, at least half the students
would be lost.
North Vancouver Archives, 4838.

Between 1941 and 1946, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police prepared at least sixteen separate reports on investigations into
students who had run away from the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school.
Sisters of Charity, Halifax Archives, 1695A.

One of three boys who ran away from the Kamsack, Saskatchewan, school in 1965 died when he attempted to cross theAssiniboine River.
Saskatchewan Archives Board, R-A25317.

When three boys ran away from the Pine Creek, Manitoba, school in 1951, the principal did not notify the police or contact theboys’ parents until the following day. Although two of the boys made it home safely, the third boy froze to death. His body was
discovered by his father.
St. Boniface Historical Society Archives, Oblates of Mary Immaculate of Manitoba fonds, delegation, SHSB 30035.

A 1949 investigation into discipline at the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, school concluded the institution more closely resembled
a “detention home than a boarding school.”
Canada, Department of Interior, Library and Archives Canada, PA-047850.

In 1948, C. H. Birdsall, the chair of the United Church committee responsible for the Edmonton, Alberta, school, complained,“It is impossible for the Residential School to offer salaries in competition with” Indian Affairs rates. Given the poor quality ofaccommodation, equipment, and staff at the school, he felt that it was “doubtful the present work with Indian Children could
properly be called education.”
United Church of Canada Archives, 93.049P873N.

Staff and students at the Sturgeon Landing, Saskatchewan, school, 1946. Until the 1960s, members of religious orders made up asignificant proportion of residential school staff membership.
St. Boniface Historical Society Archives, Oblates of Mary Immaculate of Manitoba fonds, N4096.

A teacher and student at the Anglican school in Aklavik, Northwest Territories. Many residential school staff members weredrawn to the work by a desire to teach and ‘improve the world.’
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P75-103-S7-90.

James DeWolf, principal of the Cardston, Alberta, school in the 1950s. As an Anglican minister in Nova Scotia, DeWolf had beenvery active in campaigns for social equality.
Glenbow Museum, NC-7-1046.

Between January 1958 and March 1960, fifty-eight staff members left the Alert Bay, British Columbia, school.
Canada, Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Library and Archives Canada, PA-185533.

In the 1966–67 school year, the Kamloops, British Columbia, school employed at least sixty full- and part-time workers.
Canada, Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Library and Archives Canada, PA-185532.

The staff of the Gleichen, Alberta, school in 1955; Principal R. J. Crocker on the far right. Prior to his appointment that year,
Crocker had never worked in a residential school. He held the job for a year and a half.
Glenbow Museum, NA-4817-48.

In 1964, one year after he was appointed principal of the Sioux Lookout, Ontario, school, Ahab Spence was granted an honorary
doctorate of laws by the University of Saskatchewan.
Gibson, University of Saskatchewan, University Library, University Archives & Special Collections, Photograph Collection A-4401.

CHAPTER 38

Fire hazard: 1940–2000

In 1940, R. A. Hoey, the superintendent of Welfare and Training for Indian Affairs,
wrote a blistering critique of the condition of Canadian residential schools. He
said the schools had been poorly built, often failing to meet “the minimum standards in the construction of public buildings, particularly institutions for the education of children.” Not surprisingly, many were “acute fire hazards.” He wanted to see
many of them replaced, preferably with day schools. He recommended that any new
residential school should be “of fireproof construction throughout.”1
Hoey’s two goals—a switch from residential schooling to day schooling, andthe improvement of fire safety in residential schools—came into conflict with one
another. In the years to follow, school fires would be an important factor in the closureof many existing residential schools. Although some of these schools were replaced,
the replacements were not always of fireproof construction. For example, the Prince
Albert, Saskatchewan, school, which replaced the schools destroyed by fire in Onion
Lake and Lac la Ronge, was “temporarily” housed for decades in an abandoned army
camp. This school had one of the largest enrolments of any residential school (550
students in 1953, for example), yet was considered a fire hazard for most of its history.2
Since Indian Affairs saw the future in transferring students to day schools, it
was reluctant to bring existing residential schools up to building-code standards.
Convinced that the buildings would be closed in a matter of years, it regularly sought
and received exemptions from improvement orders. The lack of investment is underscored by a 1960 report from the British Columbia Fire Marshal’s office. It concluded
that the Mission school was overcrowded, had inadequate fire escapes, and little firefighting equipment. School buildings, some of which dated back to 1885, were judged
to be fire hazards.3
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has determined that at least
seventeen schools or residences were destroyed by fire between 1940 and 1997 (seeTable 38.1). In addition, at least nineteen outbuildings were destroyed by different fires
during this period (see Table 38.2). There were at least thirty-two additional recorded
fires (see Table 38.3). It was suspected or proven that at least eleven of these sixty-eightfires were deliberately set (see Table 38.4).

302 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Table 38.1. Schools or residence buildings destroyed by fire.
1. Carcross, Yukon Territory (1940)1
2. Ahousaht, British Columbia (1940)2
3. Alberni, British Columbia (1941)3
4. File Hills, Saskatchewan (1942)4
5. Fort George, Québec (the Anglican school) (1943)5
6. Onion Lake, Saskatchewan (the Anglican school) (1943)6
7. Wabasca, Alberta (1945)7
8. Norway House, Manitoba (1946)8
9. Lac la Ronge, Saskatchewan (1947)9
10. Delmas, Saskatchewan (Thunderchild) (1948)10
11. Fort Simpson, Northwest Territories (1950)11
12. Sturgeon Landing, Saskatchewan (1952)12
13. McIntosh, Ontario (1965)13
14. Cambridge Bay, Northwest Territories (1973)14
15. Cambridge Bay, Northwest Territories (1974)15
16. Fort George, Québec (federal teachers’ residence) (1975)16
17. Fort Smith, Northwest Territories (1980)17

Table 38.2. Outbuildings destroyed by fire, 1940–1997.
1. Fraser Lake, British Columbia, poultry house (1940)1
2. Fraser Lake, British Columbia, poultry house (second fire in one year) (1940)2
3. Cranbrook, British Columbia, several outbuildings (1941)3
4. Fraser Lake, British Columbia, poultry house (1942)4
5. Alert Bay, British Columbia, pump house (1945)5
6. Brocket (St. Cyprian’s), Alberta, horse and cattle barn (1946)6
7. Sandy Bay, Manitoba, garage partially destroyed (1948)7
8. Lestock, Saskatchewan, slaughterhouse (1948)8
9. Round Lake, Saskatchewan, barn, the blacksmith shop, and three granaries (1949)9
10. Round Lake, Saskatchewan, barn (1950)10
11. Kenora, Ontario, Presbyterian, barn (1951)11
12. Brantford, Ontario (Mohawk Institute), two barns (1955)12
13. Sioux Lookout, Ontario, school hockey house (1957)13
14. Amos, Québec, cow barn (1957)14
15. Fraser Lake, British Columbia, pump house (1959)15
16. Fort Simpson, Northwest Territories, Roman Catholic Mission, barn (1959)16
17. Blue Quills, Alberta, barn (1963)17
18. Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, skating rink change shack (1967)18
19. Williams Lake, British Columbia, engineer’s shack (1967)19

Fire hazard: 1940–2000 • 303

Table 38.3. Additional reported fires that did not destroy buildings, 1940–1997.
1. Fort Alexander, Manitoba, laundry room (1941)1
2. File Hills, Saskatchewan, two classrooms destroyed (1942)2
3. Chapleau, Ontario, chimney (1944)3
4. Hobbema, Alberta, boiler room (1945)4
5. Chapleau, Ontario, furnace room (1947)5
6. Edmonton, Alberta, laundry room (1948)6
7. Chapleau, Ontario, chimney (1948)7
8. Pine Creek, Manitoba, girls’ dormitory (1951)8
9. Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, boys’ dormitory closet (1951)9
10. Williams Lake, British Columbia, classroom destroyed (1954)10
11. Beauval, Saskatchewan, wood-storage room (1956)11
12. Cardston, Alberta, fire above the furnace room (1958)12
13. Coppermine, Northwest Territories, school building (1959)13
14. Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, gymnasium and shops area (1960)14
15. Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, basement rumpus room (1963)15
16. Fort Smith, Northwest Territories (1964)16
17. Carcross, Yukon, boiler room (1966)17
18. Beauval, Saskatchewan (1966)18
19. Churchill, Manitoba, residence (1967)19
20. Churchill, Manitoba, washroom (1967)20
21. Carcross, Yukon, boiler room (1968)21
22. Kamsack, Saskatchewan, girls’ dormitory and laundry room (fires on two consecutive days)(1969)22
23. Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, dormitory (1974)23
24. Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, dormitory (1974)24
25. Cardston, Alberta, principal’s office and two dormitory fires (1976)25
26. Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan (a series of small fires in the dormitories and gymnasium in 1977
and 1978)26
27. Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, boys’ dormitory (1977)27
28. Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, boys’ dormitory (1979)28
29. Mission, British Columbia, residence (1980)29
30. Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, residence bedroom (1986)30
31. Lestock, Saskatchewan, girls’ dormitory (1993)31
32. Lestock, Saskatchewan, dormitory (1993)32

304 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Table 38.4. School fires or attempted fires that were suspected or proven to bedeliberately set.
1. File Hills, Saskatchewan (1942)1
2. Lac la Ronge, Saskatchewan (1947)2
3. Delmas, Saskatchewan (1948)3
4. Round Lake, Saskatchewan (1949)4
5. Pine Creek, Manitoba (1951)5
6. Beauval, Saskatchewan (1956)6
7. Kamsack, Saskatchewan (1968)7
8. Beauval, Saskatchewan (1966)8
9. Cardston, Alberta, Roman Catholic school and residence (St. Mary’s) (1976)9
10. Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, a series of attempted arsons (Spring 1977 to Spring 1978)10
11. Lestock, Saskatchewan (1993)11

There was only one fatal fire during this period. In 1968, a fire, likely caused by acigarette, broke out in the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school rumpus room late one evening. David Thomas Anderson, Kenneth Lloyd Anderson, Peter Michael Anderson,
and Bucky Arnold all died. The four boys appear to be the only students to die in residential school fires in the period from 1940 to 1997.4

Decade of destruction: 1940–1950
In 1944, R. A. Hoey observed that since he had joined Indian Affairs in 1936, nineresidential schools and four day schools had been destroyed by fire. The rebuilding
did not keep up with the rate of destruction. Throughout this period, only two residential schools had been built, and the majority of the day schools that were built were
replacements for those that had been destroyed. The school-aged First Nations population, however, was increasing at a rate of 300 pupils per year. Just to keep pace withthis growth, it would have been necessary to build “at least five day schools and one
residential school” a year.5 During the Second World War, however, the federal government built no new residential schools.6 The limited rebuilding that did take place
during this period was largely initiated by the churches. In 1945, for example, theAnglican Church rebuilt the schools at Carcross, Yukon, and Fort George, Québec.7
The number of schools lost to fire continued to mount. Poorly built and poorly
maintained residential schools represented a serious fire hazard. In the ten years from1940 to 1949, school buildings at the following locations were destroyed by fire.
1940: Carcross, Yukon Territory8
1940: Ahousaht, British Columbia91941: Alberni, British Columbia10

Fire hazard: 1940–2000 • 305

1942: File Hills, Saskatchewan11
1943: Fort George, Québec (the Anglican school)12
1943: Onion Lake, Saskatchewan (the Anglican school)13
1945: Wabasca, Alberta14
1946: Norway House, Manitoba15
1947: Lac la Ronge, Saskatchewan16
1948: Delmas, Saskatchewan (Thunderchild)17

It is in large measure a testament to the work of the staff and the discipline of thestudents that none of these fires resulted in any loss of life. The actions of two boys,
Donald Beardy and Oliver Sinclair, were credited with saving the lives of fellow students when fire destroyed the Norway House, Manitoba, school in 1946. According to
a community history:
All the boys were fast asleep. Donald knew the doors were always locked,
but that was not why he found it hard to relax. Lying under the warmth of
the blankets, the air in the dormitory was making Donald feel like sneezing.
Something was making his nostrils quite itchy. Finally, Donald sat up to clear his
nasal and throat passages; it was then he noticed the room was full of greyishblack smoke. Clearing his eyes, he knew instinctively everyone was in great
danger. He shook his friend Oliver, who was sleeping in the next bed. He did
not need to show him the smoke, as Oliver had woken up and could see it forhimself. Donald ordered Oliver to wake up the rest of the boys while he woke up
the girls in the next dormitory.
Donald tried to open the door which the supervisors always locked. He kept
banging and pushing until it finally gave away. He ran to the girls’ dormitory andtold everyone to get out quickly. By this time the boys were already getting away
through the fire escapes. Soon, one by one the girls came flying down the fireescapes, too.
Down to the ground below Donald and Oliver hurried, so that they could catch
each one as they came sliding down.18

Many of the buildings that burned were acknowledged fire traps. After inspecting the ruins of the Ahousaht, British Columbia, school, Indian Affairs official P. B.
Ashbridge wrote, “The destroyed building was of wood frame construction with shingle roof. Building was very old and dry, being partially built of cedar, and was considered to be a fire hazard.” He attributed the cause of the fire to a failure in the wiring.19
In his report on the Wabasca, Alberta, fire to Indian Affairs, Anglican Church official
H. A. Alderwood noted that when he had inspected the school the year before, he hadthought it was “easily the poorest thing of its kind I had seen, and I felt that the fire
hazard was considerable, and that it must have been because of the great care on thepart of the staff that it had escaped loss in the past.”20

306 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

A 1941 inspection of the Lac la Ronge, Saskatchewan, school described it as “nothing more or less than a fire trap.”21 When it was destroyed by fire in 1947, Principal
Douglas Wickenden wrote, “The ‘fire-trap’ has ceased to exist and mercifully without
loss of life.”22
The fires played a role in the eventual dismantling of the residential school system. Government officials recognized that the fires created an opportunity to expand
day schools. Four of the schools (Ahousaht, Onion Lake, Lac la Ronge, and Delmas)
were never rebuilt. When the Thunderchild school at Delmas, Saskatchewan, burned
down, Indian Affairs official J. P. B. Ostrander noted, “The Indians of the Poundmaker,
Meadow Lake, and Sweetgrass Reserves have all been asking for day schools,” and hecould see no reason why they should continue to be denied such schools.23 Despite
Oblate requests for a new school, by the spring of 1949, the government decided not
to rebuild at Delmas.24
Temporary accommodation for the pupils from the Onion Lake school was provided at St. Alban’s College, Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, in 1944.25 After the Lac laRonge school was destroyed by fire in 1947, the students were transferred to Prince
Albert.26 The Anglicans sought unsuccessfully to have the Onion Lake and Lac laRonge schools rebuilt.27 Instead, arrangements were made to house the students in
a former Canadian military basic-training complex on the edge of Prince Albert.28 By
spring of 1948, the boys from St. Alban’s College were quartered at the military camp
and trucked to classes.29 In 1951, it was decided to move all the students living at the
St. Alban’s school into the military camp.30
The File Hills, Saskatchewan, school never recovered from the loss of the classrooms destroyed in the 1942 fire. Two years later, classes were still being conductedin playrooms. According to the superintendent for Indian agencies, “Under one of theplayrooms an engine is continually running and you can understand that this is distracting to whatever teacher they might have.” With the conditions at the school, “children cannot possibly get the education they should receive.”31 In 1948, in responseto requests from the principal to make improvements to the school, Indian Affairs
official J. P. B. Ostrander wrote that he hesitated “to recommend spending any further
money on it.”32 The school was closed at the end of the 1948–49 school year.33 Most of
the students were to attend day schools. Between six and eight students were to besent to either the Brandon or Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, schools. Both were operated by the United Church.34
Other schools were closed before they could burn down. In 1944, Hoey referred to
the Mount Elgin school in Muncey, Ontario, as “one of our worst fire hazards.”35 He
did not believe it could be “repaired and made reasonably satisfactory from the standpoint of sanitation.”36 Mount Elgin was closed in 1946.37 In May 1950, the Saskatchewan
Fire Commissioner’s office condemned the Round Lake, Saskatchewan, school. Fire
Commissioner R. E. Tiffin concluded that no changes could be made that would “makeFire hazard: 1940–2000 • 307

the building a reasonably safe place to house these children.”38 The poor condition of
the school led the government to close the school at the end of the school year. The
decision sparked a protest from the Toronto-based Women’s Missionary Society of theUnited Church of Canada. The society had been requesting the construction of a newschool for fifteen years. It also complained to Indian Affairs that “if the school buildings are in such poor condition, we should have been made aware of this by those whohave been supervising.”39 The complaint suggests the society had limited knowledgeof conditions in a school for which it was partially responsible.
A series of fires contributed to the closing of the Chapleau, Ontario, school during
this period. A chimney fire did considerable damage to the building in February
1944.40 There was a small electrical fire at the school in the spring of 1947.41 The schoolcaught fire once more in March 1948.42 After the fire, the principal warned that “incase of a fire getting a head start during the night, half of the occupants of the building, both staff and children, would be trapped some 30 feet from the ground without
any means of escape.”43 Indian Affairs declined to pay for a new fire escape. Instead, it
authorized the Indian agent to install additional interior doors that would allow students in senior dormitories to have access to the junior dormitory fire escapes.44 The
school was closed at the end of the 1947–48 school year.45
The 1940s were the most dangerous decade in terms of residential school fires. But,
through the following half-century, Canada continued to underinvest in safety, knowingly placing the lives of students and staff at risk.

Inadequate fire protection: 1940–1960
It is clear from the evidence that throughout this period, many, if not most, ofCanada’s residential schools were fire hazards. In 1941, R. A. Hoey had informed the
director of Indian Affairs that the Anglican schools at Whitefish Lake and Wabasca“have been for years in a dilapidated and insanitary condition.” They needed to be
replaced by either new schools or day schools.46 The safest solution, as Hoey had
observed, would have been to build more day schools, allowing children to returnto their parents’ homes, or to replace burned schools with new, fireproof buildings.
Instead, during the 1940s, the government made few new investments in First Nations
schools. In the absence of new schools, the government should have ensured thatthe existing schools had adequate levels of fire protection. This would have included
alarms for speedy notification and evacuation of the schools, effective firefighting
equipment, and safe, functioning fire escapes. But, inspections from the 1940s regularly identified schools that failed to provide such elementary fire protection.
A 1940 inspection of the Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario, reported that thehose reels on the top floor did not contain hoses. The Kenora fire chief recommended

308 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the installation of fire doors on the furnace room.47 Indian Affairs was prepared toprovide $30 to purchase the fire doors, but there were no funds for improvements tothe fire escapes and fire-alarm system. The Indian agent was advised to bring the matter to the Indian Affairs branch’s attention at the start of the new fiscal year. In themeantime, the principal was to “make every possible effort to keep the present fireescapes as free from snow and ice as is possible.”48 Even when the money to purchasefire doors could be found, the doors were difficult to obtain. Efforts by the Oblates toimprove the fireproofing of the Catholic school in Kenora in 1942 were frustrated bywartime rationing of steel.49
In 1940, it was noted that there were no fire bells in the dormitories at the Sioux
Lookout, Ontario, school. Neither were there any in the laundry, boiler room, engine
room, dining room, or a number of basement hallways. There was also a need for
additional fire hoses. On a more positive note, the inspector felt that the surprise fire
drill went smoothly, with the school being emptied in two minutes.50 In reporting on afire that destroyed a classroom block at the Alberni, British Columbia, school, IndianAffairs inspector G. H. Barry wrote that it would have been possible to save the building if his previous recommendations for improvements to equipment at the school
had been implemented.51 A fire at the Cranbrook, British Columbia, school in April
1941 revealed that the school had an insufficient supply of firefighting equipment andan insufficient supply of water.52
Water supply was a constant problem. When a fire broke out in the laundry room of
the Fort Alexander, Manitoba, school in the fall of 1941, the school was saved because
the principal “had the children, the Sisters and all the staff carrying water and assisting in putting out the fire.”53 Even when there was water, the hoses might fail. A 1946
inspection of the Edmonton, Alberta, school concluded that the fire hose in the building was twenty-two years old and should be condemned.54
The principal of the Birtle, Manitoba, school reported in March 1943 that the fire
alarm could not be heard in the junior boys’ room. A lack of interior lighting madenighttime fire drills dangerous. “Often a little girl or a little boy gets so frightened thathe or she is afraid to take a step and there is a danger that those behind may pile up
and a dangerous situation result.”55 An inspection of the Hobbema, Alberta, school in1944 concluded that the state of fire protection at the school was “very poor.” Alarms
could not be heard throughout the school and there were insufficient and ineffectivemeans of escape.56
Poor maintenance and overcrowding also increased the fire risk. A 1945 inspectionof the Cranbrook, British Columbia, school recommended that Indian Affairs “lose notime in installing added protection if it wishes to prevent a serious conflagration.” Theengine room was described as being in “filthy condition, the floor saturated with oil.”
The supply of both power and water was deemed to be unsatisfactory for fire safety.57
A 1945 fire-safety inspection of the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, school noted that

Fire hazard: 1940–2000 • 309

the dormitories were so crowded that there were only inches between the beds andthere was even “one bed blocking the exit door.”58 Into the 1940s, some schools had
no electrical service. In 1946, E. L. Stone, the Indian Health Services medical superintendent for Alberta, wrote that the Anglican school at Whitefish Lake, Alberta, had“no water system and was lighted by coal-oil lamps. The fire menace is extreme.”59 A
1948 Indian Affairs inspection described the school as being “very inadequate fromthe stand-point of sanitation and fire prevention.”60
The end of the war did not bring about a dramatic improvement in fire-safety measures. In a 1949 response to a request for funding to make improvements to the Fraser
Lake, British Columbia, school, as had been recommended by a fire marshal, Bernard
Neary, the Indian Affairs superintendent of Indian Education, noted that “funds arelimited at the present time, and it will be difficult if not impossible to provide anylarge amount of money for improvements.”61 The principal of the Roman Catholicschool at Kamsack, Saskatchewan, R. Beauregard, sent an urgent telegraph message
to Ottawa in July 1955, warning that, because of a “critical” problem with the school’s
water pipes, there was a “danger of fire.”62 A Saskatchewan government inspector
reported in November 1955 that the Kamsack school’s “alarm system is completely
out of order, and fire escapes are not marked at all. The existing hoses are leaking badly
and the valve if opened will not close off again.”63 In April 1957, Indian Affairs official
W. J. Harvey described the only fire protection at the Anglican school in Fort George,
Québec, as “a few fire extinguishers filled with water.” He said that if the frame building
were to catch fire, it would be “enveloped in flames in a few minutes.”64
In a 1956 report on the need to improve the water supply for firefighting purposesat the Lower Post, British Columbia, school, a federal official noted that “there is aserious lack of fire protection at this school.” He went on to acknowledge that “thissituation exists to a more or lesser degree at all our residential schools.”65 The Lower
Post school was not an aging institution: it had opened in 1951.66
Lytton, British Columbia, principal C. F. Hives had for many years been trying to
draw Indian Affairs’ attention to what he called the “unsatisfactory, inefficient, andunsafe condition of the heating system” in two classrooms. Indian Affairs had not
addressed the issue, since it planned to replace the building with a new set of classrooms. In 1957, one of the classrooms caught fire. Although staff members were able
to bring the fire under control with no loss of life, the fire underscored the ongoingneglect of the existing buildings.67 In that same year, an inspection of the Anglican
school in Cardston, Alberta, called for improvements to the fire escape, water pressure, wiring, and firefighting equipment.68 The nearby Catholic school was ordered tomake improvements to the fire escapes, replace rotten standpipes, and alter exit doors
so that they opened outwards.69
Inspection reports from 1958 found fire safety to be inadequate at schools in British
Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, and Ontario. Indian Affairs official J. V. Boys judged

310 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the firefighting equipment at the Kuper Island, British Columbia, school to be “quite
inadequate.” He wrote that “with the existing water supply, it is impossible to throw a
stream of water on the roof of the main building.”70 An inspector called for the replacement of the fire escapes at the Joussard, Alberta, school, along with the installation ofa fire-detection system and fire doors.71 Extensive renovations were called for to themain building at the school at Fort Alexander, Manitoba. Indian Affairs recognized thatthe building was “in bad shape and it would not be possible to bring it up to acceptable standards without the expenditure of a large sum of money.” At the time, thegovernment intended to build a new classroom block and transfer a Veterans Affairs
building to the school. Therefore, the government was determined “not to spend any
more money than is absolutely necessary to reduce the hazards in event of fire.”72 Fire
protection at the McIntosh, Ontario, school was judged to be “totally inadequate andthe existing escapes are unsuitable and dangerous.”73
A 1959 inspection of the Sturgeon Lake school at Calais, Alberta, concluded that themain building “was not suitable in the writer’s opinion for a school and dormitory.”
He recommended replacing the fire escapes, adding additional escapes, installing a
new fire-alarm system, reducing enrolment, relining all the hallways with non-combustible material, and replacing the roof.74
A negative inspection did not always lead to safety improvements. The examples of both Canada’s oldest residential school—the Mohawk Institute in Brantford,
Ontario—and one of its newest—in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan—demonstrate how
slow Canada was to respond to recommendations for improvement to fire safety inthe 1940s and 1950s.

The Mohawk Institute
In 1946, the Mohawk Institute was the subject of a thorough and highly criticalexamination by fire inspector N. C. Rathburn. He pointed out that while it was generally accepted that all exit doors in public buildings should open outwards, at the
Mohawk Institute, “the main entrance door, classroom doors, dining room doors, exit
doors from the sewing room, in fact practically all the doors except those on the fireescape, [are] opening inwardly.”He also said that previous recommendations to have “a proper fire drill organizedin this school” had been neglected. Fire hoses were full of holes, fire extinguishers
had not been recharged, heating pipes were wrapped in paper, the fire bell could not
be heard in the dormitories, and the gas valve on the kitchen stove “was leaking very
badly.”75 Twelve years later, in 1958, after another inspection, Rathburn wrote that
although some improvements had been made at the school, “we cannot get away fromthe fact that this building, of wooden structure inside, would allow a fire to spread very

Fire hazard: 1940–2000 • 311

rapidly and with the number of children and supervisors, particularly on the second
and third floors, there is every possibility that if fire did take place unnoticed, loss oflife could very likely happen.”
He stated that the existing building could be made safe only through the installation of a sprinkler system.76 By the spring of the following year, Indian Affairs awarded
a contract for the installation of such a system.77 In the fall of 1959, a fire inspector
informed the school that a recent fire drill at the school was “not efficient.” The inspector had doubts as to whether “a safe evacuation could be made” without the additionof an enclosed stairway that would allow the second and third floors of the school tobe evacuated at the same time.78 In spite of the building’s ongoing deterioration, theMohawk Institute remained in operation until June 1970.79

Prince Albert
After the destruction by fire of the Anglican school at Onion Lake, Saskatchewan,
the students were transferred to a former private boys’ school in Prince Albert called
St. Alban’s.80 As noted above, in 1950, many of the students were transferred to an
abandoned military camp on the edge of town. When it was operated by the military,
the camp had received fire protection from its own, fully equipped, fire hall, which
had a full-time crew of firefighters.81 But, once it became a school, it no longer had thatlevel of fire protection.
Indian agent J. P. B. Ostrander wrote of St. Alban’s in 1946 that “if a fire started in
the building there would be a great probability of considerable loss of life becauseof narrow corridors filled with dry inflammable material and not easy access to fireescapes or the stairway.”82 In 1949, the director of Indian Affairs, D. M. MacKay, recommended that the government, in partnership with the Anglican Church, fundextensive repairs to the school, which had been the subject of a detailed and highly
negative fire inspection.83
In 1950, the Prince Albert fire chief condemned the heating system at the school
facilities located in the former military training camp.84 In the summer of 1951, the fire
chief was still expressing “dissatisfaction with the fire-fighting and fire-escape facilities at the school.”85 The Saskatchewan fire commissioner raised concerns about thecomplex in 1953, when it was housing 550 children. He wrote that the wood-framebuildings were highly susceptible to fire, estimating that each of them would be totallyconsumed by fire within five minutes. He recommended an improved fire-alarm system in the school as soon as possible.86 A 1954 fire inspection of the school reached
the following conclusion:
It cannot be stressed too strongly that occupancy of these buildings as aresidential school is contrary to all accepted standards for safety of life and312 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

property, against fire. This condition is further aggravated by the lack of sufficientwater supplies to prevent the possibility of a major fire gaining headway in anyof the buildings. The distances between the buildings is such that the probabilityof fire spreading, under favourable wind conditions, from the source of origin to
adjacent buildings and developing into a conflagration of serious proportions
cannot be overlooked.87

Renovations were undertaken later in that year, but by 1960, Henry Cook, thehead of the Anglican Indian School Administration, was complaining to Ottawa that“the building interiors are becoming progressively shoddy.” He said, “One wonders
just how much longer the so-called ‘temporary buildings’ are going to be considered ‘permanent.’” He recommended that Indian Affairs construct a new building in
Prince Albert.88

Fire escapes
The inadequacy of the fire escapes at the schools during the 1940s and 1950s merits
special mention because it demonstrates how issues that had been clearly identified
in previous decades remained unresolved. Ongoing budgetary restrictions meant that
schools continued to be equipped with inadequate and dangerous fire escapes. This
was not just a matter of wartime economy: in 1954, Indian Affairs admitted, “A shortage of funds and technical staff to initiate the work has delayed putting into effectmany fire prevention and protective measures in our Residential schools.”89 This problem was compounded by school administrators’ continuing practice of locking students into their dormitories at night. As in the past, this measure was taken to prevent
students from running away and to keep male and female students from slipping into
one another’s dormitories at night.
The major problems with many school fire escapes were identified in a 1949 memorandum by the chief of the Engineering and Construction Division, Department ofMines and Resources. The memorandum noted that in many residential schools, thefire exits could be reached only through the windows, with sills often four feet (1.21
metres) off the ground. For small children, simply getting over the windowsill could
present a problem. Once they were out the window, the children usually would haveto go down an iron pole. This was “impracticable for small children.” The memorandum said that steel stairs did not offer a solution for situations where “small children
must descend several stories under winter conditions.”90 These uncovered escapes
could become blocked with snow or covered with ice.91 It was recommended that
schools install either fully enclosed and accessible fire-escape towers that would contain stairways, or enclosed steel chutes.92

Fire hazard: 1940–2000 • 313

Leona Agawa never forgot her first fire drill at the Spanish, Ontario, girls’ school.
She said a staff member had to force her to use the pole.
“Hurry up there, get down there,” she said. And I was scared. I’m looking down
there. There’s, there’s three flights of stairs. I’m looking down there, how am
I gonna get down there with hanging on that pole? “Well, hurry up,” she said.
She’s, she’s slapping me again. How I got on there, oh, I just hung on like this, inhere I was burning, and hanging on, and I just let go, and I fell hard on, on mybehind, and I was crying, and she said, “Don’t you cry.”93

There was nothing particularly new about the problems with fire escapes. IndianAffairs inspectors had been identifying these issues since at least the 1930s. They continued to do so throughout the 1940s. A 1941 inspection report called for improvements to the fire escapes at the Lac la Ronge, Saskatchewan, school.94 Inspector A. G.
Hamilton was concerned in 1945 that the smaller children at the McIntosh, Ontario,
school were not used to the pole-type fire escape. He thought there should be more
frequent drills to ensure that the children were not afraid of using the pole.95 For hispart, Indian agent G. Swartman expressed concern over the use of the pole-type
escape at all, which, he thought, in certain weather conditions, could become too slippery and dangerous to use.96
A fire inspector in 1945 strongly recommended that ten measures be taken to
improve safety at the Sandy Bay, Manitoba, school, including the provision of outside fire escapes on the school and the dormitories.97 A decision was made to defer
the installation of the fire escapes, which would cost $4,000, until the following fiscal year.98
Year after year, inspectors made similar reports. The 1946 report of the Commission
on Indian Affairs observed that the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school was not fireproof or “sufficiently equipped with fire-escapes.”99 An inspection of the Christie
Island, British Columbia, school in 1946 identified the need for additional methods ofescape from each classroom and the installation of outward-opening exit doors.100 A
1947 inspection of the Roman Catholic school in Kenora, Ontario, recommended that
all the exits to the fire escapes be altered to allow for quicker and safer exit from theschool.101 A provincial inspector concluded that the Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, school
lacked sufficient fire escapes in April 1948.102 Funds were not made available to install
new escapes until June 1949.103 Another inspection identified an urgent need for a fireescape for the girls’ dormitory at the Whitefish Lake, Alberta, school in 1948.104 The
partial destruction by fire of the Fort Frances, Ontario, public high school prompted
the local Indian agent to inspect the fire exits at the Fort Frances residential school in
1950. He discovered that many of the wooden steps on the girls’ fire escape were rotten, and the wooden railing was “not safe.” The doors to both the boys’ and girls’ fireescapes also opened inwards.105

314 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In 1950, a provincial inspection of the Presbyterian school in Kenora called for the
replacement of the existing fire escapes with a “spiral fire escape” at each end of thebuilding.”106 As of June 1951, nothing had been done. Principal T. C. Ross wrote to
Indian Affairs, asking for direction on the type of escapes that should be installed. He
added that he did not “feel able to continue to accept responsibility for the safety ofchildren housed under present conditions.”107 In March 1952, Indian agent Norman
Paterson reminded Ottawa that the need to replace the fire escapes at the school had
been drawn to Ottawa’s attention four years earlier. He thought that Indian Affairs
should scrap the “antiquated fire escapes” and proceed with the “installation of amodern and safe method of evacuation.”108
After a visit to Fort Providence, Northwest Territories, John Parker, a Northwest
Territories lawyer, reported in 1957 that there were no fire escapes at the Fort
Providence school. He wrote, “There are two stairways in the building but if a fire were
to develop on the lower floors, these would act more like chimneys than as passages
for escape.” In his opinion, the only two alternatives were putting in proper fire escapesor abandoning the building.109 In response to Parker, Northern Affairs official Ben
Sivertz reported, “It has been known for a number of years that the Fort Providence
Residential School is in very bad condition and is a fire trap.” Sivertz pointed out thatthe government was replacing the school with the system of hostels and day schools,
and that responsibility for the fire escapes lay with the school’s owner: the Roman
Catholic Church.110 Parker’s complaint led to an inspection that concluded that
crowding at the school constituted a fire hazard. Bishop J. Trocellier was instructed
not to take any more students into the school.111
It was not unusual for years to pass before improvements to fire escapes were
made. The following examples from Moose Factory and Sioux Lookout (Ontario), Fort
Alexander and Cross Lake (Manitoba), and Edmonton (Alberta) all demonstrate how
serious safety problems were left unaddressed for years.

Moose Factory
Henry Cook, the superintendent of the Anglican Indian School Administration,
called on Indian Affairs to install a metal fire escape at the Moose Factory school inJanuary 1950.112 His request was bolstered by a report from the Ontario Fire Marshal’s
office that the exits at the school were “extraordinarily unsatisfactory—if a fire started
in the night in the building I could foresee only a shocking sacrifice of life.”113 In
mid-August 1950, D. Hester, the principal of the Moose Factory school, proposed thatthe school not reopen for the coming year because nothing had been done to eliminate the fire and health hazards at the school.114 After Indian Affairs made a commitment to make needed repairs, the school reopened in the fall of 1950. However, due

Fire hazard: 1940–2000 • 315

to government delays, by October, the repairs still had not been made and the fire
hazard remained high.115 In February 1953, the school was still judged to be “in a badstate of repair.” Snow was likely to build up on the wooden fire escapes, which were“out of line on account of movement of the main building.”116 In September of 1953,
Cook asked the government to install a canvas chute–style fire escape.117 In June 1954,
an Indian Affairs inspector described the school as a “real fire trap.”118 It was decided,
however, not to install fire escapes, since, according to F. Matters, the region’s supervisor of Indian agencies, “it is not expected to use the building much longer and thechildren will be sleeping in the new building.”119 But Henry Cook, the Anglican official,
was far from impressed with the new building. In September 1954, he was describing
the dormitories as “fire traps.” He wrote, “One door allows for exit and the windows do
not open to allow escape by that means if one wishes to jump to the ground.”120

Sioux Lookout
A 1952 inspection of the Sioux Lookout school reported:
The main fire escape stairs are wooden and lead down from upstairs to the large
enclosed verandah. If that portion of the building were burning evacuation of thepupils would be difficult. There is one other metal fire escape on the outside of
the building but this does not lead to the ground but rather to the roof of a shednext to boiler room (from where a fire would most likely originate).121

Three years later, the Ontario deputy fire marshal, J. E. Ritchie, called on IndianAffairs to improve the “totally inadequate” fire escapes at the school. He said that theroof over the enclosed steel stairs leaked, and the stairs became covered in ice in thewinter. There were two wings of the school where the children “have no direct exit tothe outside from the dormitory,” and, in some cases, “they have to slide down a poleto the floor below.”122 The following year, Henry Cook, of the Anglican Indian School
Administration, informed Indian Affairs that his organization refused to “be held
responsible for accident or other calamities which might be inflicted upon pupils or
staff members in the event of a fire, fire drill or any other reason making use of thefire-escapes necessary.”123 In April 1957, the federal government awarded a tender forthe construction and installation of new fire escapes at the school.124 Five years had
passed since the issue initially had been raised.

Fort Alexander
Indian Affairs inspector A. G. Hamilton judged the fire escapes at the Fort Alexander,
Manitoba, school to be unsafe in 1945. He reported, “One pole must be 18' long and316 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

for little children to grasp this and step out into space is unsatisfactory. Some children
are afraid; then too some children drop too quickly and might easily be hurt when
landing.” He also thought the poles were not securely attached to the school. While
Indian Affairs was not prepared to put in new fire escapes, the superintendent ofIndian Education, Philip Phelan, did recommend that the poles be firmly secured andthat more fire drills be held, since, in his opinion, “the pupils usually become accustomed to pole type of fire escape.”125 The following summer, Principal J. Brachet asked
Indian Affairs for funds to purchase a chute-type escape to “replace the long pipe, of
which the children are afraid.”126 Indian Affairs official B. E. Olson wrote in the fall of1948 that “the need for proper fire escapes” at the Fort Alexander school was “progressively becoming more urgent.”127 He was told that there were “no funds available
for the construction of fire escapes.”128 Nothing had been done by November 1949. In
examining the issue, B. F. Neary, the new superintendent of Indian Education, notedthat many of the schools had pole fire escapes. If the government were to replacethem all, it would “entail expenditure of a great deal of money.” Neary, presumably
after speaking to Phelan, wrote that he had been advised “that if the children practice using this escape, they become accustomed to it.” He suggested that before thegovernment authorized the replacement of the poles, the local Indian agent consult
with the principal to determine if he had “any definite views concerning the pole fireescape.”129 The issue had now been going on for so long that there was a new principal
at Fort Alexander. Like his predecessor, Father Ruest was “very much against sliding
pole fire escapes, for while they might be satisfactory for older children, the younger
children will not use them because of the drop; also the drop is so sudden it might
break their legs.”130 To his credit, Neary sought outside advice. The executive officer ofthe Dominion Fire Prevention Association, E. Scholfield, advised him that the poletype fire escape was not “suited to your purposes in your particular occupancies andI would strongly urge you to install approved stair-type fire escapes where necessary
in the future.”131
When a provincial inspector visited the school in the summer of 1950, the sliding
poles were still in place. The inspector duly judged them not to be “a safe means ofegress.”132 In November 1950, Indian agent R. S. Davis reported that the school was still“without proper fire escapes.” In his opinion, an attempt to evacuate the upper-storey
dormitories in winter via the poles would result in students’ clothing freezing to thepoles; “the loss of life would be great.”133 In September 1952, Davis noted that the
problem had yet to be addressed, adding, “This condition is very serious and, wewould be severely criticised if fire broke out at the school and a number of children
were injured.”134
The lack of action at Fort Alexander led the Manitoba government fire commissioner
to inform Indian Affairs that he would no longer be inspecting federal governmentbuildings, “due to the fact that we receive no cooperation in having life safety from

Fire hazard: 1940–2000 • 317

fire recommendations carried out.”135 In July 1953, the federal government approved
a contract for the installation of new fire escapes at the school.136 It was not until May
1954—nine years after an Indian Affairs inspector first called for the replacement of
the pole fire escapes—that Davis was able to report that the sliding poles had been
dismantled and replaced with steel steps and handrail.137

Cross Lake
An October 1949 inspection report on the Cross Lake school noted that “noneof the previous orders have been carried out.” The inspector wrote that “the sliding
poles used as an alternative means of escape are most unsatisfactory, and it is very
doubtful if these poles would be of any use in case of emergency.”138 Indian agent R.
S. Davis made a follow-up inspection in December of that year. He concluded there
was no need to replace the poles, but he recommended that a fire-alarm system beinstalled.139 In 1956, after being notified by Cross Lake principal G. E. Trudeau that hewould not accept responsibility for any tragedy arising from the government’s unwillingness to address problems of fire safety at the school, Indian Affairs finally issued
contracts to have the school wiring updated and new fire escapes installed.140 This wasat least seven years after inspectors had raised the need for fire-escape improvements.

Edmonton
In 1946, Indian Affairs official J. H. Leyland wrote a withering critique of the poletype escapes at the Edmonton school. “It is difficult to imagine any person and especially small children, being able to safely make their escape from the building in theevent of fire by means of this type of escape. One hundred and thirty children in nightattire would, in my opinion, never be able to evacuate the building by means such as
are available.”141
Not only did Indian Affairs not replace the fire escape, but the branch also considered eliminating the salary for the night watchman, whose main job was to watch for
fires. An outraged Principal E. J. Staley pointed out that it was only the alert action on
the part of the night watchman that had prevented the previous year’s laundry-room
fire from getting out of control. Nothing had been done to remedy the faults identified
by the fire inspector in 1946: the water supply was “useless,” while the fire escapes
were “antiquated and useless.” Staley said the government should “modernize thisplace and enable the staff to sleep at night, without being afraid that their charges may
be fried by morning.”142 Staley succeeded in getting Indian Affairs to continue to pay
for a night watchman.143

318 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The pole-type fire escapes, however, remained in place. In 1953, a new principal,
Findlay Barnes, described the escapes as “metal pipes having a cement base, down
which the children should slide. Over the years the ground has been worn away so
now there is nothing but jagged cement for them to land upon. For this reason we
have not been able to have a fire drill from the dormitories as we would like to havehad.”144 Rather than replace the fire escapes, the government chose to level the groundat their base.145 In November 1953, Alberta fire commissioner A. E. Bridges threatened
to issue a fire-protection order unless the school dealt with the inadequacy of its fire
alarm and fire escapes, and removed a number of fire hazards. It would appear that
Principal Barnes had requested the provincial inspection in order to increase pressure
on the federal government to address the issue of the fire escape.146 Installation of the
new fire escapes was underway in September 1954—six years after an inspector had
deemed the previous escapes “antiquated and useless.”147
The pole-type fire escape was indeed long-lived. In 1966, a fire inspector recommended that the pole-type fire escape on the west side of the Catholic school in
Kenora be replaced.148 A 1968 inspection concluded that the pole-type fire escape wasinsufficient, given the large number of students living in the dormitories. Its replacement was described as an urgent matter.149 It is not clear from the record if the pole
was ever replaced. However, the fact that the Dominion Fire Commissioner’s office
was recommending “changes in the fire escape system” was cited by Indian Affairs
official W. McKim as one of the department’s reasons for deciding to close the school
in 1972.150

Locked exits: 1940–1997
While the federal government put lives at risk through its reluctance to provide thefunding for proper fire escapes, many principals further imperilled students by locking them in their dormitories. The practice had been banned as far back as 1932, when
Indian Affairs official Russell T. Ferrier had instructed principals that fire escapes were
to be “efficient, kept in repair, free from snow or ice and unlocked exits to them must
open out.”151 Similar instructions were issued in February 1938 and in February 1942.152
The records of the residential schools system cite numerous reports of lockedexits. After a September 1940 inspection of the Presbyterian school in northwestern
Ontario, the Kenora fire chief recommended that the “old system of keeping the doors
locked be done away with.”153
A 1945 inspection of the Birtle, Manitoba, school reported that in one case, the exit
to the fire escape was through a private bedroom with a locked door. In addition, thedoor from the bedroom to the fire escape itself was also locked.154 Morley, Alberta,
principal E. J. Staley told Indian agent J. N. R. Iredale in 1946 that, while he was aware

Fire hazard: 1940–2000 • 319

of Indian Affairs policy, he was continuing to lock fire-escape doors to “safeguard themorals of the children.” He said that if he were compelled to leave the doors unlocked,
he would have to install an alarm that would sound when the doors were opened.
Ireland instructed him to get the details on the type of alarm he needed.155 A 1947
inspection found the fire-escape doors at the Alert Bay, British Columbia, school
locked (although the key was left hanging beside the doors). An Indian Affairs official recommended that the school install a buzzer that would alert staff if anyone was
opening the fire escape and leaving the doors unlocked.156 A March 1948 inspection of
the Chapleau, Ontario, school revealed thaton the boys side the door to the fire escape was locked, this escape leads fromthe junior boys dormitory, the senior boys are on the front of the building andhave to pass the top of the stairway which would be the danger point in case offire, but their room door is locked, also at night which means they would have toget both doors opened before even reaching the fire escape.

The inspector noted that while extra fire escapes would improve safety, “they would
be useless unless this idea of locking doors at night is discarded, but the staff appear
to be reluctant to do this.”157
Compliance issues continued throughout the 1950s. In 1952, for example, problems were identified at three schools. At the Fort Frances, Ontario, school, an inspector
noted that a fire-escape door was locked and lacked what was termed ‘panic hardware’that would allow the door to open in an emergency. Although the principal assured
the inspector that the door was left unlocked at night, Indian Affairs official Philip
Phelan instructed that the principal be informed that “the Department does not wish
the fire escape door to be locked.”158 A fire inspection of the Grayson, Saskatchewan,
school found that the fire-escape door to the girls’ dormitory was locked. The reportcontinued: “A similar situation existed in the boys’ dormitory, except that it was
impossible to open the fire escape door—a portion of the latch being missing.”159
The principal, J. Lemire, promised to keep the doors unlocked. But, he added, “forthe safety of the children, I do not believe very much in those fire escapes, specially[sic] during the winter, as you know they are condemned and were supposed to be
replaced long ago.”160 An inspection in 1952 of the Beauval, Saskatchewan, school concluded that “the fire alarm system and facilities for evacuating children in case of fire,
had been sadly neglected. There are far too few fire extinguishers, and no one at theschool knows when they were last checked.” When the inspector asked that a fire drill
be held, the staff discovered, for the first time, that there was no central switch for thealarm. The fire-escape doors opened inwards and were locked shut.161 The practiceof locking the fire-escape doors at Beauval apparently continued. In January 1956,
Indian Affairs official J. R. Bell reported he had been “unaware that the fire door had
been nailed shut.” He said the problem had been corrected.162

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Students at the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, school complained in 1949 that thedormitory doors were kept locked.163 Six years later, an inspection report on the schoolstated, “Exit doors from balconies must not be locked,” indicating that safety had not
improved, despite the students’ concerns.164 An inspection of the Alberni, British
Columbia, school in 1960 revealed that the “lack of fire escapes and the division of thebuilding by locked doors separating the boys’ and girls’ sections leave only one meansof egress from each end of the building.”165
From the 1960s onwards, reports of the locking of fire-escape doors are less frequent, but the practice still continued. A 1961 inspection discovered that one of theexit doors at the Alert Bay, British Columbia, school was padlocked.166 In October 1962,
the Dominion Fire Commissioner’s office carried out an inspection of the Assiniboia
school in Winnipeg. The inspection was made at the request of the Winnipeg Fire
Department, which felt that its negative reports on the school were not receiving
proper attention.167 The federal inspection concluded that the enclosure of a stairwell
had not been carried out in a satisfactory manner, that the type of fire escape recommended for the second-storey dormitory and the first-floor chapel had not been
installed, and that the dormitories were overcrowded. Although padlocks had been
removed from the exit doors, the latches used to lock the dormitories at night had notbeen removed. In fact, latches had been installed on additional exit doors.168
A 1964 inspection of the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school concluded that fire
protection was “poor on the whole, owing to lack of municipal or private fire brigade
within reasonable distance.” The overcrowded dormitories were “dangerous in eventof fire.” It was also recommended that the practice of locking doors between dormitories be abandoned, since “they constitute a means of egress.”169 The following year,
it was discovered that the exit doors at the Kamloops, British Columbia, school were
“obstructed or padlocked in some cases.”170 In 1966, the exit at the Roman Catholicschool in Kenora was equipped with a complex alarm lock that could be opened only
after specific instructions attached to the lock were read.171
A 1968 inspection of the Birtle school included the reminder: “Fire escape doors arenever to be locked.”172 That same year, E. R. Daniels of Indian Affairs reported that hewas “astounded and appalled” at what he saw on inspection tours. He reported finding:
1)
2)
3)
4)

Fire-fighting equipment inoperative.
Exits from dorms locked.
Smoke barrier doors with hooks and eyes on.
No plans for fire drills.173

In 1970, the chief of the Indian Affairs engineering division on the Prairies sent thefollowing telex to headquarters.
grade level fire exits from each end stairwells at brandon students
residence found locked in closed position by use of heavy chains andFire hazard: 1940–2000 • 321

padlocks during inspection by member of this office nov 25 stationary
eng advised but nothing done suggest immediate action be taken
to ensure these fire exits which have panic hardware installed be
unlocked safety of children certainly endangered under present
locked circumstances.174

A 1973 inspection of the Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, residence noted that, as in previous years, problems had been identified concerning “exits, door stops, locks. etc.”
The inspector wrote:
It appears that to achieve the student control that is considered necessary d.f.c.
[Dominion Fire Commissioner] fire requirements are bypassed or circumvented
in some manner or other. To further this control concept this building isequipped with a large master key control panel and several sub-panels whichthemselves are all under lock and key. In order to navigate this building aninordinate number of keys must be used.175

The following recommendations were made after an inspection of the Hobbema,
Alberta, school in December 1975:
1) Remove flush mounted locks from all stairwell doors and smoke
barrier doors.
2) Remove lock from exit door, northeast end to exterior.
3) Remove all mounted door stops on smoke barrier doors.
4) Repair burned out exit lights where required.176
Any improvements that might have been made didn’t last long. Six years later, inMarch 1981, Indian Affairs informed the principal of the Hobbema school that theschool’s practice of locking exit doors with “chains, padlocks, ropes, etc.” was “totally
against fire regulations” and should “stop immediately.”177 Principal L. Johnson
assured Indian Affairs that he would not “condone any practices which contravene
accepted fire safety practices.”178
The problem also occurred in the school residences in northern Canada. In 1976,
Harry Mayne, the supervisor of student services of the Northwest Territories department of education, issued a telex stressing that the practice of locking and chaining
fire doors at Fleming Hall in Fort McPherson was to cease immediately.179
The continual violation of a clear and often-stated government policy reflects theunwillingness of the federal government to enforce its own regulations. The fact thatthe churches felt obliged to lock students into the dormitories reflects the degree towhich the system depended on compulsion in order to operate. Runaways, as noted
elsewhere in this report, remained an ongoing problem. Indian Affairs was just as
likely to criticize a principal who had too many truants as it was to criticize a principal
who kept his students locked up.

322 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Principals were also open to criticism if a female student became pregnant. As
a result, principals put students’ lives at risk in an effort to control unwanted social
interactions. In her memoir of her time as the school nurse at the Presbyterian schoolin Kenora in the 1950s, Kay Blake (formerly Kathleen Stewart) wrote of how boys
from another school used a newly installed chute-type fire escape to gain access to
the girls’ dormitory. The principal—whom she did not name—took a highly irregularand dangerous approach to the issue. “Our principal brought out his ‘303’ and waited.
There was a triangle of cedar shrubbery near the fire escape where the boys hid. A few
shots whistling over their heads caused them to leave promptly. The principal was notallowed to do this again but we had no more similar visitations.”180

Fires set by students: 1940–1997
The system’s punitive nature contributed to one of the most dangerous student
reactions to residential school: deliberate attempts to burn schools down. In commenting on the risk of fire at the aging and dilapidated St. Alban’s school at Prince
Albert, Saskatchewan, in 1946, Indian agent J. P. B. Ostrander wrote: “More than one
disastrous Indian school fire has been started by the pupils themselves in an effort toobtain their freedom from a school which they did not like. The number of truants inthis school would certainly indicate much dissatisfaction.”181
There was a great deal of student dissatisfaction. And there were, particularly inthe 1940s, several cases of suspected and proven instances where students set fire to
their schools.
Inspector G. H. Barry wrote in 1941 that, in his opinion, the fire that destroyed aclassroom block at the Alberni, British Columbia, school was not an accident, andthat other buildings might meet the same fate “till such time as the feeling of the local
Indians changes.” Barry also noted that it would have been possible to save the building if recommendations he had made previously for improvements in firefighting
equipment at the school been implemented.182 The Alberni principal reported that,while there was no evidence that “any Indian set the fire,” there was, among local First
Nations people, “very real opposition to the school.”183
After a police investigation into the 1942 fire that destroyed two classrooms at theFile Hills, Saskatchewan, school, three young boys were taken into custody.184 The local
Indian agent, M. Christianson, felt that these boys had been acting on the instructionof some older boys. He believed that the older boys should be discharged before they
“do something they shouldn’t.” He also believed the male staff members at the school
were all “weak sisters,” who could not handle the older boys.185 Five students wereconvicted for their role in setting the fire. One twelve-year-old boy was sentenced tothree months in the Regina Industrial School (a provincial government reformatory).

Fire hazard: 1940–2000 • 323

Two fifteen-year-old boys were sentenced to three and a half months in the Regina
Industrial School. At the end of that time, they were to be transferred to the Brandon,
Manitoba, residential school. Two sixteen-year-old boys were sentenced to a year in
the Moosomin, Saskatchewan, jail. The parents of the two fifteen-year-olds paid a lawyer to represent their sons; the other boys had no legal representation. According to
Indian agent Christianson:
At the trial and investigation it was revealed that the five sentenced are not any
worse than the other boys at the School because everybody knew the night
before that the fire was going to take place, apparently with the exception of theStaff. I must say that the boys who were reprimanded seemed to be very nice andthis was borne out by the Principal of the Industrial School in Regina.186

A Mounted Police investigation into the Lac la Ronge, Saskatchewan, school fireof 1947 concluded that two twelve-year-old boys had set the fire. Indian agent J. P. B.
Ostrander recommended against prosecution, saying that if the boys were sentenced
to the Regina Industrial school, they would be placed among “incorrigible white boys.”
Prosecution, he felt, would also turn the boys into heroes. Similarly, Saskatchewan
Department of Justice officials opposed prosecution. Church officials, however,requested prosecution, as did R. A. Hoey, then the director of Indian Affairs.187 One
boy was prosecuted and given a sentence of an indefinite period on October 29, 1947.
He was originally sent to the Regina Industrial School. There, he was diagnosed withtuberculosis and was sent to the Indian Hospital at Qu’Appelle. He was returned tohis home community on February 23, 1948.188 In the fall of 1948, Indian Affairs wasconsidering sending the same boy to the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school. Ostrander
opposed the recommendation, saying it would be preferable to commit him to the careof his father.189 The charges against the other boy were dismissed on July 19, 1948.190
Two boys were suspected of setting the fire that destroyed the Delmas,
Saskatchewan, school in 1948, but the police investigation reached no definitive conclusions.191 According to the account of a student, published in 1993, the fire was set byfour boys who warned the rest of the boys in advance. The girls were not told, because
the “girls’ dormitories were on the other side and so they had lots of time to get out.”192
A twelve-year-old girl admitted to setting fire to a dormitory at the Pine Creek,
Manitoba, school in 1951, in the hopes that if the school burned down, she would besent home.193 The fire had been quickly brought under control.194 After an appearance
in juvenile court, she was remanded for an indefinite period, and she was transferredto the Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, school.195
Indian Affairs official J. R. Bell believed that the 1956 fire in the wood storage roomof the Beauval, Saskatchewan, school had been deliberately set. Some of the older boys
told Bell that “someone in the school started the fire, but would not or could not nameanyone.”196 A decade later at the same school, two thirteen-year-old boys were caught

324 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

attempting to set fire to the building. They were observed before the fire got out ofcontrol, and limited damage was done. Principal J. Bourbonnais described the boys as“far of being bright.” He noted that if the fire had burned for another five minutes, theschool might have been destroyed, since “the water system which was supposed to bechanged and improved two years ago, has not been done yet.”197 Indian Affairs official
W. Karashowsky wrote that since it was evident the boys were “not happy in a residential school,” they could be placed in a day school close to their home community.198
The principal of the Roman Catholic school in Kamsack, Saskatchewan, E. Turenne,
reported that students had tried to set the school on fire on two consecutive days inthe spring of 1968. On one occasion, three girls set a cardboard box on fire in their
dormitory. Two of them then went to bed in the dormitory, while a third called thematron. The principal said that one of the children who set the fire was “very deeply
disturbed.” The fire was put out quickly before it could cause any damage. The nextday, a girl set a sheet on fire in the laundry. On being questioned by the principal, she
was “quite confused,” saying she did “not know why she started the fire.” In this case as
well, the fire was quickly brought under control.199
In 1977, the Qu’Appelle school was hit by a series of fires. There was a fire in the
junior boys’ dormitory in March 1977.200 One month later, there was a fire in the senior
girls’ playroom.201 There was a trash-can fire at the school in May of that year and a firein the junior girls’ locker room in June.202 In September, a staff member reported that
she had overheard a few boys saying “they wished for the school to burn down so as
they could go to a different school.” Later that day, she found evidence of an attempt
to set a fire in the boys’ locker room.203 In April 1978, a group of girls set fire to the curtains in the senior girls’ dormitory at the school. According to an incident report, “Allgirls concerned were spoke to” by staff.204 It does not appear that any of the students
were prosecuted for these activities.
There were also cases of students and staff members accidentally starting fires.
Sparks from a torch being used by maintenance staff during a repair job ignited a firein the engine room of the Sturgeon Landing, Saskatchewan, school in 1952. The firequickly spread and burned the school to the ground.205 In January 1967, a fire brokeout one night in a staff member’s room at the Churchill Vocational Centre. The fire
was brought under control without loss of life or injury.206 Three boys smoking in theirroom in the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, residence set paper in a garbage can on fire in
1986. For this, they were grounded “to their beds except for meals or any extra workthat needs doing.”207

Fire hazard: 1940–2000 • 325

Enforcement of fire regulations hastensschool closings: mid-1950s–1970
For much of their history, Canadian residential schools operated outside the jurisdiction of existing fire regulations. Constitutionally, provincial governments had
responsibility for establishing and enforcing building codes, but, prior to the 1970s,
they delegated this responsibility to municipalities. The result was a multiplicity ofconflicting codes—or, in some cases, a complete lack of regulation. Many residential
schools were located in remote rural and northern locations that didn’t have municipal government, building codes, or fire inspectors. In 1941, the National ResearchCouncil (nrc) published a National Building Code. It was not until 1963 that the nrc
developed a companion National Fire Code. Neither of these codes had legal standing. Instead, they were meant to be used by municipalities as a model for their building codes. It was only through a slow and uneven process that municipalities adopted
these codes. In 1973, eight provinces took responsibility for building codes awayfrom the municipalities, issuing province-wide regulations based on the National
Building Code.208
Although they lacked legal force, the federal codes were used as a basis to assess
conditions in residential schools and to make recommendations for improvements.
By the late 1950s, the Dominion Fire Commissioner’s office, a branch of the federal
government, examined all the preliminary designs on buildings designed by the
Department of Public Works, and approved final working drawings.209 In 1957, IndianAffairs recommended that the plans for a classroom block at the Mission, British
Columbia, school not be based on the plans for the dormitory built for the Hobbema,
Alberta, school. Since the Mission school would be located on the fringe of Greater
Vancouver, it was thought “a fire resisting construction would be more suitable.”210
This suggests that the construction of the Hobbema dormitory did not use fire-resistant construction technologies.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, federal and provincial fire marshals began to
pay increasing attention to the residential schools. Not surprisingly, they judged theschools to be overcrowded fire traps. The standard recommendation was the installation of expensive sprinkler systems. In 1950, for example, the Nova Scotia fire marshal recommended that a sprinkler system be installed in the Shubenacadie school.211
Indian Affairs official Philip Phelan in effect rejected the fire marshal’s recommendation, telling the school principal that Indian Affairs had not installed sprinklers in
any of its residential schools.212 By this time, the federal government was committed to closing the system down and usually tried to bargain for time. In many cases,
schools were allowed to stay in operation if they installed smoke and heat detectors
and reduced enrolment. These compromises were also based on an understandingthat the school would close in a few years.

326 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

A 1958 inspection of the North Vancouver, British Columbia, school (sometimes
referred to as the “Squamish school”) concluded that the school was “over crowded”
and a “Fire Hazard.” North Vancouver Fire Warden A. H. Abbott estimated that if
the school caught fire at night, at least half the students would be lost.213 The British
Columbia fire marshal condemned the building and ordered that it be closed by
the beginning of the 1958–59 school year. Indian Affairs won the school a one-year
reprieve by agreeing to reduce enrolment and employ a night watchman. At the end of
the year, the students were to be transferred to new day schools, or to a new building
being constructed at Mission.214 The Squamish Band did not support the closing of theschool, or the reduction in enrolment to fifty. In response, Indian Affairs scaled backthe proposed decrease in enrolment.215
The risks that the government was running were underscored when fire destroyeda Roman Catholic mission hospital in Alexis Creek, British Columbia, on the Anahim
Reserve. Twelve First Nations children, eleven of whom were under the age of five,
died in the blaze, which swiftly roared through the two-storey frame building. Only
one child was rescued. The twelfth boy who died was nine-year-old Marvin Char, a
student at the Williams Lake residential school. He and two of his siblings were in thehospital being treated for injuries received in a traffic accident.216
While a new school was under construction at Mission, the Oblates were worried
the fire marshal might not allow the old buildings to continue in use until the newbuildings opened.217 The Christie, British Columbia, school needed extensive renovations to satisfy the recommendations of a 1960 British Columbia fire marshal’sinspection. These included improvements to wiring, to the water supply, and to thefire escapes.218 Despite the improvements made in 1963, the following year, a federal
fire inspector judged fire protection at the school to be “poor.” He said, “A fire would
spread so rapidly in the main building that any form of protection requiring humanoperation would be of little value.” While there was a sufficient number of fire escapesand stairwells, they were all of wooden construction and “could easily be renderedunusable in the event of a fire.”219
When the fire commissioner recommended the installation of a sprinkler system at
the Christie school in 1965, Indian Affairs sought to install a fire-detection system as
an alternative, again arguing that the building would be closed “within a reasonable
period.” The Dominion Fire Commissioner’s office rejected that proposal, and theschool was faced with the prospect of having to significantly reduce its enrolment.220
The Christie residence closed in 1971.221 The government used a similar argument at
the Sechelt, British Columbia, school, where a fire inspector once again ordered theinstallation of a sprinkler system in 1965. Because the government said the building
would close within five years, the Dominion Fire Commissioner dropped the requirement to install sprinklers on the condition that a fire-detection system be installed.222
The school was still in operation in 1973, three years after the promised closure. An

Fire hazard: 1940–2000 • 327

inspection report from that year noted that the school was “not afforded automatic
sprinkler protection and a developed fire would spread rapidly.”223
According to a 1964 inspection, the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school was overcrowded, with some dormitories having only thirty square feet (2.78 square metres)
per student as opposed to the recommended fifty square feet (4.64 square metres).224
That same year, an inspection report on the Kamloops, British Columbia, school notedthat although most of the school dormitories met minimum space requirements,
dormitories in the main building were “quite overcrowded.” Fire protection wasassessed as being inadequate, due to the “inferior highly combustible constructionused in the main residence.” It was recommended that a sprinkler system be installed
and that overcrowding be reduced.225 An inspection of the Lytton, British Columbia,
school reached nearly identical conclusions.226 An inspection of the Williams Lake
school in 1965 described fire protection as being “wholly inadequate.” The building
was of “combustible construction” and lacked a sprinkler system. The existing fire
equipment was judged to be in “poor maintenance.”227 A follow-up inspection to the
Kamloops school in 1965 noted little improvement. Fire protection was described as“unsatisfactory.” The alarm system was in “poor condition,” and the fire extinguishers
were “old and battered.”228
Similar conditions prevailed in Alberta. In 1959, Alberta Deputy Fire Commissioner
W. D. MacKay informed Indian Affairs that although the Fort Vermilion, Alberta,
school had room to house 103 students in its dormitories, he recommended that, due
to the “highly combustible interior, the open stairways, and the general hazardous
condition of this building,” enrolment be limited to fifty. This would not eliminate thefire hazard, but would make the evacuation of the building safer.229 Roman Catholic
officials opposed the move, saying there was a strong local need for residential schooling, and that fire drills had demonstrated that the school could be quickly emptied.230
After considering the Catholic request to allow a larger enrolment, Indian Affairs,on the advice of the fire marshal, maintained its position that enrolment had to be
reduced to fifty.231
That same year, an Alberta fire inspector delivered a devastating report on the
Anglican and Roman Catholic schools in Brocket, Alberta. Indian Affairs official R.
F. Battle commented that “the inspector has not recommended any additional fireescapes or repairs to the existing. It would appear from his report that no matter what
precautions were taken the buildings would still be a fire trap.”232 This led to a decision
to reduce enrolment in the school, a measure that was opposed by the Peigan members of the Father Lacombe Council of the Knights of Columbus. The Knights claimed
that the government was attempting to close the Catholic residential school surreptitiously, against the wishes of the local First Nations people.233 In January 1960, IndianAffairs had decided to reduce the Catholic school enrolment from seventy-eight tofifty-two. In addition, the minister responsible for Indian Affairs had also agreed to328 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

a closure of both the Roman Catholic and Anglican schools as soon as other school
facilities could be provided.234
The cost of recommended fire-safety improvements hastened the closure of anumber of schools. In 1963, the Dominion Fire Commissioner’s office had recommended the installation of a sprinkler system at the Cluny, Alberta, school. IndianAffairs requested an exemption from the order on the grounds that the school would
be closed within five years, and the residence did close in 1968.235 Principal Adrian
Charron opposed the closing. In response to the assertion of Indian Affairs that theschool was being closed to address complaints about fire hazards, Charron said, “It’s
the same hazard since 1911.”236
When the Dominion Fire Commissioner called for $25,000 worth of improvements
to the school’s fire escapes at Blue Quills, Alberta, Indian Affairs sought a temporary
reprieve that would allow the existing fire escapes to be used for an additional two to
three years.237 The Dominion Fire Commissioner’s office agreed to the delay, while
requiring an upgrade to the glass in the stairwell windows to limit the spread of any
potential fire.238
A 1967 inspection of the Fort Vermilion, Alberta, school made a number of recommendations for improvement. However, the inspector concluded that “due toits age and the combustible nature of the construction materials, even a minor fire
could prove disastrous. The building is also structurally unsound and therefore it is
the opinion of the writer that serious consideration should be given to discontinuing
its use.”239 The residence closed at the end of the 1967–68 school year.240 In December
1968, the Joussard, Alberta, school required $125,000 in repairs to bring it up to fire
code. Instead, R. F. Davey, the director of Indian Education, recommended that theschool be closed at the end of June 1969.241 The residence closed at the end of the
1968–69 school year.242 In the case of the Assumption, Alberta, school, in 1969, IndianAffairs felt it could avoid making $45,000 worth of repairs if it closed the school at
the end of the following school year.243 By 1970, the estimated cost of repairing theschool had jumped to $120,000.244 The residence, with no safety repairs, closed only
three years later, in 1973.245 In March 1969, Indian Affairs was faced with the prospectof making $80,000 worth of repairs to the Morley, Alberta, school in order to rectify
issues that had been identified by the Dominion Fire Commissioner.246 Instead, theresidence building was closed at the end of June that year.247
A 1965 inspection of the Roman Catholic school in Onion Lake, Saskatchewan,
pointed out that the National Building Code required sprinklers in wood-frame buildings. However, since the principal indicated that the main building would be closed
within five years, it was acceptable to install an automatic fire-alarm system.248 In
1969, the Dominion Fire Commissioner was calling for $55,000 worth of work to theOnion Lake school.249 Indian Affairs proposed that rather than making the repairs, it
employ an additional night watchman at the school.250 The Onion Lake school did

Fire hazard: 1940–2000 • 329

not close until 1974, almost ten years after the call for sprinkler installation. When it
did close, the school was described as “a fire hazard.”251 In February 1968, the federal
government’s assessment of the Roman Catholic school in Kamsack, Saskatchewan,
was that, despite government investment in the maintenance of the building, it wasa “fire hazard and a potential threat to the lives of the children still living in it.”252 The
Kamsack residence closed the following year.253
In 1968, the Dominion Fire Commissioner’s office was once more recommendingthat the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school—which was still located in the former
military camp—either undergo extensive renovations or install a sprinkler system.
Indian Affairs engineer W. G. Robinson was of the opinion that “large sums of money
should not be spent on the existing structures at this site due to their age and condition.”254 The problem continued into the 1970s. The chiefs of ten Saskatchewan First
Nations signed a petition in May 1973, calling on the federal government to completerenovations of the Prince Albert school. According to their petition, the Dominion
Fire Commissioner had condemned eight huts, housing 192 children, as being unfit
for occupation.255 Indian Affairs hoped the fire inspector would allow the buildings toremain open with limited repairs. If not, it intended to place students in “other residences, foster homes, or in their own homes.”256 The fire inspector agreed that if certain repairs were carried out, the buildings could remain in use for the next year, withthe expectation that “other more suitable facilities are to be provided for housing thestudents for the following year.”257
In the 1960s, there were recommendations to install sprinkler systems in the Sandy
Bay, Pine Creek, and Fort Alexander schools in Manitoba. In 1967, Dominion Fire
Commissioner R. A. W. Switzer, after receiving assurances that the Sandy Bay school
would be in operation for only four more years, agreed that a fire-alarm system would
be installed rather than a sprinkler system.258 The following year, a recommendation
to install a sprinkler system in the Pine Creek school was withdrawn because theschool was scheduled to close in three years.259 A sprinkler system was approved for
installation at the Fort Alexander school in 1967. A pre-installation inspection notedthat the dormitories showed signs of “dangerous overcrowding”; the stairways, boiler
room, and boiler were in poor condition; and the plumbing was crude. It was recommended that these issues be dealt with prior to the installation of a sprinkler system.260
Pine Creek school closed in 1969, and Sandy Bay and Fort Alexander schools closed
in 1970.261
In 1961, the principal of the McIntosh, Ontario, school was lobbying for the installation of fireproof stairways at the school. He said there was “no proper means of exit
for the children in case of fire and with so many heartbreaking disasters occurring
through fire happening around us.” The school was still equipped with pole-type
escapes. These, Principal J. Lemire said, were “far too dangerous for the little tots to
use them.”262 Four years later, a dormitory at the school was destroyed by fire. The

330 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissionbuilding was quickly and safely evacuated with no loss of life.263 Lawrence Wanakamik
was a student at the school.
There was walking around and running around inside, in the dorm. The next
thing we know we heard the nuns say, “There’s fire, fire!” So everybody got up,
and started running outside. And it was a fire just right behind us there, where,
where I guess it started somewhere on our side because they were just building
an addition to the, to the school there at the time. I guess it must have caught
fire somewhere in the…. And we all went to the next building, watched the fire,
feeling a little bit happy, you know, when I thought I was gonna get sent home.
But, you know, a couple of days after, we were again shipped to Fort Frances.264

After the fire, it was recommended that the dormitory not be rebuilt. Indian Affairs
officials said the site was already small and crowded, lacked playground space, andwas difficult to reach. It was recommended that the school simply operate as a day
school.265 The McIntosh residence was closed in 1969.266
In April 1966, the Roman Catholic school at Kenora had an enrolment of 110.
However, the local fire marshal had concluded that the school’s maximum enrolment should be eighty-eight.267 A federal inspection in November of that year notedthat the dormitories were “overcrowded by National Building Code Standards.”268 A
1971 inspection recommended the installation of a sprinkler system in the school.269
The estimated cost of the repairs was a quarter of a million dollars. The Indian Affairs
Ontario regional director, W. McKim, wrote that Indian Affairs would not be justified
in putting “this amount of money into this old building.” Since declining enrolment
trends did not justify the construction of a new building, the residence was slated for
closure in June 1971.270
In January 1968, officials from the Indian Affairs engineering and construction
division opposed a plan to enclose fire escapes at the Shingwauk Home in Sault Ste.
Marie, Ontario. Instead, they proposed a series of renovations that would include
the construction of a new fire escape. The cost of this proposal would be $25,000.271
However, the local Indian Affairs official said the agency did not have sufficient funds
in its budget to pay for such an improvement.272 In January 1970, the estimated cost of
the replacement of the fire escapes had risen to $50,000.273 The Shingwauk residence
closed six months later at the end of the 1969–70 school year.274 There is no indicationin the record that the issue of the fire escape had been addressed prior to the closing.

The last decades: 1970 onward
During the period from 1970 onwards, when the residential school system was being
wound down, funding for fire safety failed to keep pace with the ongoing deterioration of the schools. The government and churches continued to be slow to implement

Fire hazard: 1940–2000 • 331

recommended changes. Schools continued to operate in violation of building andfire codes. Fire-safety equipment often was not properly maintained. Schools withlong-standing problems with fire safety, such as those in Prince Albert and Beauval in
Saskatchewan, and Fraser Lake and Mission in British Columbia, continued to be thesubject of highly critical inspection reports. Tragedy was averted, but the government
continued to run very high risks.
A December 1970 inspection of the Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, school had identified
numerous needed improvements. The responsibility for carrying out these improvements lay with the church, which owned the school. According to a May 1974 report,none of the major improvements called for in the 1970 inspection report had beenmade.275 A fire inspection of the Kamloops, British Columbia, school in May 1972began with this observation: “None of the major Requirements included in the previous inspection dated March 11, 1971, have been implemented.” Among the sixteen
items that needed action were the requirements for a new fire-alarm system in themain residence and an emergency lighting system in the Annex Residence.276
There was a crisis over the building quality at the Fort George federal day school,
which was housed in part of the former Anglican residential school in Fort George,
Québec. In March 1975, C. A. Edwards, the president of the Public Service Alliance ofCanada, the union that represented the school’s employees, called on the federal government to take immediate action to improve conditions at the school.277 In May 1975,
one of the teachers’ residences at the school was destroyed by fire. The fire revealed,
once more, the inadequacy of the fire-safety equipment at the school. According toMichael Shiner, the president of the local of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, atthe school, “due to insufficient water pressure, it was almost half an hour before a hose
could be brought into play on the blaze.”278
In 1975, a set of prefabricated trailer classrooms was installed at the Prince Alberta,
Saskatchewan, school. They were put up without a building permit, and did not meet
Prince Albert’s construction standards. In addition, the classrooms did not comply
with the National Building Code. When it was determined that, with some repairs,
the building could be brought into compliance, the Prince Albert fire chief agreed
that the “occupant life safety was adequate.”279 In March 1980, Sol Sanderson, thechief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indians, warned that the classroom blockat the Prince Albert residence would probably be closed by the federal fire marshal
unless it had significant repair. Sanderson suggested that it was likely the building
needed replacement.280
In October 1977, fire-prevention officer Peter McKenzie reported that the Lestock,
Saskatchewan, residence was “drastically overcrowded.” The beds were placed so
closely together that in the case of fire, “we would no doubt have a panic situation
which could lead to the loss of life.” He ordered that enrolment be reduced until there
was fifty square feet (4.64 square metres) of space per student.281

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The Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school was subject to a withering critique in1975.282 The safety of the school’s fire escapes, which had been subject to icing overin winter since at least 1932, continued to be a problem.283 The inspector wrote that“the plywood structures erected over the fire escapes are, by design, inadequate, andby experience, ineffectual.” The school was dirty, the “viability of the house sprinkler
system” was “suspect,” and the firefighting equipment was “in total disarray.”284
After a 1979 inspection of Block H of the residence of the former Roman Catholicschool at Cardston, Alberta, an inspector recommended that the Blood Tribe
Administration cease to use the building as an education facility. Among the problems
with the building were its “lack of adequate exits,” “lack of building fire protection,”“inadequate fire alarm system,” and “distance from the nearest fire department.”285
The Cardston residence did not close until 1988.286
An April 1980 inspection of the Qu’Appelle senior boys’ dormitory concluded thatthe building was “very old and its condition is unacceptable in its present state foruse as a dormitory, mainly because of its inadequacy to meet the requirements of the
National Building Codes, the Fire Codes and Life Safety codes.” For similar reasons,the inspector concluded that the senior girls’ dormitory “should certainly not be used
as a dormitory for senior girls.”287 After the inspection, a decision was made to replace
the boys’ residence (which was estimated to be seventy-five to eighty years old).288 It is
not clear from the records what was done with the girls’ dormitory.
When a dormitory at the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, school caught fire in 1974,
it was discovered that the alarm did not sound in the Portage fire hall, where it was
supposed to ring.289 Indian Affairs paid to have a new fire-safety system installed atfour schools in British Columbia in 1974. To his dismay, an inspector discovered thatnone of the systems had been properly installed, leaving him with “no other choice
but to condemn the work.”290 An electrical fire at the Mission residence in 1980 was
not detected until smoke drifted up through the building’s roof. Luckily, the fire brokeout during the day, when the 122 children living at the school were in class.291 A 1981
inspection of the Christie student residence, which was located in Tofino, British
Columbia, revealed that smoke detectors were not located in all sleeping areas, andmany of them were inoperative.292
Residences in northern Canada were also hit by a number of serious fires close tothis same period. There were boiler-room fires at the Carcross, Yukon, school in 1966
and 1968. Both fires were brought under control without any injury or loss of life.293
Cambridge Bay, Northwest Territories, was the site of three destructive fires. The first,
in November 1957, destroyed a day school in the community that was attended by
students living in a local hostel.294 In 1973, a fire destroyed several classrooms in theschool.295 In 1974, the local hostel was destroyed by fire.296 There was a serious fire at
Breynat Hall, the Roman Catholic residence in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, in
October 1974.297 After the fire, a decision was made to stop using the building as aFire hazard: 1940–2000 • 333

school hostel. Instead, it served as a dormitory for students in an adult training program.298 In October 1977, there was a mattress fire in a dormitory at Akaitcho Hall,
Yellowknife. It was brought under control without any damage or loss of life.299
In November 1982, the Dominion Fire Commissioner’s office ordered the installation of a sprinkler system in the Beauval, Saskatchewan, school. Indian Affairs disputed the need for such a system at the school, but the Dominion Fire Commissioner’s
office insisted that the risk of loss of life justified the installation of such a system.300 It
was not until June 1984 that the federal government received quotes for installing thesystem. The price was $33,666.301 The record is not clear as to whether the system wasever installed, but the Beauval residence continued to operate until 1995.302
In light of the many flaws identified above, it is important to recognize that from1940 onwards, particularly in northern Canada, many new school residences wereconstructed. The buildings did provide a higher degree of fire protection than had thebuildings in the past. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has beenable to identify only four students who died as a result of in-school fires during thisperiod, compared to at least thirty-five students and two staff members who died infires in the years prior to 1940. This decrease in the number of deaths can be attributedin part to these improvements. However, the problems that R. A. Hoey identified in1940 remained prevalent for the next fifty-seven years. Few of the older schools wererenovated to meet “the minimum standards in the construction of public buildings,
particularly institutions for the education of children.”303 Many schools were repeatedly described as fire hazards, recommendations for improvements went unheeded,and dangerous and forbidden practices, such as the locking of fire escapes, were widespread and entrenched. In the interests of cost containment, the Canadian government placed the lives of students and staff at risk for six decades.

CHAPTER 39

Runaways and truants: 1940–2000

W

hen Sam Ross from northern Manitoba was sent to the Birtle school
in southwestern Manitoba in the late 1950s, he was first put to work
doing chores in the school barn. In November of his first year, he told
the principal:“I didn’t come here for, to work with animals.” I said, you know, “We’re not used
to animals.” I said, We’re up north there where, what people live out, they did
their living by trapping, fishing and working in the forest, cutting timber, sellingwood, fire wood; but nothing, nothing to do with farm animals. We don’t havethat up north.

Ross was transferred to the boiler room.
I went with this guy and he taught me, for three weeks this guy taught me how tolook after the boiler room. And I got used to, you know I picked up quickly you
know, how to look after the boiler room. But it was a lot of work though. Every,
like Friday, Saturday, I, I got on a little tractor with a trailer. I had to go about
pretty near a mile out to that railroad siding; there was a, box cars would sit there
and with a full load of, they were full of coal.

He became proficient at working in the boiler room, but found it exhausting andasked to be sent home. When the principal refused to let him go, Ross, who was eighteen years old, made up his mind to run away. He located a map of Manitoba andstudied train routes. He also began to set aside food and money. Aware that his mailwas being read, he wrote his mother, asking her to send him
a pair of good mitts and a scarf; two thick winter mitts and a scarf and ten
dollars, put the ten dollars in the thumb part of the mitt I said, in that letter.
And then I, I had to go and mail that letter in town because when you give it,when you put your letter in there, their box there before they mail them out,
they would read your letter. And if they didn’t like what you were writing to yourparents they would just throw it away or I don’t know.

336 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

While he was in the midst of making his preparations, he was accused of attempting
to slip into the girls’ dormitory. He denied the charges and was let off with a warning.
The confrontation with the principal over this matter led him to hasten his departure. He left that night, although it was winter. He had originally intended to jump
onto a train when it passed through a nearby town, but he discovered that the train
stopped in that town. He boarded the train as a passenger that evening and rode it to
Minnedosa, Manitoba, a distance of about 100 kilometres. There, he spent the night
sleeping in a corner of the train station. He overslept and missed the next day’s bus
to The Pas, which was 500 kilometres to the north. After selling his wallet and knife,
he had just enough money to get him to Overflowing River, Manitoba, 100 kilometres
south of The Pas.
When he got off the bus, he recognized some people from his home community.
One of them was Edward Lathlin. “I don’t forget that guy. And I asked him, he recognized me. ‘Where did you come from?’ he said. ‘Oh I ran away from, I’m running awayfrom school,’ I said, ‘I’m just about there,’ I said. ‘I’m stuck; and this is as far as I can go.
I don’t have more money,’ I said, ‘to buy my fare.’”Lathlin and his friends fed Ross and gave him money to get home. After a night’s
rest, Ross’s family took him to the Indian agent, who was angered that the principal
had not informed him or members of Ross’s family that he had run away. Insteadof sending him back to Birtle, the agent sent him to the Brandon residential school.
Many students were critical of that school, but Ross said it was “way better than where
I was before. And they even taught us how to look after our money over there. You getallowance, when you’re in school. They would write down how you spent your money;
they would teach you how to live.”1
Sam Ross was one of hundreds of residential school students who ran away during
this period (from 1940 to 1998). His story has much in common with those of otherstudents. He ran away because he was overworked; the journey he was undertaking
was long and arduous; and he succeeded because he had the support of friends andfamily. Others were not so lucky. At least seventeen runaway students died, and manyothers were seriously injured. Indian Affairs was well aware of the fact that conditions
at the schools drove students to run away. Underfunding of the schools intensified
those pressures throughout much of this period. Officials were also well aware of therisks that students faced in running away—runaways had died in 1935, 1937, and 1939.
By the 1940s, the federal government had yet to put in place clear, nationwide policies
for the reporting of runaways, and for the measures that should be taken for their safe
return. Shockingly, it would not be until 1971 that national policies were put in place.

Runaways and truants: 1940–2000 • 337

Reasons for running away
In May 1943, Mounted Police officer W. E. Needham prepared a brief report on why
he thought students were continually running away from Mount Elgin near London,
Ontario. When he returned students to the school, he had asked them why they had
left. The answers were brief, usually to the effect that the student did not like it thereor felt unfairly treated. Needham wrote that, from his observations, “the discipline is
too severe, also these children have very little or no recreation, and with help so scarcethey are obliged to do the majority of the farm work, resulting in these children being
overworked.” Each winter, he wrote, the students have to unload several railcar loads
of coal. In his opinion, this was work “that is much too heavy for them.” He said there
were a number of children at the school who were over the age of sixteen and shouldhave had the legal right to leave. “They are kept at school to assist in the farm work,
thus engendering in their minds somewhat of a rebellious spirit.”2
In 1953, J. E. Andrews, the principal of the Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario,
shared with Indian Affairs his own pseudo-scientific theories for the causes of theschool’s runaway problem:
Causes of truancy appear to be basically primitive in nature and need carefuland scientific investigation from a broad anthropological basis. Motives whichmight be described as the “call of the seasons”, the bush, and so forth, have abearing on this problem. Phases of the moon have something to do with it aswell as crisp frosty weather. Childish reasons such as “the boys were teasing us”
are quite adequate from the child’s point of view to justify his starting out on afifty to one hundred mile trek in sub zero weather with no provision for food or
shelter and, considering the journey, inadequately clothed.

Moving from the anthropological to the material, Andrews wrote that, of the factors
contributing to truancy, “the lack of well-equipped playgrounds and the shortage ofplayroom space and facilities rank foremost.” The playrooms were so small that eachchild had but a “small patch of flooring about four feet by four feet three inches.”3 In
this view, he was not alone. That same year, A. Lacelle, the principal of the Roman
Catholic school in Kenora, attributed his school’s runaway problem to “our inability tohave any organized sports at the school due to lack of play grounds.”4
Although it is doubtful that playgrounds alone would have kept students from running away, little was done throughout this period to make most schools attractive tostudents. As other chapters in this volume demonstrate, there was much about theschools that they might wish to escape. And escape they did.

338 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The runaway epidemic of the 1940s
The word epidemic was used frequently in official correspondence to describe
the frequency and numbers of students running away from residential schools in
the 1940s. There were severe truancy issues at schools across the country. The problem was not restricted to small or remote schools. Students also ran away from large
and well-established schools, and from relatively new schools. They ran away from
Catholic and Protestant schools. They ran away from schools that were close to urban
settlements, and they ran away from schools that were in isolated locations.
In the 1942–43 school year, approximately sixty students ran away from the Mount
Elgin school.5 The mother of one of the boys who ran away in the spring of 1943 asked
that her son be discharged when he was located. She said, “Each time he has run away
and when they got him back the principal of the School gives him a big beating up but
he says that will not make him stay.” The last time she saw him, he told her “he would
rather leave school and work out on a farm.”6 This was a very real option, since thewartime labour shortage had created significant employment opportunities for boys
who were prepared to do farm work. Principal Oliver Strapp thought the government
should prosecute farmers who hired runaways for employing underage boys.7 IndianAffairs official R. A. Hoey rejected the idea.8 The boy was eventually located and discharged from the school. Strapp then insisted that he would not return the clothing
the boy had come to school in until the family gave him the clothing the boy had beenwearing when he ran away (or provide a $5 payment). When the boy’s father complained to Indian Affairs, the branch instructed Strapp to return the boy’s clothing.9
The Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario, experienced a rash of runaways inearly 1949. On January 23, twenty-five girls ran away from the school. All but two werequickly located and returned to the school. Within two weeks, ten of the girls ran away
for a second time.10 The Mounted Police concluded that many of them were staying
at the home of a resident of the Six Nations Reserve for several days before heading
for their home reserve. The resident of the reserve was prosecuted under the Juvenile
Delinquents Act for harbouring refugees from an institution.11 In the documents it hasreviewed, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has not been able tolocate a record as to the disposition of the case. However, Indian Affairs did consider
having several of the girls, those who were believed to be the leaders of the group of
truants, committed to a reformatory.12
Truancy problems plagued the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school throughout the
1940s. Between 1941 and 1946, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (rcmp) preparedat least sixteen separate reports on investigations into students who had run awayfrom there.13
Five boys ran away from the Pine Creek, Manitoba, school on the morning of April
22, 1940. The rcmp was informed of their disappearance on the afternoon of theRunaways and truants: 1940–2000 • 339

following day. Two of the boys were quickly located, and another boy was returned toschool on April 30.14 However, it was not until May 25 that two brothers were locatedon the Lake Manitoba Indian Reserve.15
Six boys, ranging in age from eleven to fourteen, ran away from the Brandon,
Manitoba, school on September 29, 1942. Four were located, but two brothers(Reginald and Lawrence Doota) were still missing by October 1.16 Two more boys ran
away on January 9, 1943.17 One of them was found by police on the Peguis Reserve on
January 29.18 On January 11, 1943, four boys (again including Lawrence Doota, who
had apparently been returned to the school) caught a freight train going west. With
the assistance of the Mounted Police, they were located later that day near Oak Lake,
Manitoba, and returned to the school.19
The local Indian agent said in 1942 that “truancy is rife” at the Birtle school. He
suggested that numerous changes in staff, and the fact that the boys knew they
could “get work outside at fair wages,” led boys to run away.20 In April 1942, a seventeen-year-old and two fourteen-year-old boys ran away from the Birtle school, making
their way back to the Cote Reserve in Saskatchewan. A Mounted Police officer locatedthe younger boys and placed them on a train back to Manitoba. Of the older boy, thepolice officer wrote “it appears that little can be done if he does not wish to return toschool.”21 The Birtle principal, N. M. Rusaw, reported on August 1, 1948, that a student
named Solomon was missing.22 The boy was not located until mid-September. He had
been working for farmers in the Portage la Prairie area. According to Rusaw, the boy
was “quite happy” to be back at the school.23
In late October 1941, two fifteen-year-old boys ran away from the Portage la Prairie
school. Fellow students told the police that the boys, who were from the Roseau River
Reserve in southern Manitoba, intended to hop a freight train and search for work.24
The Mounted Police located the two on their home reserve on November 5.25 On
November 30, 1941, another boy from the Roseau River Reserve ran away from thePortage school. He too was located by the Mounted Police on his home reserve andreturned to the school.26 Later that month, one of the first two boys once again ran
away, and was once again located on the Roseau River Reserve and returned to the
Portage school by the Mounted Police.27
In October 1940, the Mounted Police located and returned a boy who had run awayfrom the Grayson, Saskatchewan, school.28 The Mounted Police returned two boys
who had run away from the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school in January 1940.29 Twoboys ran away from the Anglican school in Onion Lake, Saskatchewan, on May 17,
1941. They found work with a local farmer, but were located by the Mounted Policea few days later on May 20 and returned to school.30 Five boys ran away from theLestock, Saskatchewan, school on October 1, 1944. The Mounted Police were notifiedof their disappearance on October 4. Two of the boys were returned to the school by
their parents after a week. Two other boys were located at their parents’ home and340 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

returned to the school without any reported objection. The fifth boy was found travelling with his parents. According to the police, the boy’s mother “was against his
returning to the school, but finally the boy got in the car.”31 In April 1945, one of theboys, along with another schoolmate, ran away again from the same school.32 They
were picked up in the town of Punnichy and returned to the school after spending
a night at the Punnichy police detachment.33 Two thirteen-year-old girls had previously run away and been returned to the Grayson, Saskatchewan, school by the local
Indian agent. When they ran away for a second time in October 1944, the principal
called in the rcmp. The police located them at the home of the father of one of thegirls, and returned them to the school. According to the officer, “They were warned
about their conduct and promised not to cause any more trouble.”34 Two boys who ran
away from the Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, school were found at their family homes on
the Pasqua Reserve and returned to the school in the winter of 1949. Once again, thepolice officers warned the parents “against further allowing their children to remainaway from school.”35
In the spring of 1945, seventeen boys were truant from the Hobbema, Alberta,
school.36 The problem had developed in the fall when many of the older boys took farmwork rather than returning to the school, making between $5 and $6 a day. Because
they were over fifteen years of age, the Indian agent could not force them to return toschool. According to the school principal, once they discovered that the truants would
not be forced back to school, other older boys also left to seek farm work.37 Three years
later, five children were truant from the Hobbema school. However, because theschool was overcrowded and the students were fifteen years of age, the Indian agent
decided not to seek their return.38
In British Columbia, Indian Affairs sought to remind school principals that they
were responsible for students not only when they were in school, but also when they
had run away. When the principal of the Kuper Island, British Columbia, school asked
Indian Affairs to help track down three young girls who, he believed, had made their
way to Victoria, the department provided only reluctant assistance. Indian agent R.
H. Moore wrote in 1946 that he thought there were “entirely too many runaways fromthis School owing to lack of supervision.” He objected to the principal’s view that “itis the responsibility of this Department to round up these children and bring themback without any, or very little exertion on the part of School authorities.”39 The Alert
Bay, British Columbia, school was hit with what the principal termed an “epidemic oftruancy” in the fall of 1947.40
The residential school records on runaway students are fragmentary. Even if therecords were complete, it might not be possible to gain a full understanding of theextent to which children were running away, since it is apparent that many cases were
not reported.

Runaways and truants: 1940–2000 • 341

The reporting of runaway students
Many Indian Affairs officials did not believe that principals provided proper notification when a student ran away. The principal of the Mount Elgin school in Muncey,
Ontario, Oliver Strapp, neglected to inform Indian Affairs of the school’s persistentproblem with runaways. It was only from the Mounted Police that the local Indian
agent, George Down, learned in June 1943 that there had been approximately sixty
runaways from Mount Elgin in the previous year.41
In 1940, school inspector G. H. Barry suspected that the principal of the Lytton,
British Columbia, school was reporting runaways as being discharged rather than
missing. The local Indian agent, who did not get along with the Lytton principal, had
told Barry that “at least nine pupils had run away this year, but there were probably
more unreported to him.”42 Sometimes, Indian Affairs had to prod schools for information on runaways. In 1942, Indian Affairs official Philip Phelan wrote to Shubenacadie,
Nova Scotia, principal J. P. Mackey, asking whether a runaway boy had returned.
Phelan said that he supposed the boy “is well able to look after himself, but we have
had some unfortunate experiences at other schools when pupils truanted.”43 IndianAffairs had not been informed that the boy in question had already been located andreturned to the school.44
Under Regulation 10.4 of the Indian Residential School Regulations adopted in
1953, the school principal was to “take prompt action to effect the return to schoolof any truant pupil, and shall report promptly to the Superintendent [of Education],
Indian Agency, every case of truancy.”45 Despite such explicit instruction, the problemof the non-reporting of runaway students continued. After a change of administration
at the Sioux Lookout, Ontario, school in 1961, the Anglican Church discovered thatthe previous principal had been under-reporting the truancy problem—which was
attributed to the poor job being done by the school’s student supervisor—and had
been collecting grants for students who were no longer attending school.46

The Mounted Police and the search for runaway students
Late on the evening of April 18, 1941, fourteen-year-old John Kioki, thirteen-yearold Michael Sutherland, and eleven-year-old Michel Matinas slipped out of their dormitory at the Fort Albany school. Fort Albany is located in northern Ontario, a shortdistance from James Bay. The boys had been hoarding bread for several days, andJohn had a bow and arrow, expecting to obtain additional food with it. After discovering their disappearance, Principal Paul Langlois worried that the boys might have
tried to cross a river, fallen through the thin ice, and been carried off to James Bay.47
Their fate was never known, but they were presumed to have died. At the inquiry held

342 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

into their deaths, the father of Michel Matinas said he was satisfied that all had been
done to locate the boys.48 However, John Kioki’s father said he was “not sure sufficient
search was made for my son and the other boys.”49
Philip Phelan, chief of the training division for Indian Affairs, was not satisfied
with the way the matter had been handled. On July 17, 1941, he wrote to Rev. H.
Belleau, Vicar Apostolic of James Bay, to say that both the Mounted Police and IndianAffairs should have been notified of the boys’ truancy sooner, as “any unusual eventat a school, especially when the results are fatal, should be immediately brought tothe Department’s attention.” The rcmp admitted that even if they had been notified sooner, they probably could not have “done much,” due to weather conditions.
Despite this, Phelan admonished Belleau, saying that a “more determined effort
should have been made by the principal and staff to locate these boys,” as the incident
was “likely to have a very disturbing effect on the Indians [that would] naturally react
on the school.” He then ordered Belleau to send out instructions to the principals of
the schools in his diocese, indicating that “when any pupil truants from the school
immediate and effective efforts should be made to locate the pupil.”50 As in the 1930s,
Indian Affairs did not take the opportunity to send out a system-wide instruction tothis effect. Instead, the message was limited to the Catholic schools in one diocese.
One month after the three boys had run away from the Fort Albany school, T. R. L.
MacInnes, the secretary of the Indian Affairs branch, had issued an instruction much
more widely that was bound to make searches and the return of students less effective.
In a May 1941 circular to all inspectors, Indian agents, and residential school principals, MacInnes announced a “radical change” in departmental policy regarding the“services of the r.c.m.p. in order to locate truant or absentee pupils from Indian residential schools.” He wrote that it had been customary in the past for Indian agentsand principals to request rcmp assistance in finding and returning runaway students
to schools. The police, however, charged the costs they incurred back to Indian Affairs.
As a result, MacInnes wrote, “we are required to pay yearly a substantial amount overwhich we have no control.” Under the new policy, the rcmp was not to be contacted“unless the Principals and staffs of the Indian Agencies have exhausted all theirefforts.” MacInnes wrote that
we must depend to a large extent at least, on Indian Agents, Farming Instructors,
and other officials to co-operate with Principals of Indian schools in locating
and returning truant and absentee students. In making this statement it isunderstood that the Principals of Indian residential schools are also expected to
put forth every effort to return absentee pupils without cost to the Department
before calling on Indian Agents and other officials to assist them.51

In comparing MacInnes’s direct and forceful message sent to all the relevant parties, and Phelan’s far more selectively delivered message, something becomes very

Runaways and truants: 1940–2000 • 343

clear: Indian Affairs did a far better job of establishing and communicating policies
related to cost control than it did in the circulation of policies related to student safety.
Despite the order, principals continued to call on the services of the Mounted
Police. On May 30, 1941, Phelan reprimanded Principal Strapp for calling out the
Mounted Police when four girls had run away from Mount Elgin. Phelan wrote, “As aresult we will receive an account from the r.c.m.p. for mileage and expenses.”52 Strapp
responded that before calling the police, he and a member of his staff had spent from1:30 to 5:00 in the morning searching for the girls. He also pointed out that on anotheroccasion when he was looking for students on the Oneida Reserve, he was told by areserve resident that he had no rights on the reserve. He asked Phelan for a ruling on
his legal right to search and apprehend truants on reserves and on the public roads.53
As noted earlier, between 1941 and 1946, the rcmp prepared at least sixteen separate reports on investigations into students who had run away from the Shubenacadie,
Nova Scotia, school. So frequent were the calls for Mounted Police support that IndianAffairs branch director Harold McGill sent out a circular in 1943, reminding principals
and Indian agents of the 1941 policy. He pointed out that, despite this instruction,
there had been both a growing increase in truancy and a “steadily growing tendency
on the part of the residential school principals to lean increasingly on the members of
the r.c.m.p. for the return of pupils to the schools.” In the future, the rcmp was to becalled “only in rare and exceptional cases.”54
Indian agencies and schools were so poorly staffed, however, that they could nothandle truancy cases without the police. In 1945, Ontario Indian agent G. E. Hurl foundthat the police were unwilling to accompany runaway students back to their schools.
He had two boys in his agency who needed to be returned to the Mount Elgin school.
He feared that if he simply put them on the train without a police escort, they would“only disappear again.” That is, in fact, what happened. Before the principal could pickthem up at the train station, they had run away a second time. They were located andreturned, only to run off yet one more time. Philip Phelan then recommended that theboys be sent to the Chapleau, Ontario, school, adding somewhat ominously, “I doubt
if they would truant from that school.” In the end, the decision was made to send one
to Chapleau and the other to Mount Elgin.55
In other cases, the Mounted Police volunteered its services. In Yarmouth, Nova
Scotia, the Mounted Police, “on their own accord,” monitored the day school attendance of the children of a First Nations woman. When they judged the attendance
to be unsatisfactory in 1944, they first warned the woman and then, “after talking thematter over with Mrs. Bartlett secured the necessary permission and escorted thechildren to the School in Shubenacadie.”56
When two boys who had run away from the Birtle school in 1945 needed hospital care for their frozen feet after spending a cold March night sleeping outside, local
Indian affairs official A. G. Hamilton called on his superiors to modify department

344 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

policy on requesting assistance from the rcmp. Hamilton said principals and Indian
agents should be given a free hand in seeking police assistance, and that “the police
should be in at the beginning, not after others have failed.”57
The record makes it clear that despite the policy instruction of 1941, many principals did make use of the Mounted Police to seek out runaway children. Hamilton’s
protest makes it equally clear that others did not. In the documents it has reviewed,
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada could find no record of an orderrescinding the 1941 policy directive at the end of the Second World War. As late as1950, Oliver Strapp, who was by then the principal of the Brandon, Manitoba, school,
reported he had not called on the Mounted Police to help search for two runaway
boys “because I have been informed that I am not allowed to regard them as truant
officers.” One of the boys ended up in hospital with frozen toes.58
As two examples from Fort Smith in the Northwest Territories demonstrate, theMounted Police continued, in some cases at least, to be uncooperative well into the
1960s. In 1957, J. S. Craig, the rcmp officer in charge of the Fort Smith subdivision,
declined a request from the assistant superintendent of schools for the Territories toassist in “checking on school truancy.”59 When a boy ran away from Breynat Hall at
Fort Smith in 1966, the hall administrator contacted the local rcmp detachment forassistance, only to be told that “finding such children was not the usual work of ther.c.m.p.”60 However, during the same period, the police force appears to have been
prepared to offer its services to schools in the Yukon. In 1960, the Mounted Police
located two boys, one fifteen years of age and one sixteen, who had run away from the
Carcross, Yukon, school. They were living with the mother of one of the boys. The principal was informed of their whereabouts and the police declared the case closed.61

Searches
Although school principals were sometimes seriously criticized for how they
responded when students ran away, many staff members did put considerable effort
into the search for runaways. Moose Factory, Ontario, principal Gilbert Thompson
gave this description of the search he undertook when two boys ran away from his
school in the evening of November 20, 1943.
I began searching for the same shortly afterwards. By 10:00 p.m. I could not
locate these boys and knowing that they might have crossed the river, whichcrossing was precarious in the dark due to the fact parts of the river were not yet
frozen, I notified Cpl. W. Kerr of the r.c.m.p. Together we made a further searchthat night. The following morning I went to Moosonee and discovered that it
was possible the lads had slept in the deserted shack of the family of one lad. No
one had seen the boys at Moosonee. That night the policeman and I went acrossRunaways and truants: 1940–2000 • 345

to the shack in the hope that the lads would have returned there, but they were
not there. The next morning the policeman took his dogs and went down therailroad track following up a lead that someone had seen two people walking on
the track, who had later disappeared into the bush when sighting the on-comingman. The boys were well clothed, but not outfitted for severe weather. Before thepoliceman overtook them they had walked some 24 miles and had reached thecamp of the parents of one of the boys. All returned the following Wed. night bytrain, including the parents of one of the boys.

The boys said they had run away because they were being teased. The parents of
one of the boys, fearful that he might run away again, asked that he be discharged
from the school. To the frustration of the principal, the Indian agent agreed to therequest, requiring only that the father punish the boy in front of the other students
before withdrawing him from the school.62
Nine years later, J. E. Andrews, the principal of the Presbyterian school in Kenora,
provided the chief of the Whitedog Reserve with this description of a January search
for three runaway boys.
Mr. Barrington spent the whole of Thursday from 8:45 a.m. until 11:30 p.m. in thebush without food and at great hardship to himself on the trail of these children.
I spent all day Thursday trying to trace them by car, and the hours from 5:30 until
10:30 p.m. in the woods in search of them and Mr. Barrington. We got back to theschool at 1 a.m., and two staff members again spent the hours from 5:30 a.m. to
10:30 a.m. Friday in search of them.63

It is clear, however, that search efforts were often poorly coordinated and unnecessarily delayed. On November 9, 1954, one twelve-year-old and two ten-year-old boys
escaped by canoe from the Roman Catholic school at Kenora. The boys set out on Lakeof the Woods for their home reserve. The Ontario Provincial Police were notified of
their disappearance immediately—in large measure because the boys had stolen thecanoe—but the federal Mounted Police were not contacted until they had been gone
for nearly two weeks.64 According to an Ontario Provincial Police report:
It is a rather common occurrence for Indian children to run away from the
Residential Schools for no obvious reason and go to the homes of nearby
relatives and friends who will invariably emphatically deny that the children
are there. Because of this, an all out search was not made until a report wasreceived from Mr. Fred Boucha of French Portage that on November 29th he hadseen three small Indian boys in a canoe going up Sturgeon Channel, Lake ofthe Woods.65

The Mounted Police undertook a search, initially by boat and then by plane. The
aerial search located the canoe on Big Island in Lake of the Woods. The searchers also
noted smoke coming out of the window of a cabin. The boys were found in the cabin,

346 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

unconscious, with the cabin filling with smoke from a mattress fire. They were flown
to hospital, where they recovered.66 Indian agent F. Matters said that when he interviewed the boys as to why they had run away, they gave little information, although
one made it clear “he wasn’t going to stay at school and has made three attempts to
run away.” Matters commented that the entire event underlined “the dangerous situations that arise if a child is kept in residential school against his wishes. Without any
sense of responsibility they do things that could seriously embarass [sic] the Branch.”67

Death and danger
John Kioki, Michael Sutherland, and Michel Matinas, the three boys who died after
running away from the Fort Albany, Ontario, school in 1941, were not the only runaway students to come to a tragic end or to be injured during this period. In January
1949, four girls ran away from the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, residential school.
While they were crossing a river, their feet became wet. By the time they took refuge
in a home, their feet were frozen.68 The damage was so severe that the girls had to behospitalized in the Portage la Prairie General Hospital for several weeks, and it wasfeared some of them might lose some of their toes.69
Guy Hunter’s parents sent him to the Presbyterian school in Kenora in the 1940s
after the Indian agent threatened to send his father to jail. The violence of the corporal punishment at the school caused him to run away on several occasions. On his
return, he was strapped so hard, he said, he could not hold a pencil. When he was toldthat as a punishment for continually returning to his family on the Whitedog Reserve,
he might be sent to a school in eastern Canada, he ran away once more. He made it
home, but had severe frostbite. “I was froze already, can’t go further ’cause the shoes
I was wearing or socks, I walk in slush, water and no match to build firewood. I use to
sleep anywhere in the bush. In the trees, that’s where I sleep, just like a home.” He washospitalized, but the damage was so severe that it was necessary to amputate one of
his feet.70
Leonard Major, Ambrose Alexander, and Alec Francis left the Kamloops, British
Columbia, school by hopping a freight train in September 1947. All three died when
the train hit a rock slide and was derailed on September 17.71 According to the memoirs of Kay Blake (formerly Kathleen Stewart), who worked at the Presbyterian schoolin Kenora in the 1950s, one runaway boy fell when he attempted to jump a freighttrain. His leg was severed. An alert rail worker stopped the train and provided first aid,
and the boy was later fitted with an artificial leg.72
On April 7, 1951, Albert Nepinak and two other boys ran away from the Pine Creek,
Manitoba, school. Albert’s father had been working at the school and Principal Guy
de Bretagne thought the boy had followed his father home at the end of the workday.

Runaways and truants: 1940–2000 • 347

The principal eventually sent out some boys, including Albert’s brother, to bring the
runaways back, but they returned without them. In the morning, the principal saw
Albert’s father at mass and discovered the boy had not gone home the previous night.
The father, thinking his son might have gone to his grandfather’s home, went to lookfor him there. Instead, he discovered his son’s body, frozen to death on the trail. Albert
had become separated from the other boys when he was unable to cross a river thatthey crossed and had collapsed on the trail. The rcmp report on the death noted,“Father de Bretagne explained that it is customary if any of the boys leave that either
members of the family will go look for them or as was the case in this instance when
the deceased’s brother George and two other boys started after the three boys who
had left.”73 In other words, he generally left it to family members to find and retrieve
the runaway. While Philip Phelan questioned whether the principal had handled thecase properly, R. S. Davis, the regional supervisor of Indian agencies, reported that“reasonable steps to find the boy were taken,” since a search was started once it was
discovered that Albert had not gone home.74 It is not clear from the record if Phelan
pursued the matter, but, by the end of July 1951, a new principal had been appointed.75
In November 1956, four boys ran away from the Sioux Lookout, Ontario, school.
An Ontario Provincial Police officer became involved in the search. He was informed,
incidentally, that two other boys, Tom and Charles Ombash, aged twelve and eleven,had run away from the school one month earlier, on October 5, 1956. The four boys
that the police had been called in to search for were located, but by December 19,
the Ombash brothers were still missing.76 Not only had Sioux Lookout principal Eric
Barrington not informed the police about the brothers’ disappearance for over amonth, but he had not informed Indian Affairs, either. In a letter to the local Indian
agent about the matter, R. F. Davey, the Indian Affairs superintendent of education,
wrote, “It is inconceivable to me that Mr. Barrington would let pupils be absent fromthe school for a month without knowing where they are or without reporting the matter to you.”77 The boys were never located, and there appears to have been no negative
consequence for Barrington.78 He remained as principal of the school for another five
years, until he was appointed principal of the Wabasca, Alberta, school in 1961.79
On January 16, 1959, two sisters, Beverly and Patricia Marilyn Joseph, aged twelve
and fourteen, respectively, left the Kuper Island, British Columbia, school, making
their departure in a small boat. Their disappearance was not discovered until the nextmorning, and it was not reported to the police until that afternoon, after school officials had searched the island. Patricia Marilyn’s body was found washed ashore ten
kilometres from Kuper Island.80 By the fall of that year, her sister had not been foundand she was presumed dead.81
Thirteen-year-old Mabel Crane Bear, eleven-year-old Geraldine Black Rider, andten-year-old Belinda Raw Eater ran away from the Anglican school at Gleichen,
Alberta, on the afternoon of March 8, 1962. A sister of one of the girls told school staff

348 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissionthat they had intended to go to Mabel Crane Bear’s home (the house of a Mr. andMrs. Mayfield). Since school was cancelled for the following day, all the students inthe school had been allowed to go home at 3:30 that afternoon. For this reason, theprincipal wrote, he “was not unduly concerned over the absence of these three girls.”
He noted that the weather was warm, and by the time it would have taken to retrieve
them from Mabel’s home, it would be time to dismiss them once more. As a result,
he made no effort to return them to school. However, the girls quarrelled with the
Mayfields and left the home in the evening. Shortly after they left, the region was hit
by a blizzard. Geraldine survived the blizzard, but the two other girls froze to death.82
Three boys ran away from the Roman Catholic school in Kamsack, Saskatchewan,
on June 4, 1965. One of them, Alfred Whitehawk, died when he attempted to cross theAssiniboine River. The principal stated that he expected he would “need the help of
the r.c.m.p. to bring back to school the other boys who are still at large. I feel that we do
not get from the people the cooperation we need in locating these boys. The reserves
are too big an area for me to cover, especially when some of the people purposely hide
the children and pretend not to know where they are.”83
The schools of northwestern Ontario were plagued by a serious runaway problem
in the 1950s and 1960s. The cases of Guy Hunter, of the boy who, according to Kay
Blake, lost a leg to a train, and of the Ombash brothers, who disappeared, are but three
examples. In January 1962, a child who had run away from the Presbyterian school in
Kenora (also known as the Cecilia Jeffrey school) had to be hospitalized due to exposure. The child recovered but several toes had to be amputated. The following January,a child who had run away from the school in McIntosh had to be hospitalized for treatment of frozen feet.84
These were preludes to a tragedy that drew national attention to the Cecilia Jeffrey
school. On October 16, 1966, twelve students ran away from the school. Three of theboys walked for thirty-one kilometres, reaching the house of a Mr. Benson. He gavethem food and let them sleep on the floor. The next morning, they made their way tothe uncle of two of the boys, Charles Kelly. They were joined on that morning by one
more of the runaways, another nephew of Kelly’s. On October 19, after Kelly took histhree nephews trapping, the remaining boy, Charlie Wenjack, continued on towards
his parents’ home at Ogoki in the Marten Falls First Nation in Ontario.85
Wenjack had never run away from the school before, which he had been attending
since 1963. The week before he ran away, he had skipped a class. For that misdemeanour, he had been spanked.86 He was twelve years old.
He started off walking down the Canadian National Railways line; his home waswell over 600 kilometres away. Freezing rain at the time later turned to snow. On
October 23, a train engineer spotted Wenjack’s body lying by the side of the track. A
pathologist concluded that he had been dead for twenty-four hours. His stomach was

Runaways and truants: 1940–2000 • 349

empty, and all he had in his pockets was a glass jar of matches. He was clad in light
clothing. There were bruises to his forehead, his left eyebrow, and one of his legs.87
The principal of Cecilia Jeffrey was Colin Wasacase. (He had grown up in the RoundLake, Portage la Prairie, and Birtle schools, and had worked at the Norway House andBirtle schools in Manitoba.)88 As part of his efforts to ensure Wenjack’s return, he had
spoken to children about where Wenjack might have gone. He then travelled to Pine
Point and Rabbit Lake in the Kenora area in search of the boy and his companions.
Indian Affairs official P. C. Clarkin had gone to Rat Portage and Keewatin in search of
the boys.89
Indian Affairs flew Wenjack’s body home, along with his mother, several of his sisters (three of whom were also students at Cecilia Jeffrey), and the school principal.
Charlie’s father held the principal to blame for the death and refused at that timeto allow his daughters to return to the school.90 Wenjack’s tragic death was brought
to national attention by journalist Ian Adams’s article “The Lonely Death of Charlie
Wenjack,” which was published in Maclean’s magazine in February 1967.91
At the inquest into Wenjack’s death, one of the boys who had run away with Charlie,
ten-year-old Edward Cameron, said he ran away because he was lonesome. Several of
the boys mentioned they had been strapped at the school. One of Wenjack’s teachers, Ron Magnusson, told the inquest that Charlie had been a quiet boy; at one time,
Wenjack had told him he longed to return to his family.92 Principal Wasacase told theinquest that runaways had become a real problem at the school, largely because children were homesick. According to the newspaper account of the inquest, Wasacasesaid the strapping punishment was instituted as a corrective measure forstudents who run away. On one occasion sixteen girls left in a group and when
they were apprehended he had endeavoured to try a lecture and see if this would
help. Instead, the principal reported, the group made fun of him and termed him
as being real “easy.”93

The coroner’s jury recommended that:
1. Mr. Charles Kelly should have notified the authorities of the boys [sic]presence.
2. Mr. Benson should have notified the authorities of the boys [sic] presence.
3. The Cecilia Jeffrey School needs more supervisory staff to adequately control
the number of students involved.
4. The Indian education system causes tremendous emotional & adjustment
problems for these children. It behooves we who are responsible for thisorganization to do everything possible to mitigate their problems. We makethe following suggestions:
5. A study be made of the present Indian education & philosophy. Is it right?

350 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

6. Enrollment in the residential schools causes a disruption of the basicsocial unit (The Family). Therefore the enrollment should be on a smaller
geographic scale to allow family liaison.
7. Brothers and sisters should not be separated in the interests of expediency.
8. Where a sufficient number exist a day school should be maintained.
9. We feel an improved situation could develop if the children are placed in
private homes.
10. If the residential schools are to remain, reduce the number involved
so personal relationship [sic] can develop between children andthe administration.94

In response to the inquest’s recommendations, R. F. Battle of Indian Affairs statedthat “it is the practice of the Department not to separate members of the same family
although this does occasionally happen by reason of circumstances beyond our control.”95 In January 1967, education services director R. F. Davey sent out a memorandum asking all regional superintendents to check with the residential schools in theirregion to report on the injuries experienced by residential school students “between
the time of their running away from school and the time that they are apprehended”
during the previous five years.96
A document prepared by Indian Affairs after Wenjack’s death outlined the process
to be followed when a student ran away from an Ontario residential school. Step one
was to inform of the police; step two, to interview friends of the student; step three,
to organize a search; and step four, to contact the Indian Affairs district superintendent of schools. After the student was missing for six hours, the parents were to be
informed. It was to be made clear to the police that the student was not a fugitivefrom justice but was being sought to prevent their injury or suffering. The need for the
preparation and circulation of such a document in 1966 underscores Indian Affairs’
ongoing policy failure on this issue for almost 100 years leading up to that point. The
fact that the document applied only to hostels or residential schools “operated undercontract with the Indian Affairs branch by a religious body in Ontario” is also evidenceof the continuing lack of a clearly enunciated national policy.97
Indian Affairs also carried out a review of conditions at Cecilia Jeffrey. The report
showed that in September and October of 1966, fifty-five children were absent without leave from the school on a total of 146 occasions. Of those fifty-five, thirty wereabsent thirty-seven times. The school had an enrolment of 143. The periods of absence
ranged from a half-day to a week. An Indian Affairs official identified six causes for thetruancy problem: students’ disrupted, often chaotic, home lives; the forced nature ofenrolment; the lack of free-time activities in the hostel; inadequate staff leadership;
the lack of privileges for teenage children; and insufficient supervisory staff. On theRunaways and truants: 1940–2000 • 351

latter point, it was noted that all six supervisors were newly hired. While many showed
potential, they were alllacking in knowledge concerning the role of hostels, characteristics of the Indianchildren, their background of training and ways and means of handling thechildren. Little initiative, enterprise, imagination was shown by the Supervisors.
They were also greatly lacking in leadership. I heard a great deal of, “I told them
all to play volley ball”. Even in the childrens’ [sic] free-time they appear to be told
what to do and as a result refused to participate.

The report’s first recommendation was that the “Ontario Welfare Council be contracted to make a study of the families represented by the children enrolled in thishostel to determine if alternate arrangements for the children are advisable.” The second recommendation was in keeping with the first, calling on child welfare agencies
to provide families with more supports, thereby allowing their children to remain at
home. The report also called for improvements in the recreational opportunities atthe school, improved staff training, the hiring of extra staff, and the construction ofa gymnasium.98
Education director R. F. Davey endorsed the recommendations and instructed staff
to arrange for additional training for the existing supervisory staff. He also suggested
bringing in experienced staff “of proven ability” from other Presbyterian schools, but
cautioned that any new hires should be “competent help,” arguing that the problem
at the school lay with poorly trained staff. Davey said the construction of a gymnasium was a long-term measure. It should be remembered that as early as 1953, theschool principal, J. E. Andrews, had identified the cramped and poorly maintained
playrooms as a cause of truancy at the school.99
Students at Ontario schools continued to run away with tragic results. Joseph andRockie Commanda had been expelled from a Catholic public school in Eganville,
Ontario, in December 1967 for concerns over their attendance and behaviour.
Because of what was described as “difficulty” in their home, it was felt they should beplaced in a foster home. Since no such home could be located, they were enrolled in
the Mohawk Institute, in Brantford, Ontario, in February 1968. With the approval of
their parents, they were returned to the school at the start of the 1968–69 school year.
However, at the end of the first day at school, they ran away. School officials notified
the Hamilton, Burlington, Oakville, and Kitchener police of the boys’ disappearance.
On September 3, members of the Oakville police located the two boys. Rockie wasconvinced to enter the police car, but Joseph ran away. About six hours later, Joseph
was struck and killed by a train while he was attempting to cross a series of tracks.100
Tragedy struck again in northwestern Ontario in 1970. Two twelve-year-old boys,
Philip Swain and Roderick Keesick (his last name in some reports is also reported as
Tayapaywakejick), were living at the Roman Catholic residence at Kenora in November
1970, and attending a local day school. On November 27, they left the school at noon

352 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

and did not return. Residence officials contacted the Kenora police at 9:35 that evening. The Kenora constable who took the call did not pass the information on to the
Ontario Provincial Police, because he believed residence staff would do so. As a result,the provincial police were not contacted.101 The instructions that Indian Affairs had
issued in 1966 on what to do in the case of runaways had been vague about responsibility on this matter, merely instructing staff: “Notify the local office of the Ontario
Provincial Police or the r.c.m.p. whichever is appropriate.”102
The boys were trying to reach their homes at Grassy Narrows, ninety kilometresfrom Kenora. They spent the night of November 27 at Keesick’s uncle’s home in Jones,
Ontario, and left the following morning.103 They were not seen alive again. Swain’s
body was found on December 5 by a hunter on the roadside near Grassy Narrows.
Keesick’s body was discovered near Grassy Narrows two days later.104
A coroner’s jury heard evidence on the deaths on December 17. It recommended
that in future, the police be contacted immediately if students did not return to theschool by dinnertime. Similarly, the police were to be contacted if students were missing in the morning. It was recommended that in such situations, the police commence
an immediate search. Students should be given courses in wilderness survival, andan investigation should be conducted into why “the residential students run away.”105
In the wake of this report, in 1971, Indian Affairs staff from the Kenora district
met with school residence staff to discuss steps to be taken in the case of a runaway.
Furthermore, all residence staff members across the country were to be instructed“to take immediate emergency steps when a student is missing” and to contact police
officials if runaway children were not immediately located. In addition, staff members
were to make every effort “to get in touch with parents or guardians.” Schools were toconsider implementing “a regular program of survival training for students who must
live away from home to attend school.”106 National policies were finally being enunciated, at the same time that the residential school system was being wound down.
Stringer Hall, the Anglican residence in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, saw more
runaways, and one more set of tragedies. In the spring of 1972, Ian and George Hurst,
two boys under the age of ten, ran away from Stringer Hall on four occasions. Eachtime, they were located, or they returned to school on their own.107 On June 23, 1972,
three boys, Lawrence Jack Elanik, Bernard Andreason, and Dennis Dick, ran awayfrom Stringer Hall.108 Andreason was found alive a few kilometres from Tuktoyaktuk.
He had walked approximately 150 kilometres and lost almost fourteen kilograms. His
feet were badly swollen. Elanik’s body was located, but the search for Dick was called
off. Stringer Hall principal L. Holman reported:
Everything that could possibly be done, was done, to try and locate these boys
before it was too late. The r.c.m.p., the Regional Director’s Office & Staff, owners
of private aircraft, the various Air Services, Helicopter Operator’s, [sic] private
citizens and the men of the Armed Forces at Inuvik, did a valiant job.109

Runaways and truants: 1940–2000 • 353

Parents worried about the dangers their children faced if they ran away. In October
1944, Charles Kehler of the Anglican day school at Massey, Ontario, wrote a letter to
Indian Affairs on behalf of a local Aboriginal woman, Mrs. Jack Owl. Her son and acousin had recently run away from the Shingwauk Home in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario,
because “the Farm Instructor at the School abuses them, that he makes them work
like men and that at times, he chases them with a pitch-fork.” According to Kehler:
Mrs. Owl is afraid that if Wilfred is sent back he will run away again, and she isfearful that in running away he may get hurt. It seems that when he ran away in
September he and the other lad(s) jumped on to a freight train to get home. This
time he says that he came by road. The boy’s mother is afraid that if he runs away
as he is doing he may meet with some serious accident, or, in the winter, getdrozen [sic].

While he was at his mother’s house, he said that if he had not run away with his
cousin, “he would not have come near home, for he does not want to be sent backunder existing circumstances. Mrs. Owl does not want her boy to run away sometime
and wander about the country homeless for months.”110

The treatment of runaway students
Runaways were subject to a variety of disciplinary measures on their return, including being strapped, having their hair cropped, and losing privileges. They also might
be subject to a variety of other sanctions, ranging from discharge, transfer to anotherresidential school, to institutionalization in a non-residential school.
In dealing with three boys who had repeatedly run away from the Squamish schoolin North Vancouver, Indian agent F. J. C. Ball recommended in 1940 that they each besent to a different and more remote school: Kuper Island, Christie, and Kamloops.
Such punishment would, it was felt, also “have a good effect on the other pupils.”111
When, in November 1945, a student made his way home from the Gordon’s school in
Saskatchewan, using a team of horses and a sleigh taken from the school, the Indian
agent recommended that he be transferred to the Onion Lake Catholic school.112
In 1953, two children from the Swan Lake Band in Manitoba, who had run away
on several occasions from the Brandon school, were transferred to the Portage la
Prairie school.113
After the disappearance of the Ombash brothers, in 1957, the principal of theSioux Lookout school and Indian Affairs agreed on a plan to enrol children from theregion at the more distant Kenora school. This, it was hoped, would discourage thestudents from running away. However, the parents objected to the plan. Principal
Eric Barrington pointed out that the previous fall, the Sioux Lookout school staff “hadnot a moments [sic] peace with children ‘taking off.’” However, Barrington wrote, “the354 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

parents seem to think that the children now like to go to our school and will not cause
any trouble. While this is a very gratifying thought I personally am not so sure that
we would not have the same thing all over again.”114 But in the face of the parental
opposition, the plan was abandoned. Instead, the local Indian agent was instructedto discharge all students who ran away.115 A few years later, in 1964, Indian Affairs recommended transferring a number of habitual truants from the Presbyterian school in
Kenora (Cecilia Jeffrey) to the Anglican school at Sioux Lookout.116
Indian Affairs official H. B. Rodine did not approve of the intent of the principalof the Fort Frances, Ontario, school to have three students who had been regularly
running away transferred to a more distant school. Instead, he recommended counselling to ensure that the students were offered the sort of training for which they
were suited.117
Older runaways often were simply discharged. Four boys ran away from theBrandon school in the spring of 1940. One of them, who was seventeen years old at
the time, was found in Sweetgrass, Montana. Because he was nearly eighteen, it was
decided not to return him to the school. Given the fact that most of the other boys
were also close to the age of legal dismissal from the school, the principal requested
that police circulars calling for the apprehension of all the boys be cancelled.118 When,in 1951, two boys ran away for the second time in a month, the Spanish, Ontario, boys’
school principal wrote, “If there is any possibility of their staying home we shall behappily rid of them.”119
Principals often sought to discharge students they thought to be “bad influences.”
Students who ran away were usually high on this list. Indian agent W. P. B. Pugh said
that this approach had solved the truancy problem at the Blue Quills, Alberta, school,
and recommended that it be employed at the Hobbema school, where, as late as
November 7, 1945, ten students had yet to return to school from the summer vacation.120 In December 1946, Beauval, Saskatchewan, principal F. X. Gagnon requested
permission to discharge a boy who attempted to run away and had coaxed other boys
to run away as well.121 The following year, the father of a boy who had run away fromthe Sioux Lookout school was informed that it was “just as well if he does not comeback here because he was actually a bad influence on the other boys.” It was suggested
that, instead of returning him, the father punish the boy and send him to day school.122
That same year, Sioux Lookout school principal D. C. Wickenden asked for the discharge of three students who ran away within a week of their arrival at school. He
wrote that “we do not feel that we should have them back as they are not desirable.” 123
In 1956, the Spanish school principal, Leo Burns, was seeking Indian Affairs approval
to discharge two girls who kept running away. The girls, who were sisters, “questioned
the right of their being at the school against their parents’ wishes.” Burns wrote thatthey probably belonged in a reform school. When they ran away, they carried stonesin their hands “to bash in the faces of those who took them.”124

Runaways and truants: 1940–2000 • 355

In some cases, it appears that school staff recognized that some children would bebetter off at home. In 1954, Indian Affairs allowed the Shingwauk Home in Sault Ste.
Marie, Ontario, to discharge thirteen-year-old Ronald Owl into the care of his grandmother. Ronald was judged to be “consistently rude to members of the Staff, and iswell-known as a bully to smaller boys. He has been guilty of smoking in the dormitory, something most strictly forbidden because of danger of fire.” In recent weeks, he
had run away twice, and had been in trouble for “hitting a smaller boy and spitting in
his face.”125 In another situation, Indian Affairs concluded in the spring of 1958 that it
would be better to find a foster home for one boy from Prince Edward Island than toreturn him to the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school in the coming year.126
After the death of her brother, one girl ran away from the Gordon’s school threetimes. Each time, she was accompanied by a different female student. According to
the principal, the girl had made it clear that she wished to be at home with her family
and to attend day school. By February of 1958, Principal J. J. Johnstone worried that
one of her escape attempts would end in tragedy. For this reason, he recommended
to Indian Affairs that the girl be transferred home and enrolled in a day school.127
It appears the girl stayed at Gordon’s for the rest of the school year, but the school
refused to allow her to return in the following year.128
In 1959, the principal of the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school sought to expel
two students who had a constant record of truancy. They had been warned andstrapped—“within the instructions given by officers of the Department”—but there
had been no improvement. To keep them in the school would, the principal said,
require restrictions so strict “as to be against regulations of the Department, as also
against fire portection [sic] regulations and those of common sense. The school cannot be a prison.”129 The principal’s comments draw attention to a significant issue: thesystem, by its very coercive nature, generated a significant runaway problem.
The practice of discharging runaways continued into the 1960s. In October 1960,
five children were discharged from the Protestant hostel in Whitehorse, Yukon, forrunning away. In most cases, letters were sent to their parents to the effect that they
were not wanted, since they were “not interested in education.” In one case, the letter was sent to the discharged student: a sixteen-year-old who was told, “As you havedecided not to get an education, you will now have to look after yourself. You neednot think that we will help you at home when you could be well fed and well clothedwith good living conditions at the Protestant Hall.”130 The policy of the Roman Catholic
Yukon Hostel was also to discharge all truants who were sixteen years of age or over.131
In 1960, Christie, British Columbia, principal Allan Noonan recommended thattwo fifteen-year-old boys be discharged. They had left the school and, using a stolencanoe, made their way home to Ahousaht. The parents of one boy refused to force him
to return to school, and Noonan judged him to be “a trouble-maker” and a “bad influence on the younger boys.” The other boy’s parents wanted him to return to school,356 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

but, in the principal’s view, he was a problem in the classroom, refusing “to do any
work at all.”132
On discharge, students might find themselves placed in orphanages, reformatories, or institutions for delinquent children. In 1941, Shubenacadie principal J. P.
Mackey informed Indian Affairs that he was placing a student in the St. Patrick’s Home
for Boys in Halifax. The boy came from Prince Edward Island, had run away twice inten days, and had put the school to considerable “trouble and expense,” according toMackey.133 Since the cost of keeping the boy at the St. Patrick’s Home was considerably more than keeping him at Shubenacadie (yet more evidence of the comparative
underfunding of the residential system), Indian Affairs instead ordered that the boy
be sent home.134 Two years later, Mackey was trying to have another boy admitted to
the St. Patrick’s Home. The boy had organized two escapes from the school. For one
escape, he had “made a key to fit all the doors, got up during the night, and visited thestorerooms. He made a second key, unlocked the dormitory and outside doors, took
the two younger boys with him as well as a supply of food and blankets.” The boys werequickly picked up and returned to the school. The day before he was to be sent to St.
Patrick’s, he was locked into an upper-storey dormitory. According to Mackey, “Hemanaged to get out the window by means of the fire hose, and at the present time, Mr.
Rice, the r.c.m.p. and all concerned are scouring the neighborhood for him.”135
In November 1944, four boys ran away from the Shubenacadie school. Three werequickly located and returned to the school, but the fourth made it to his home community at Pictou Landing, Nova Scotia. From there, he travelled with his older brotherto Portland, Maine, where his father was working in a shipyard. While in Portland,
he was located by the police and held in a parochial school. Shubenacadie principal
J. W. Brown wanted him brought back and punished “for the principle of the thing,”
possibly by being placed in the St. Patrick’s Home. Indian Affairs official Philip Phelan
rejected the proposal, saying he could see no “particular advantage” in returning theboy to the school.136 When the boy’s sister ran away from the school a few months
later, in February 1945, she was placed in the Halifax Good Shepherd Reformatory as adisciplinary measure. According to the Indian agent, “In the ordinary course of events
she would have been dismissed from the school.”137
Students could also be prosecuted for damaging property while they were truant.
Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, school principal Laviolette presented six runaway boys to
the Mounted Police detachment in Fort Qu’Appelle in the fall of 1942. He said theboys had admitted to him that after they had run away from school, they had broken
into a building in hopes of finding some food. Laviolette said the boys had agreed to
pay the owner back. The police investigated and located the home and its owner, who
declined to press charges.138 In December 1956, two students from the Birtle school
were arrested by the rcmp for car theft. Rather than their being sent to the Brandon jailto await trial, the boys stayed at the Birtle school. Principal N. W. Rusaw wrote, “TheyRunaways and truants: 1940–2000 • 357

are two frightened boys and I hope to be able to get the custody of them otherwise
they will go to reform school.”139
Under the 1951 amendments to the Indian Act, children who were expelled orsuspended, or refused to attend school regularly, were deemed juvenile delinquents
under the Juvenile Delinquents Act.140 Judges had considerable discretion in the sentencing of juvenile delinquents: they could fine them, place them in foster care, andeven have them placed in an industrial school or reformatory until they were twenty-one.141 Therefore, discharge from residential school did not necessarily lead to more
freedom; sometimes, it led to less. In 1953, the principal of the Presbyterian school in
Kenora informed the father of two boys who had just run away that if “there is further
trouble with them, I am prepared to recommend that they be placed in an institution
for delinquent children.”142
After being determined to be an “habitual truant” at the Fort Frances school, Joanne
Perrault was committed in 1958 to the St. Mary’s Training School for Girls in Toronto(available documents do not indicate the type of court that imposed this sentence).143
In 1958, a fourteen-year-old girl ran away from the Shingwauk Home and then went
to the police, stating that she had been picked up by men and raped. When the police
took her to hospital to be examined by a doctor, she refused to co-operate. She wasthen returned to the school. The events repeated themselves five days later, although,on that occasion, the police returned her directly to the school. In the documents it
has reviewed, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has not found evidence of any further investigation into her allegations. Principal Roy Phillips recordedthat he was “somewhat doubtful of its truth, as she each time told several untruths inconnection with the incident.” Phillips became convinced the girl was suffering froma mental disorder. As a result, she was brought before a magistrate and committed for
an indefinite period to a training school for girls in Galt, Ontario.144
In 1959, the principal of the Pine Creek, Manitoba, school expelled two girls who,
he believed, had organized four other girls to join them in running away from theschool. It was felt the two exerted a negative influence over the other students. The
principal recommended that they be transferred to a “correction home.”145
Senior Indian Affairs official R. F. Battle informed an Alberta Indian Affairs superintendent in 1959 that although it was “possible to treat persistent truants as juvenile delinquents,” the Juvenile Offenders Branch was “reluctant to take such severe
action.”146 Similarly, in that year, Indian Affairs instructed field staff that it was “reluctant to give authority for the prosecution of attendance cases in which the pupil concerned is over 15 years of age.”147 Despite this, prosecutions did take place.
In 1961, a Manitoba provincial court judge passed sentence on seven boys convicted of truancy from the Birtle school. Six of them were sent to different residential schools, under police escort, and required to report to the local Mounted Police

358 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

detachment every two weeks. The seventh was given a two-year sentence at thePortage la Prairie Home for Boys.148
Indian Affairs also threatened to prosecute people who provided shelter to runaway students. Meridith Astakeesic ran away from the Birtle school several times, usually going to the home of Stella Blackie on the Birdtail Reserve. Indian Affairs official
D. A. H. Nield advised Blackie in 1965 that
if the parents or grandparents do not keep their child in school, we have noalternative but to lay a charge against you under Section 118 of the Indian Act.
May we suggest that when this lad comes to you looking for food and shelter thatyou take a strap to him or punish him in some way rather than encouraging him
to run away from school.

It is unclear from the letter what Blackie’s relationship was to Astakeesic, but Nield
noted that “the mother of this boy is unable to keep him in either day or residential school.”149

Refusal to return to school in the fall
If the persistence of runaways was a sign of ongoing student dissatisfaction withresidential school life, difficulties in getting students to return to school in the fall was
an indication of continuing parental resistance to residential schools.
Two weeks after the start of the 1940 school year, fifty-four students had yet to returnto the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school. The police were called in and, by October
2, twenty-five of the truant students had been returned to school.150 Three years later,
rcmp Corporal L. F. Fielder, at the request of Indian Affairs, visited the Fort Fraser andStella reserves to warn parents that they should send their children to the Fraser Lake
school.151 In 1946, the parents of seventy students had refused to return their children to the same school. Their grievances included “the time spent by the pupils inmanual labour, and religious instruction.” In addition, they wished to see day schools
established in their communities. Some parents had hired a Prince George, British
Columbia, lawyer to take their case.152 The Indian agent recruited the assistance of thelocal Mounted Police detachment, and, after threatening parents with prosecution,
had cut the number of truants down to thirty-five by the first week in October 1946. It
was proposed that “action will shortly be taken under the Indian Act, against some ofthe parents of the Stony Creek Band who have not returned their children to school.”153
Although it was common to threaten parents with prosecution, there were thosepeople in Indian Affairs who recommended against pursuing prosecutions. This wasparticularly the case after the 1941 policy directive instructing principals to seek theassistance of the Mounted Police in the case of truancy only as a last resort. In 1942,
Indian Affairs official A. G. Hamilton reported that there were thirty-five children on

Runaways and truants: 1940–2000 • 359

the Sandy Bay Reserve in Manitoba who were not attending school. Although theprincipal of the Sandy Bay school was “anxious to take these children in,” Hamilton
commented, “These Indians are difficult to handle and for the present I think it would
be a mistake to use force.”154 In 1942, the Beauval, Saskatchewan, school was having
trouble recruiting its full complement of students. The superintendent of Welfare andTraining, R. A. Hoey, wrote that he was “aware, of course, that there is this year an acutelabour shortage in the province of Saskatchewan and it may be difficult to arrange forthe return of the senior pupils.” But, if the students did not return, he recommended
that “the desirability of imposing the penalties for which provision has been made in
the Act should be carefully considered.”155
Hoey continued to caution against the use of the police. In November 1943, theprincipal of the Moose Fort, Ontario, school requested that the Mounted Police beused to enforce compulsory attendance. In response, R. A. Hoey wrote:
Experience has taught us that whenever compulsion has been exercised,—and
it has been exercised quite frequently throughout the years, in attempts tomaintain regularity of attendance at Indian day and residential schools—theresults have been invariably disappointing. Attempts on the part of the r.c.m.p.
to enforce attendance have erected the impression in the minds of a great many
Indian parents that our residential schools are penal institutions, established,
not for the benefit or education of their children, but to punish them. This feelingor attitude on the part of Indians has become so widespread that we have been
recently asked by the Commissioner of the r.c.m.p. not to use his constables as
truant officers and that, if we must use them, to use them sparingly.

Hoey argued that it would be possible to reduce the parents’ antagonism to theschools by establishing “courses of study more attractive to Indians and more effectively designed to meet the needs of the Indian population.”156
In 1943, the principal of the Hobbema, Alberta, school proposed that at the beginning of the school year, he would visit all the families that did not send their children
to school. If that failed to convince them to send their children, he and the Indian
agent would pay the parents a second visit. Only at that point would they take “moresevere measures.” Through this approach, he hoped to avoid involving the Mounted
Police in truancy cases.157
It is clear, however, that the police were still being asked to help return students inthe fall. In October 1945, H. A. R. Gagnon, the assistant commissioner of the rcmp,
wrote a letter to the director of the Indian Affairs branch, complaining that the Indian
agent at Cardston had just turned over fifty-one cases of truancy to the force. Gagnon
said it would be more appropriate for Indian Affairs to appoint a truant officer.158
In August 1945, parents from the Little Pine Reserve in Saskatchewan refused tosend their children to the Anglican St. Alban’s school in Prince Albert. In a letter of protest, three of the fathers wrote that children from the community had returned home

360 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

for the holidays in ragged cloths [sic] and some with shoes not fit to wear andmany sizes too large for them. One of the girls had sores all down her legs andcould walk only with difficulty. Our children had told us that the food is very
poor at times and not in sufficient quantity, and being compelled to eat weather[sic] they wanted to or not. Further, our children tell us that Rev Ellis says somevery bad things to them—one time telling all the students that “don’t you knowthat I could kill you all and throw you into the ash pit—and not even bother tobury you” and that he has kicked and abused them.

The parents also pointed out that the school was overcrowded and that some of thestudents got “only a half a day’s schooling in order to make room for the rest.” Theirpreference was for their children to attend the day school on the reserve.159
In response, Indian agent J. Bryce visited the school. He concluded that the students were well fed and well clothed, and showed no sign of “fear or resentment.”160
Indian Affairs official C. S. Bell then went out to the Little Pine Reserve, where he“warned the parents that the children were to return to school.” When he was told theparents would not send their children back, he returned with the Mounted Police and“rounded up eight absentee children.”161
The show of force did little to address the truancy problem at the school. Three years
later, Bernard Neary, the superintendent for education for Indian Affairs, asked J. P. B.
Ostrander, a regional department official, to investigate why so many children wererunning away from the Prince Albert school.162 A report from a local Indian Affairs official that fall stated, “Two-thirds of the staff are old and decrepit. Organized games andsports have been lacking, which has resulted in a steady stream of children, boys andgirls, running away.”163 In October, Principal F. W. Fisher wrote, “Since September 5th,
my car has travelled 2400 miles, two thirds of which at least, were in connection withtrying to get children back to school. I am really in despair. Many of these runaway
have been off four or five times.”164
Indian Affairs official C. A. F. Clark thought the recruiting process at the school was
reminiscent of the “church-owned mission school stage of development when parents were induced rather than required to put their children in school.” The principal had spent much of the fall recruiting students. Parents also complained that theirchildren were poorly fed, clothed, and cleaned, and removed them from the school.
John Tootoosis and other First Nations leaders had also visited to investigate the conditions of the school. This development led Clark to recommend that parents should
be restricted “to visiting their children in a place appointed therefor, and anyone otherthan a departmental official who wants to do any investigating should first have thepermission of the Superintendent.”165 The Indian Act of the day stated, “The chief andcouncil of any band that has children in a school shall have the right to inspect such
school at such reasonable time as may be agreed upon by the Indian agent and theprincipal of the school.”166 However, the amended Indian Act adopted in 1951, three

Runaways and truants: 1940–2000 • 361

years after Clark made his recommendation, no longer contained such a provision forschool inspection by chief and council.
Twenty-nine students were truant from the Morley, Alberta, school in October
1947.167 As well, in the first quarter of the 1948 school year, there were fifty truancy
cases at the Hobbema school. By the end of March, all but five of these students wereback in school. Since those five were all over fifteen years of age and the school was
filled to capacity, the principal and the Indian agent had decided not to force them toreturn to school.168
In March of 1946, Indian agent J. E. Pugh prepared a report on truancy at the
Anglican and Roman Catholic schools in Cardston, Alberta. He noted that parents ofstudents from the Blood Reserve were keeping their children out of the residential
schools. One band councillor, Joe Bullshields, told him that “the reason it was so difficult to get the children into School, was, that the Indians looked upon the School as apenitentiary.”169 When Indian Affairs official C. A. F. Clark visited the Anglican schoolat Cardston in 1949, he found that there were 92 students present in a school with anauthorized enrolment of 200. He wrote, “There are children on the reserve enoughto fill the school, which has three empty classrooms.”170 Clark attended a meeting of
the Blood Band Council, where he was told parents were reluctant to send their children to the school because the principal was not a clergyman and was “rough” withthe children, the students were not fed enough bread, and “the teachers are not very
skilful [sic].” Clark told them that Pitts was an authorized lay reader in the Anglican
Church, and an experienced teacher and principal. He also said he had reminded
Pitts of the department’s rules regarding discipline. He promised an increase in thebread ration and said that “better teachers are in prospect.”171
Indian Affairs official G. H. Gooderham conducted a follow-up visit. He said thatthe school wasneither clean nor tidy and the principal was none too clean or tidy himself.
He appears to be a pleasant enough young man but I was not very highly
impressed. As for the teaching staff, three additional teachers have been familiar
faces at other Institutions; two of them had at one time been at the Edmonton
Residential School and Mr. Staley had to let them out because they were
inefficient. The third, an elderly gentleman, was at the Old Sun School at one
time. He may have been a fairly good teacher at one time but his classroom was
so untidy and so disorganized that I fear he is getting very poor results.

He noted that many parents were not sending their children to the school, and concluded that if Councillor Bullshields’s negative assessment of the principal reflected“the opinion of the majority of Anglican members of the Band, then Mr. Pitts is a failure and should be replaced.”172 It was not until 1952, in the wake of continuing criticism, that Pitts resigned his position at the school.173

362 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In defending himself against allegations from Pitts that local Indian Affairs staff had
not done enough to ensure that truant students were forced to attend school, Indian
agent Ralph Ragan painted a picture of the process by which Indian Affairs roundedup students who did not report to school. In late November, Ragan wrote:
We have our Indian Scout, Rufus Good Striker, out since September bringing
in truants to St. Paul’s [the Anglican school in Cardston], and working alone
and among his own people he has done a fair job. Due to a shortage of staff
here and the largest and most cumbersome harvest on the Reserve this yearwith its terrific accounting problems due to the wheat quota, Mr. Pitts had beenadvised that more staff could not be spared for truants until this was finalized.
On November 10th we saw daylight ahead and in a letter to Mr. Gooderham
designated the week of November 17th for an all-out drive on truants with alltrucks and staff that could be spared. The Superintendent’s car and two lightdelivery trucks with five members of the staff were out beginning the 17th.174

In October 1953, parents from the Whitedog Reserve in northwestern Ontario
backed up their argument for a day school as an alternative to the Presbyterian schoolin Kenora with complaints about the “ill treatment of our children” at the school.
“They are locked up for punishment and they hate that so much that they run awayvery frequently which places them in great danger of accidents before they finallyreach their homes.”175
Government officials sometimes seemed unable to understand why parents did
not want to send their children to school. In 1954, Norman Paterson, the superintendent for the Kenora Indian Agency, wrote that he had “persistently and patiently
tried to get from the Chief and Councillors some valid reason” as to why parents at theWhitedog Reserve were not enrolling their children in residential school. He thought
the reason may have been that a number of children who ran away from schools in
Kenora “had met with difficulties getting back to the Reserve,” including, as in the casepreviously noted, the runaway student who was so severely frozen that he had to have
his leg amputated. Paterson does not appear to have viewed these “difficulties” as a“valid” concern for parents to withhold their children from the school.176
Not surprisingly, the school in northwestern Ontario had problems with recruitment as well as with runaways. In the fall of 1953, sixty-three students were truant from the Presbyterian school in Kenora. Some of them had not been to schoolin two or three years.177 By November, there were still at least fourteen students not
in attendance.178

Runaways and truants: 1940–2000 • 363

The legal authority to keep students in school
Since the 1890s, Indian Affairs had been refusing to allow parents to withdraw children after voluntarily enrolling them, on the basis of the consent form that was signed
at the time of admission. In the 1950s, the form said the student would remain in theschool “for such term as the Minister of Mines and Resources may deem proper.”179
However, in 1952, the department discovered that the form had no legal standing. The
issue arose when an eight-year-old girl left the Squamish, British Columbia, schooland returned to her father’s home. She continued to attend the school as a day student. Indian Affairs concluded that she was “running around the Mission Reserve till
all hours of the night owing to the lack of proper home supervision.” It sought to havethe Mounted Police prosecute her father under Section 118 of the Indian Act. That
section made it an offence to ignore an order to “cause the child to attend school.”
The Indian Affairs case was complicated by the fact that the girl was, in fact, attending
school. It rested its argument that she be returned to the residential school on the factthat when the girl had been enrolled in school, her father had agreed that she should
remain in school until the minister deemed it proper that she be discharged.180
However, an Indian Affairs legal adviser pointed to an 1892 Justice Department
legal opinion that the provisions in admission forms lacked any legal basis. The father
could not be prosecuted under the Indian Act, unless the minister responsible for
Indian Affairs were to specifically designate that she attend the residential school, apower that was provided for in Section 117 of the Indian Act.181 The immediate situation was resolved by the girl’s return to the residential school.182 However, IndianAffairs officials were left with the uncomfortable realization that the admission form,
which had long served as the basis of their truancy policy, had no legal standing. As the
Indian commissioner for British Columbia, W. S. Arneil, wrote, “It seems, therefore,that no action can be taken to return a child to a residential school unless the Minister
specifically designates the school as the one the child should attend.”183 Despite thisrealization, no amendments were made to the Indian Act to address this issue.
The increase in the number of day schools, coupled with the continued closingof residential schools, appears to have reduced the recruitment problem. But it did
not eliminate it. By mid-September of 1960, ten children from the Yukon had notshown up at the Lower Post, British Columbia, school.184 In 1972, thirteen students
did not return to the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, residence after the Easter holiday. Some were working, some were attending day school, and some were simply not
coming back.185

364 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission“Attempts to locate her were fruitless”:
The lost and the missing
In many cases, it appears that runaway children were never located or returnedto school. The fragmentary nature of the records often makes it difficult to make a
final determination as to any specific child’s fate. Sometimes, the records documenting their return are missing. It is also possible that records indicating that the childdied while running away might also be missing. Some deaths generated follow-up
investigations, but others went almost unreported. Some of these children may havemade it home, some may have moved to urban communities, and some died trying toreach home. At greatest risk were those children who had no home to which to return.
Although no statistical trend can be identified, the records provide partial details of anumber of disturbing cases from the late 1950s and 1960s.
In 1957, Indian Affairs official N. Ogrady reported that a girl had been truant fromthe Lestock, Saskatchewan, school for “two weeks or so.” Ogrady said he had recently
received information that she might be with her mother, who was working in Lipton,
Saskatchewan.186 The record does not make it clear whether the girl was at home, but
her mother was instructed to return her to the school or, if she was aware of the girl’s
whereabouts, to inform the school.187 Two girls ran away from the Anglican school in
Cardston, Alberta, in November 1957.188 They still had not been located by Februaryof the following year. At that time, the school vice-principal informed the Mounted
Police that he did not wish to see them returned to the school.189 The police eventually
located them in March: one girl was living with her mother; the other was living in the
Picture Butte district of Alberta. It does not appear that the police returned either girlto school.190
On May 26, 1960, a female student had been absent from the Qu’Appelle school for
four days. It was only then that the school principal wrote to the Indian agent responsible for her home reserve. Rather than notifying the agent of a need to search for the
girl, the principal’s message was that, if found, the girl should not be returned to his
school.191 (She apparently was located and admitted to the school in the fall of 1961.)192
Three girls ran away from the Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, school on October 31,
1967. Two of them were quickly found, but, a week after they had run away, the third
girl had yet to be located.193 The record shows that she was suspended from the schoolfor running away, even though they didn’t know where she was.194
In a number of cases, the students directly defied orders to return to school. In
November 1967, the principal of the Roman Catholic residence in Whitehorse, Yukon,
was reporting that a girl who had had a hard time adjusting to residence life had run
away. When school officials encountered her in the community, she refused to returnto the residence.195 On November 25, 1967, a girl ran away from the same residence.
She had not been located by November 28.196 Both students were listed in the quarterly

Runaways and truants: 1940–2000 • 365

report issued at the end of December 1967 as having left the residence.197 In late 1971,
one of the supervisors at Akaitcho Hall in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, encountered a student on the street during school hours. According to the supervisor, “Whenasked if he should not be in school he stated Yes that he should be in shop but that
he did not attend classes if he did not feel like doing so.” The superintendent of theresidence, A. J. Boxer, said that residence staff had the “impression that others havethis attitude.”198
Five girls ran away from the Fort Alexander, Manitoba, school in February 1968.
Although the rcmp was involved in the search for them, they were not returned tothe school during that school year.199 Two of the girls were teenaged sisters: they had
been placed in the school after their father had murdered their mother. In the fall of
1968, the older girl was placed in the Assiniboia school in Winnipeg. After two weeks,
she ran away. According to the Indian Affairs district superintendent of schools, G. T.
Ross, “Attempts to locate her were fruitless. We know at present she is in Winnipeg but
does not remain long in one place.” Her younger sister had been returned to the Fort
Alexander school. However, she did not remain in the residence and was reported
to have “roamed the reserve.” At the band council’s recommendation, the residence
administrator transferred her to Winnipeg. According to Ross, in December 1968, she
was “at present somewhere in Winnipeg.” She was thought to be in the company of athird teenaged girl, who was also truant from Fort Alexander. Ross believed all three
girls were “subject to physical danger while wandering the streets.”200 In its review ofthe documents, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was not able
to find any records indicating that the girls were ever located. In November 1969,
another female student did not return to the same residence. She was located by thepolice, and flown to her home community.201
Roland Chaput, the principal of the Assiniboia school, waited for eight days before
writing to parents from South Indian Lake to inform them that their eighteen-year-old
son had left the residence in March 1968. According to Chaput, “He left here without
saying a word as if he were going to school that day and we have not seen him since.”
He said that Indian Affairs had been informed of the boy’s disappearance.202
On November 29, 1968, a boy had run away from the Duck Lake, Saskatchewan,
school. By December 4, he had not returned.203 It is unclear what happened to him.
Although he was listed on the December 1968 quarterly return, he was omitted from
the March 1969 return.204
One female student discharged herself from the Prince George, British Columbia,
hospital on November 26, 1971, after undergoing an ear operation. The police and herfamily were informed of her disappearance. However, she did not return to the school
until December 16.205
Two fourteen-year-old girls had been missing from the Presbyterian school in
Kenora for two weeks on 24 January 1975.206 One of the girls was an orphan: her mother366 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

had died of alcohol poisoning in 1970 and her father had committed suicide two years
earlier.207 In its review of the documents, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada was not able to locate any record of one of the girls on any attendance records
after the date of her leaving the residence. The last reference to the other girl was anenrolment listing for the first quarter of 1976—but it gives no indication of the numberof days she had attended in that term.208
A system as poorly funded and supervised as Canada’s residential school system
for Aboriginal children was bound to lead to tragedy. It was bound to drive many students to run away. It was also bound to lead many parents to stop sending their children to school. Poorly trained and poorly paid staff, hired in insufficient numbers,
inevitably would not be able to find and return all runaways before tragedy struck.
These were the same lessons as from the first half-century of the residential school
system. They were clearly apparent in 1939. The scandalous fact is that during the following half-century, residential school children, far too often, were the victims of an
unnecessary repetition of devastating history.

CHAPTER 40

Discipline: 1940–2000

In the 1960s, Indian Affairs asked a number of former students to prepare comments on their time at residential school. The response of two men highlighted
the abusive nature of discipline at the schools. A former student of the Birtle andBrandon schools in Manitoba wrote that among the disciplinary measures that hecould recall being imposed at those schools were “being tied to a flag pole, sent to bed
with no food, literally beaten and slapped by staff.” Students were “locked in at night
like cattle.” It was, he wrote, “an insult to human dignity.”1
Of the discipline at the Mohawk Institute in Ontario during the 1940s, a second
former student, Russell Moses, wrote, “I have seen Indian children having their faces
rubbed in human excrement, this was done by a gentleman who has now gone to hisjust reward.” Children who ran away werebrought back to face the music—we had a form of running the gauntlet in which
the offender had to go through the line, that is on his hands and knees, throughwidespread legs of all the boys and he would be struck with anything that wasat hand all this done under the fatherly supervision of the boys’ master. I haveseen boys after going through a line of fifty to seventy boys lay crying in the mostabject human misery and pain with not a soul to care—the dignity of man!!!2

The memories of these two former students are consistent with the statementsthat former students have provided to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada since it began its work in 2009. For example, Edmund Metatawabin said thatwithin minutes of his arrival at the Fort Albany, Ontario, school, “I got my first taste
of being slapped by the nun, who was our supervisor. I think I was only six years old. I
was slapped so hard that I hit the wall and bounced off the wall, and with insults fromthe supervisor all along.”3 Flora Moore said she was punished for playing around in
the lineup to go into the Mohawk Institute lunchroom.
That guy picked me up on the back of my neck, he kicked my butt, and then hetook me to the room, and I don’t know what happened out there, but all I know
was I had strap marks on my body, and my hands were blistered, really badly
blistered that I couldn’t use them, I couldn’t write for a couple of days. Nobody

368 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

cared enough to really see my hands because I used to hide them. I never told
anybody, so I kept it to myself, and all that. I used to soak them in cold water. I
took care of myself.

The punishment left her frightened and anxious for the rest of the year.
It first, first time my physical abuse was there. Physical abuse that my mom,my parents never, never treated me like that, you know. That’s the first I everencountered physical abuse. That was very painful. And I could never sleep after
that. I had enough and never could sleep good after that. That whole year that I
had to go back, that bothered me constantly what happened.4

For so many students, residential school discipline was harsh and unregulated;
the line between corporal punishment and physical abuse was too easily crossed. The
documentary record demonstrates the federal government’s failure to develop andenforce appropriate disciplinary standards. It is sometimes argued that the disciplineat the schools did not exceed the “standards of the day.” As the following pages willshow, Indian Affairs set few standards in regard to discipline. Those that it did set were
often reactive, created only in response to what was seen as excessively punitive discipline. In addition, Indian Affairs did not inadequately communicate those standards
that did exist, ensure that they were enforced, or take action when they were violated.

The failure to develop and enforce a disciplinary policy
In 1940, a member of the Islington Band in Ontario took his son to Kenora Indian
agent Frank Edwards. The boy had run away from the Presbyterian school in the community after the boys’ supervisor at the school had thrown a stone at him that had hit
him in the head. Edwards took the boy and his father to the school and met with thesupervisor. The man acknowledged that he had hit the boy in the head with a stone.
He said he had done so because the boy had refused to obey an instruction to stop
throwing stones. According to the agent, while he was reprimanding this employee forhis action, the principal, E. W. Byers, angrily approached and told him that every time
he came to the school, “there was always trouble, and he would not stand for it, and I
should not listen to the Indians or pupils when they came to me with their troubles.”The principal had been dismissed recently and was concluding his term of office. He
claimed that the agent was undermining school discipline.5 The incident brings manyof the key disciplinary issues of the period into focus. Who was allowed to discipline
students? What measures were they allowed to use? How were the rules communicated to students and to parents? And, what role did Indian Affairs have in regulating
discipline at the schools? As the following section demonstrates, Indian Affairs wasDiscipline: 1940–2000 • 369

slow in answering the first two questions, and ineffective in enforcing those rules thatit did develop.

The search for policy: 1940–1960
The Indian Affairs superintendent of Welfare and Training, R. A. Hoey, had written
in 1937 that a circular on discipline had been sent out to school principals, stating that
“corporal punishment should only be administered by a member of the staff, in thepresence of the Principal.”6 None of the extensive correspondence dealing with discipline in the early 1940s makes reference to this or any other disciplinary guidelines
issued by Indian Affairs. Neither does there appear to be any attempt to enforce such arule. The first Indian Affairs guidelines on discipline that the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada was able to locate were issued ten years later, in 1947.7 It was
clear long before then that such guidelines were needed.
Cecil Perkins, a former employee of the Coqualeetza Institute in Chilliwack, British
Columbia, wrote Indian Affairs in June 1940 to report on two acts of discipline that
he had observed at the school. In one case, the school farmer, Ray Carter, angered
because the boys had been slow to assemble for evening prayers, had swung his fistat one of the boys. According to Perkins, “The boy dodged the blow and had the blow
landed it could easily have seriously injured the boy.” The boy attempted to hide from
Carter, but Carter tracked him down and, according to Perkins, “proceeded to administer a serious thrashing. This was done with a section or piece of harness trace after
the boy had been made to take down his pants. This is the common form of punishment employed in the school to-wards [sic] the boys.” On another occasion, Perkins
said, a number of boys had been ordered to eat half a cake of soap as a punishment
for swearing. Perkins said that he had been warned not to raise these issues with
Indian Affairs, since “others had tried it and only made more trouble for themselves.”8The school principal, R. C. Scott, said he was aware of Carter’s having “made a ‘slap’”at one of the students. Scott said he had told Carter “there should be no more suchoccurrences.” Scott denied that students were made to eat soap—although he did say,“On a very few occasions boys have been advised, after using badlanguage [sic], thatthey ought to ‘washout [sic] their mouths.’”9 For his part, Carter said that when theboys were being called in for prayers, one of the boys had been making noise andmimicking him. “I told Joe if he would not keep quiet, I should have to take measures
to make him keep quiet. He said, ‘Do you think you can do it?’ I said, ‘Yes’, and then I
slapped at him.” The boy dodged the blow and Carter fell on his hands. He later madethe boy take down his pants and administered “six straps on his seat.” He said he had
the permission of the acting principal to administer the punishment.10

370 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Indian Affairs official G. H. Barry conducted an investigation into the charges.
The inquiry was limited to taking statements from school staff members. Barry did
not speak to students or to Perkins, the employee who had raised the concerns. He
concluded that “there has been no ill-treatment whatever of the boys as alleged.”
Instead, he believed that Perkins’s charges were “a very highly exaggerated accountof two or three instances that undoubtedly happened during the time he was at theCoqualeetza School.” Despite his conclusions, his recommendations do imply that
there were problems at the school. Specifically, he advised the principal that
it would be well in future to limit the infliction of corporal punishment byrequiring that definite permission must first be obtained, either from him as
Principal or in his absence from the Acting Principal of the School.
I would further advise that in future any such corporal punishment be given
with a regulation school strap made of rubber. The actual strap used for years at
this School was specially made for the purpose; is not part of a harness trace assuggested, but is, in my opinion, rather too thick, especially for punishment of
the smaller boys.11

The fact that, in providing this advice, Barry made no reference to any IndianAffairs policy on discipline is further evidence that there was no system-wide policyin existence.
Not all cases of excessive discipline were tolerated. In January 1941, Indian agent
G. C. Laight received a telephone call from Leo Breland, saying that his son Fred andtwo friends were at his house, having run away from the St. Albert, Alberta, school.
When Laight asked Breland to return the boys, Breland said that his son had run away
because the boys’ master had tried to choke him. Laight asked Breland to meet him
at the school later that day with the boys. In the presence of the principal, Sister Ste.
Sabine, and the boys’ master, Tony Boutet, Fred Breland said that Boutet had grabbed
him by the throat with both hands and lifted him into the air. One of the other boys
said he had witnessed the master choke both Fred Breland and another boy. All threeboys gave the choking as the reason for their decision to run away. Two other boys
were called, who also said they had witnessed the assaults. Boutet initially said that
he had grabbed one of the boys by the neck when he was running away, but later
admitted that this was not the case. Laight told Boutet that the department had noobjections to “properly administered” punishment, but “could not tolerate” the punishment Boutet had given.12 After the investigation, Boutet was dismissed.13
The parents of at least three students swore statements in 1943, protesting theharshness of Principal Oliver Strapp’s regime at the Mount Elgin school in Ontario.
Loraine Tooshknig’s mother, Jessie Seneca, had been told by her daughter that “whenMr. Strapp would punish the girls he would raise their skirts when whipping them.”
Loraine said that a punishment from Strapp had left a scar on her wrist.14 She also

Discipline: 1940–2000 • 371

reported that Miss Prentice, a teacher the children viewed as being sympathetic, hadbeen dismissed because she was too kind.15 Annie Waddilove, the guardian of anotherstudent, Mildred Fisher, said that according to Mildred, “the girls are severely whippedor strapped for very trivial offences, and they are warned by [the principal] that theymust not talk about conditions at the school when visiting their homes.”16 Beulah
French’s mother, Charlotte, said that her daughter’s medical problems were not properly attended.17 There were also complaints that the bread was stale, the cereal was
wormy, the milk was sour, and the meals were poorly cooked.18 In light of these complaints, the Chippewas of the Thames passed a band council resolution calling for aninvestigation into the operation of the school.19
Indian Affairs also received complaints from members of the non-Aboriginalcommunity about the Mount Elgin school. In 1944, R. W. MacDonald of St. Thomas,
Ontario, returned a runaway boy to the school. The boy—the grandson of a man who
worked for MacDonald—told him that he had been threatened by Strapp. In a letterto Indian Affairs, MacDonald wrote that if “half the boy’s story is right,” he was glad hewas “not an Indian.” It was time, he said, for an investigation of the school.20
There was no investigation. Instead, in 1944, Strapp was transferred to the United
Church’s school in Brandon, Manitoba.21 His troubles followed him. There, he wasin ongoing conflict with students, staff, Aboriginal parents, Indian Affairs, and eventhe government of Saskatchewan. The history of the Brandon school under Strapp’s
administration demonstrates the continuous relationship between harsh disciplinary
regimes and truancy.
On September 12, 1950, John Dowan of the Clark River Indian Reserve wrote to
Indian Affairs that his son Evan had run away from school twice in the last week. He
wrote that oneof the little boys had his feet frozen last winter doing the same and I don’t wantthat to happen to my boy. The complaint is that Mr. Strapp Principal of theschool isn’t looking after things as all the children are complaining. The children
are very mean to the little ones and the reason is the staff aren’t with themenough to see these things, and they are not getting enough to eat.

He asked that his son be allowed to live with him and attend the local day school.22
It appears that the request was not granted, since the boy continued to appear on thestudent register for the remainder of the year.23
The conflict with Saskatchewan stemmed from the fact that by 1945, there were
only two United Church residential schools in that province (Round Lake and File
Hills), and by 1950, there were none. Children from Saskatchewan families affiliatedto the United Church often were sent to the Brandon school.24 Many parents objectedto this policy and refused to send their children. This was particularly the case withchildren from the Carlyle area in Saskatchewan. Strapp believed there were numerous

372 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

school-aged children on the reserve there who should be sent to the Brandon school.
He also believed that Indian Affairs officials in Saskatchewan were not sufficiently
supportive of his efforts to recruit these children.25
Apparently, he did manage to get the support of the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police. In September 1946, Saskatchewan Premier T. C. Douglas telegraphed federal
Mines and Resources Minister J. A. Glen, the minister responsible for Indian Affairs,
to protest the removal of two children from the Moose Mountain Reserve at Carlyle to
the Brandon school in Manitoba by the Mounted Police. Douglas said the parents, Mr.
and Mrs. Shepherd, wanted their children at home, where, he said, there was space forthem in the local day school.26 Indian Affairs argued that the family’s home conditions
were such that the children were better off in residential school.
At least one of the Shepherd children did not agree. In December 1946, Douglas
once more wrote on behalf of the Shepherd family. Clifford Shepherd had run away,
returning home by hitchhiking and walking through a blizzard, arriving poorly
clothed and weakened. Two other boys from the reserve had also run away from that
school, causing considerable concern to their parents, who believed the children “arenot properly cared for, that they do not receive sufficient supervision and training, andthat the food is inadequate.” Douglas wrote that although the family lived in a small
shack, it was as well kept and as large as other homes on the reserve, and the children
were as well-cared-for on the reserve as at the residential school.27
In affidavits submitted to Indian Affairs, John Shepherd (Clifford’s father) and D.
Pewean, the father of another boy who had run away from the school, complained ofthe poor treatment their children received at the Brandon school. In sending the affidavits to Ottawa, J. P. B. Ostrander, the inspector of Indian agencies in Saskatchewan,
wrote that although he did not consider the affidavits to be of value, he thought theaccusations should be investigated. He noted, “I have had other complaints of a similar nature about the action of Reverend Strapp [the Brandon school principal],” andthought they might explain the numerous cases of truancy at the school.28
The conflict between Clifford Shepherd and Strapp continued into 1947. On January
11, 1947, Indian Affairs official A. G. Hamilton reported that in December, upon returnfrom his most recent attempt to run away, Clifford Shepherd had fought back whenordered to report to the school dormitory. As a result, he was taken there by force.
Once there, Strapp had held him on the bed while another student was sent to fetch
the regulation strap, which was used to discipline him. Since then, the boy had been
confined to the dormitory. Strapp said that if he did not keep Shepherd locked up, “hewill take one of these smaller boys away with him and that they might freeze in a snow
storm during the night.” Strapp requested that a number of troublesome students betransferred to schools in Alberta. In response to the request, Indian Affairs official
Bernard Neary said the department did not believe in transferring students except inan emergency.29 Saskatchewan Premier Douglas intervened in the case once again,

Discipline: 1940–2000 • 373

urging that Clifford Shepherd be sent home to his parents.30 Hamilton agreed, saying
Shepherd, who would not promise to stop running away, should be discharged.31 He
was discharged on January 28, 1947.32
Later that year, Douglas also raised concerns about the harshness of disciplinary
measures used in residential schools: “Frankly, I was shocked to learn of the corporalpunishment which is being administered in Indians schools.” He asked “if it is customary to give children a short haircut as a punishment. It appears that this is also acommon method of endeavouring to discipline children. Personally, I am not at all
surprised that a spirited boy, treated in this manner, would become more recalcitrant
than ever.”33
Government and church officials were quick to fend off outside criticism. In
response to Douglas’s complaints, United Church official George Dorey wrote to
Indian Affairs, “If Mr. Douglas accepts the statements of the Carlyle Indians at theirface value, without further investigation, all I can say is that he will have plenty to do
looking after the Indians in Saskatchewan without being able to give very much time
to his duties as Premier.”34
Sometimes, local Indian Affairs officials advocated harsh disciplinary measures.
Indian agent R. S. Davis concluded in 1947 that there was not enough discipline at theGordon’s, Saskatchewan, school. When the principal came to him, seeking to transfer
a number of girls to another school, Davis “told him to go back and lay on the strap
and straighten them out, and things have been a little different since.”35
The mother of a child who attended the Round Lake, Saskatchewan, school visitedthe general superintendent of Indian agencies in 1943 to complain that her son had
been strapped twice in the last year. The most recent strapping had caused the boy’s
arm to swell up, and on the previous occasion, the strap had cut the boy’s arm, leaving
it black and blue.36 He had been punished for neglecting his chores, which included
filling the water heater, feeding the furnace, and sweeping up in the furnace room. The
previous year, he had been strapped, along with a number of other boys, for “going into
the girls’ dormitory.”37 Indian Affairs ordered an investigation into the complaints.38 In
the documents it has reviewed, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
has not been able to find a copy of any investigative report related to the complaint.
The need for regulation was brought to light by events at the Presbyterian schoolin Kenora in 1944. That year, school employee G. W. Dodds resigned, claiming thatstudents were being brutally treated by a principal who regularly lost his temper.
In his initial letter, Dodds described the principal, D. S. Pitts, as “a huge man witha violent temper, & uses abominable language to the children when he goes into
these tantrums.” Most recently, he said, a number of girls were beaten for “stealingpie.”39 During the course of the investigation, Dodds acknowledged that he had neverseen the principal strike a student. Principal Pitts explained that the girls who werestrapped were punished not for stealing the pie, but for lying about the theft. One

374 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

employee commented that she felt strapping should be done with a regulation strap
and confined to the hands. The principal acknowledged that he was using a rubber
strap that was thirty inches long and one and three-quarters inches wide (76.2 by 4.4
centimetres), which, he said, he shortened by folding it in his hand. Strappings wererestricted to the hands, “except in sex cases and when children run away and jump
trains.” In those cases, the children were strapped on the buttocks.40 In a subsequent
letter to the federal government, Dodds, the former employee, expressed the view thatthe investigation had been incomplete. He also noted that the students were locked
into their dormitories at night, and, if they wanted water, were obliged to drink out of
the toilet bowl.41
In 1945, a female student at the Grayson, Saskatchewan, school attempted to slip
out of the school and meet with local boys. As punishment, her hair was cut.42 Angeredby this treatment, the girl’s parents came to the school and withdrew her and her twosisters.43 An altercation developed between the mother and one of the supervisors.
Charges were brought against both parents. The mother was convicted of common
assault and fined $1 plus $4.50 in costs. The father was convicted under the Indian Act
provisions regarding truancy, and fined $1 plus $4.75 in court costs. Because the girl’shair was not closely cropped but simply left in the “usual school girl bob,” the IndianAffairs official investigating the matter felt the parents had been unreasonable. He recommended that if the girl “does not behave in future she be sent to a Reform School.”44
There are several reports of violent conflicts. In the fall of 1944, the farm instructor
at the Cluny, Alberta, school was acquitted on a charge of having assaulted a student
at the school. According to the police report on the trial, it was alleged that the instructor had struck a boy on the face, causing his nose to bleed. “Owing to the amount of
discussion this incident caused among the Indians, it was considered that the facts
should be placed before a Court and the matter decided if the accused had the rightto punish the boy in this manner.” The farm instructor pleaded not guilty and the casewas dismissed.45
In 1945, the principal of the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school acknowledgedthat he had struck one student who would not submit to being disciplined for attempting to gain access to the girls’ dormitory. Principal Ellis told Indian Affairs official J.
Bryce, “When Leslie put his dukes up and squared away to fight, I hit him, and under
the circumstances I would do the same thing again. There is one thing I must havein this school, that is discipline. If I fail to maintain it, my staff and myself might aswell quit.”46
In March 1946, Indian Affairs official R. A. Hoey received a report from a J. M. Morrison the concerns that a nurse, Helen Marshall, had about the Whitefish Lake, Alberta,
school. Marshall had been told by a teacher that the “principal there had stripped thegirls and strapped them.” Shortly after, $15 had been stolen from a teacher’s room,and one girl had found $5 and used it to buy candy and biscuits for her friends. Morris

Discipline: 1940–2000 • 375

had urged Marshall to write a report on the incident. The Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada was not able to locate this report—if it was ever written—in
the documents that it reviewed.47
In 1947, a student named Loretta Mercer wrote a letter of complaint about the discipline at the Alert Bay, British Columbia, school. That morning, she said, the cook
“had taken a big paddle and started to beat me up. He was really made [sic] at us they
just pick on us. He just kept on hitting me all over he hit me on my arm and it was all
swoolen [sic].”48 A few weeks later, a boy ran away.49 The school was on the verge ofdisaster, having started the school year lacking five teachers.50 As worries mounted in
Aboriginal communities about their children, the principal, S. J. Wickens, telegraphed
the Indian agent, asking that he tell students’ relatives to “stay away from school asvisits disturb now.”51
The principal resigned in the fall.52 Indian Affairs official J. Coleman visited theschool and prepared a highly critical report on its operations. On the question of theoriginal complaint that the cook had beaten a girl, Coleman concluded that the cook
may have struck some students “in exasperation with a wooden spoon,” although he
did not believe the cook “would have been excessive in the matter.” The willingness
to excuse this inappropriate behaviour captures much that was wrong with IndianAffairs’ approach to discipline. Coleman was more disturbed by other reports ofWickens’s use of corporal punishment. He said that ten boys were subjected to corporal punishment for being noisy during the evening meal. In one case, the punishment
was so severe that a carbuncle (an abscess similar to a boil) on one boy’s abdomen
had burst. Overall, he thought Wickens’s approach to discipline was “alternatively
harsh and weak.”53 Again, there was no attempt to determine if any disciplinary policies had been violated.

Piecemeal policies
A conflict at the United Church’s Morley, Alberta, school in the 1940s led to thedevelopment of a set of departmental rules on discipline. In the fall of 1946, Moses
Wesley attempted to withdraw his daughter Rosie from the school. He was angeredby the treatment she had been given for running away. According to Rosie, she had
been strapped “over the body and shoulders and over the head.” The school matron,
Florence Hodgson, acknowledged that she had strapped Rosie, but denied strapping
her on the head and shoulders.54
Wesley’s complaints were echoed by other parents. In January 1947, G. H.
Gooderham, the local inspector of Indian agencies, met with the band councillors andinterested parents. They told him of their dissatisfaction with the way children weredisciplined, the food at the school, the clothing provided, the lack of time spent in the376 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

classroom, and the health and cleanliness of the students. Gooderham reported that
he assured the parents that corporal punishment “was always frowned upon by the
Department.” He said he would ask the principal to defer such punishment until discussing the matter with the parent.55 The former principal, who was by then principalof the Edmonton school, believed the current matron’s approach to discipline had created a significant problem at the school, and he recommended that she be replaced.56
Upon review of the correspondence, Bernard F. Neary, the superintendent of
Welfare and Training for Indian Affairs, concluded that the situation at the Morleyschool “has been unsatisfactory since the opening of the new term.” In response, hedrew up instructions regarding punishment (which he referred to in his memorandum as “capital punishment”), noting, “I can find on file no instance of similar regulations having been prepared.”57
Neary developed the following rules.
1. That corporal punishment will be used only where all other methods of
disciplining a pupil have failed.
2. That corporal punishment will be administered only on the hands with aproper school strap (regulation 15" rubber).
3. That the maximum number of strokes on each hand in no instance exceed
four in number for male pupils of over fourteen years of age and in proportion
for boys under that age.
4. That all such corporal punishment be administered in the presence of theprincipal or by the principal.
5. That a Corporal Punishment Register be maintained at the school containing
the following headings:
a. Date.
b. Reason for Punishment.
c. By whom administered.
d. Witness.
e. Signature of pupil punished.
6. That this Register be made available for inspection by all Indian Affairs
Branch officials visiting the above.58

He sent a copy of these rules to George Dorey, the secretary of the United Church’s
Board of Home Missions. Dorey, in turn, sent the rules to the principal, along witha letter stating, “With regard to the suggestions in the Department’s letter about

Discipline: 1940–2000 • 377

corporal punishment it would be my hope that you would see your way clear to adopting them completely.”59
Once again, Indian Affairs was responding in a piecemeal fashion. The rules were
not sent directly to all principals, but, instead, to the head of one missionary association. He, in turn, did not instruct all his principals to abide by them. Instead, he simply
urged one principal to do so. Further, as would be noted by others, these rules wereincomplete, applying, for instance, only to boys. They did not address other forms ofpunishment such as the denial of meals or the cropping of hair.
In dealing with the situation at the Morley school, Neary also recommended that thematron be dismissed in an effort to “eliminate some of the difficulty.”60 Principal G. R.
Inglis opposed this recommendation, saying that “an injustice has been done a very
faithful worker.”61 The matron was not dismissed. Dorey defended her, saying, “One of
the things we shall have to do is to try to get certified teachers to go to Morley, as theteaching staff is weak, and this has thrown a great deal of work on Miss Hodgson.”62
The Morley school continued to be an ongoing subject of discontent. At a StoneyBand Council meeting in November 1947, Chief Enos Hunter said that “the present
school system was jail more or less and that the children only received half a days [sic]education.”63 A year later, the band council objected to the continued employment of
Hodgson as matron.64
While it is not clear how wide a circulation had been given to the rules of disciplinethat Neary had developed for the Morley school, it is apparent that by 1949, someIndian Affairs officials were attempting to enforce the rules. In June 1949, IndianAffairs official C. A. F. Clark informed Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, principal A. J. W.
Scrase that he had noticed that one of the teachers in his school kept a leather strap
on her desk. He pointed out that a regulation strap should be kept in the principal’s
office and used only “by the Principal or in his presence.”65 Later that year, when hevisited the Anglican school near Cardston, Alberta, Clark explained “the rules regarding corporal punishment” and took two straps away from teachers, depositing themin the principal’s office.66
Events at the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, school in 1949 make it clear that therules on discipline had not been universally disseminated. Neither were they being
followed. As described previously in the chapter on truancy, in January 1949, four girls
ran away from the Portage la Prairie school. While they were following a riverbank,their feet became wet. By the time they took refuge in a home, their feet were frozen.67
The damage was so severe that the girls had to be hospitalized for several weeks andit was feared some of them might lose some of their toes.68 Indian Affairs official A. G.
Hamilton conducted an investigation into the conditions that caused the girls to run
away.69 The statements that he took constitute some of the most detailed student comments on life and discipline in the schools during this period. One of the girls, Lillian
Daniels, told the investigator,

378 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

I am 15 years of age. We wrote to Winnipeg and requested messages for ourparents over the air, a week before we ran away, and wanted to listen to them
Saturday afternoon. We asked Miss Quinn if we could listen to the program
and told her that we had sent in requests and wanted to listen to them. She told
us to go outside that she didn’t want us to listen to the radio. She made us gooutside and locked the door. We got together and decided to run away and see
our parents.
She always hits us on the head with her fist. She makes us wear boy’s [sic] boots.
She doesn’t like us to put our hair up in the way we want to. We are just allowed
five minutes to do our hair and if we are longer she makes us sit in a corner. (Thisis Mrs. Ross who does this) All the other teacher’s [sic] are nice to us. We are sent
to Mr. Jones by Mrs. Ross to get the strap when we talk at the table at mealtime.
We are locked in our dormitories at night. We do not like to be locked up all
the time. Mrs. Ross does not allow us to see our cousins or brothers or speak tothem. We only can speak to them when we see them when no one is aroung [sic].
I do not want to go back to the school.70

Twelve-year-old Pearl Woods explained that she had submitted some messages tofamily members to a local radio station. She had expected they would be broadcast on
Saturday afternoon.
We asked Miss Quinn if we could listen to them. Miss Quinn said we could but
Mrs. Ross came and said we couldn’t. Mrs. Ross sent us out to play. Then weplanned to run away and tell our parents about it.
Mrs. Ross hits us on the head with her fists. If we are scrubbing she stands therewith a stick or strap in her hand. At night when she is on duty she just gives us
five minutes to do our hair. If we do not get it done in that time she puts all thelights out and makes us sit in the play room for two or three hours. If we lay
down on the benches when we are there she comes down and tells us to sit up.
Mrs. Ross does not let us sit beside each other when we are in the play room.
She makes us wear boy’s [sic] running shoes if our shoes are worn out, even if
they are too big. If we tear our nightgowns she makes us wear boy’s [sic] clothes.
She locks the dormitories when we go to bed. The washroom downstairs is also
locked. When we want to go to the bathroom she won’t let us. She sends us out
and locks the door. She doesn’t let us in until quarter to six except the girls who
go on duty in the kitchen at five.
If we want to go to the sewing room she doesn’t let us go through the hall. If
we do she hits us on the head with her fists. If we do not curl our hair at nightsometimes she tries to cut it off.
When we write letters, Mr. Jones reads them and if we get some he also reads
them. Mrs. Ross always gives us short stockings up to our knees and we have towear them. She never wants to change them. Sometimes if our shoes are worn

Discipline: 1940–2000 • 379

out she lets us sew them. She doesn’t let us wear sweaters when it is cold. If wedo, she tells us to take them off.
She grabs us by the hair and shakes us. If she sees us smiling at the table she
thinks we are talking and hits us on the head with anything she can get hold of.
She gives us bags to put our clothes in and if she sees our clothes lying aroundshe straps us.
Mrs. Ross teases the girls and if they get mad she takes them in the hall andstraps them. Mrs. Ross always talks about our own people and we do not likethat. She talks about them to the staff.
She doesn’t let us talk to our brothers in the building. We can just talk tothem when we go out to skate. If she sees us talking to the boys in the rinkshe sends them away. If we stand aroung [sic] she sends us out to our own
playgroung [sic]. 71

Ella Bell, a fourteen-year-old student who did not run away, wrote, “Mrs. Ross
scolds me and strapped me about twice.” She pointed out that the dormitory door
was locked at night, and the “girls who have brothers or relatives in the school cannot
speak to them without getting permission.”72
According to the principal, Joseph Jones, the students ran away because they had
been compelled to go outside and exercise, rather than “listen to a foolish cowboy
program.”73 Mrs. Ross said that she “strapped them occasionally,” “sometimes hits
girls on the head with my knuckles,” and “sometimes give their hair a pull but do notthink I hurt them at all.”74 The principal said they were given more than five minutes
a night to fix their hair, although it was necessary to place a time limit on the activity.
As to sending the children outside, he said that it was necessary that they get fresh air.
Given the cost of shoes, it was necessary to pass on the boys’ shoes to girls in somecases.75 Additionally, he claimed Indian Affairs had undermined his authority at theschool in the previous year when it had prevented him from cutting off a girl’s hair as
punishment for running away. Indian Affairs inspector A. G. Hamilton had told himthat “the department would object to this form of punishment.”76 After an initial investigation, Indian Affairs sent the principal a letter outlining the same disciplinary rulesthat Neary had sent to the principal of the Morley, Alberta, school two years earlier.77
Jones responded by providing Indian Affairs with a detailed critique of Neary’s
rules. He said that the rule that limited the number of strokes of the strap that could be
administered could be “inadequate to the offence,” giving as an example a case at thePortage school, where an older boy gave a younger student “a smashing blow on thebridge of his nose.” He also pointed out that this rule referred only to boys, asking if
this meant the department was prohibiting corporal punishment in the case of female
students “to girls of any age for any offence whatever.” While agreeing to the rule thatcalled for the creation of a disciplinary record, he asked, “Is such register kept in other380 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

schools?” He also said he assumed that the department was leaving “all other methods” to the discretion of the principal, pointing out that it was the custom in many
schools to “‘bob’ the hair of any girl who runs away from school.”78
Jones defended the policy of demanding silence during meals, saying it was acommon practice in construction, lumber, and fishing camps. The school had a rigid
timetable to maintain, and talking at mealtime would cut into the time set aside forwashing the dishes and cleaning the dining room. He said that a policy of silence also
made it easier for teachers who might otherwise have problems in maintaining order.
He also said the boys preferred the policy: if the girls were allowed to talk, they would
prolong the meal period, making it difficult for the boys to get to their games.79
Statements from two school employees confirmed that the girls were correct in saying that the dormitories were locked at night.80 This would have created a serious riskin the event of fire.
The regional supervisor of Indian agencies, R. S. Davis, reported that “apparently
everyone is strapping these children, with the exception of the boys’ supervisor.”
He noted that there was no record being kept of when students were punished, andinstructed the principal to establish such a book. Overall, he felt the institution moreclosely resembled a “detention home than a boarding school.”81 He said he thought
the principal had “been running this school to suit himself for a number of years,
and in my opinion, the sooner we get rid of him the better.”82 By May, Principal Jones
had resigned.83
There were other attempts to enforce Neary’s rules. Indian Affairs official G. H.
Gooderham wrote to Gleichen, Alberta, principal E. S. W. Cole in 1950 to express his
concern over reports that the girls’ supervisor at the school had been administering
corporal punishment in violation of government regulations. He stated that anotherdepartment official, W. P. B. Pugh, had informed him that this was not the first suchcomplaint made against the supervisor (whose name was given as both Vera De Gerrand Vera De Geer).84 Principal Cole defended the matron. While he admitted that“occasionally her methods of getting discipline are strict,” he said she maintained“excellent discipline.” Despite this, or perhaps because of it,
it seems that a group of the senior girls do not like her and they have literally‘ganged’ up against her. One of my grade x students has reported that, in her
opinion, the girls have talked so much together about the little corrections metedout that they have been grossly exaggerated, and, in fact, new complaints havebeen imagined so realistically that they are now believed.85

Under Gooderham’s direction, local Indian Affairs superintendent W. P. B. Pughconducted an investigation. The main complainant was not able to provide himwith “definite complaints about corporal punishment being given by Miss De Geer.”
Although the investigation did not unearth specific complaints, Pugh concluded

Discipline: 1940–2000 • 381“there is no doubt Miss De Geer will be moved in due course. He [Principal Cole] did
not feel like dismissing her summarily.”86 As in other instances, even when there wasa decision to act on parental complaints, it would appear that action was delayed toensure that parents did not have a sense of victory.
In 1952, a former teacher at the Lytton, British Columbia, school wrote a letter to
Indian Affairs, complaining of the school’s disciplinary regime. She wrote, “Children’s
faces are slapped, hit on the head, struck across the nose—causing nose bleeds. Thisis done by the principal’s daughter and son-in-law (Mr. and Mrs. Purvis). Therefore no
redress made by the principal.”87
In the documents it has reviewed, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada was not able to locate a copy of the report of the investigation that was ordered
into these allegations. Indian Affairs official R. F. Davey did write at the time, “For thelast year or two I have not been happy about the operation of this school.”88
When two staff members of the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school resigned in
1952, they complained ofa manifest lack of discipline for the students as well as the staff, resulting in alack of respect for the staff, promiscuous play between the sexes and unhealthfulliving conditions. The staff has no conception of preventative discipline.
Children are allowed to run wild until whipping is the only means of discipline
possible. This was forcibly illustrated when three small boys tried to run away.
They were picked up and thrown into prison for one week. The prison consits[sic] of a small space partitioned off in the hut used as a hospital. The top twofeet of the walls are made of chicken wire so that the inmates are exposed to any
disease current in the hospital. At one stage during their confinement they were
properly switched for the benefit of the entire school.

The two former employees, Victoria Ketcheson and Patricia Watson, sent copies of
their letter to senior Anglican Church officials.89 The principal rejected their criticisms,
intimating that the women may have been considering converting to Catholicism.
Fifty staff members signed a petition expressing their confidence in the principal.90
One unsigned letter defending the principal noted that the room described as a jailhad been used in the past by teachers and even the principal as a residence. The writerdid, however, acknowledge that the runaway boys had been “spanked with a willow infront of all the children.”91
The Anglican Church authorized an investigation into the complaints, but the headof the Anglican Indian School Administration noted that he believed the women were
“insufficiently experienced to make the charges that they have.”92 In the documents it
has reviewed, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada could not locate
any copies of an investigation report. Neither does it appear that the complaints orresignations were reported to Indian Affairs.

382 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

A policy at last
On April 14, 1953, Philip Phelan, the Indian Affairs superintendent of education,
sent out a “statement of policy regarding school discipline, with particular reference
to corporal punishment at Indian schools.” The key points read as follows:
Any form of punishment tending to humiliate a pupil is to be avoided. This
policy applies alike to the use of sarcasm or to the employment of practices
calculated to produce distinctive changes in appearance or dress.
It is generally-approved practice for teachers to abstain from physical contacts
with pupils either in anger or affection. Children’s reports of such contacts havesometimes been so exaggerated as to make the teacher’s position untenable.
In any event there must be no corporal punishment of a pupil who is suspected
to be suffering from any physical or mental ailment which corporal punishment
may aggravate.
Before resorting to the use of corporal punishment, the principal or the teacher
in charge must be convinced that no other approved form of punishment
will have the necessary punitive and corrective effects. The educator must be
sure that the pupil was aware of doing wrong. The presence of such a factor
as premeditation, deliberate repetition or heedlessness of consequences may
sometimes justify a more serious view and the use of corporal punishment.
The principal or teacher in charge of a school will decide whether corporalpunishment is to be used and will personally administer it in the presence of awitness at a time selected to avoid disturbing the school programme. The witness
should be a staff member of the same sex as the pupil who is to be punished; thematron at a residential school should witness the corporal punishment of a girl.
Only the strap as issued to the principal or teacher in charge will be used. It will
be applied only to the palm of the hand.
In a special book reserved for the purpose a record will be kept of every occasionof corporal punishment. This record will show the date, the name of the pupil,a description of the offence, the number of strokes on either hand, and will besigned by the person who used the strap and by the witness.93

The rule relating to changes in appearance should have banned the cropping of
hair. The other rules should have ensured that only the principal or the teacher incharge of the school administered corporal punishment. Corporal punishment was
to take the form of strapping on the palm of the hand, delivered in front of a witnessof the same sex as the student being strapped. Since humiliation was to be avoided,
students were not to be strapped in public. No limits were placed on the number ofstrokes that could be administered when a student was strapped. These, at least, were
the rules.

Discipline: 1940–2000 • 383

This is the first set of disciplinary regulations developed by Indian Affairs that theTruth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada is certain were widely distributed
within the residential school system. They were, for example, included in the 1958
Indian Affairs field manual.94
However, these rules had no legal force. Those rules that did have legal force, theRegulations with Respect to Teaching, Education, Inspection, and Discipline for Indian
Residential Schools developed under the Indian Act in 1953, had little to say about
discipline. Principals were to assume the “responsibilities of parents or guardian withrespect to the welfare and discipline of the pupils under his charge.” Students wereto “conform to the rules for the conduct and behaviour of pupils while on or near theschool premises or any premises where any activity of the school is taking place.”95
There is no overall survey of the use of corporal punishment in Canadian schools
during this period. However, there are reports from various school divisions. In 1946,
for example, of the forty students who were strapped at one Toronto school in that
school year, twenty received six strokes, nine received eight strokes, and one received
ten strokes.96 In Toronto, the strap was used to punish truancy, lying, fighting, disobedience, smoking, and continuing misconduct.97 By the 1950s in Toronto, strappings had to be administered only on the hands, using a school board-supplied strap,
and in the presence of a second teacher or the principal.98 A December 1951 reportby the Calgary school board reported that in the first three months of the 1951–52
school year, corporal punishment had been exercised on 448 occasions (376 of thecases involved elementary school students, 68 involved junior high students, and 4cases involved high school students). The number of strokes per hand was usually one
or two. There was one case in which six strokes were administered, and five cases inwhich four strokes were administered. At the time, there were 18,000 students in the
Calgary school system.99

Failure to enforce
In October 1953, the effectiveness of Phelan’s rules underwent their first test. Thatfall, a father laid a complaint before the local justice of the peace about the treatment
his sons had received when they tried to run away from the Birtle, Manitoba, school.
He said that Principal N. W. Rusaw had strapped Ralph and Robert Bearbull on the
buttocks.100 The principal said the boys were strapped for attempting to run away; theirmother said they were punished for throwing water on another student. Indian Affairs
official G. H. Marcoux spoke to the parents, one of the boys, the principal, a police
officer, and a doctor named Bjoranson. The parents said the beating had left markson the boys’ genitals, while the doctor and police officer said that the marks werelimited to the backs of their legs and buttocks. Marcoux wrote, “Mr. Rusaw may have384 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

overstepped the mark a little but I believe his story that the boys were running away
and he said he had to make an example of them.” Abusive behaviour was once again
justified.101 Acting Superintendent of Education R. F. Davey asked for a copy of the discipline register dealing with the event. It read: “strapping on night of September 20th,
offence attempted truancy at 9:30 p.m.” As Davey pointed out in a letter to a Manitoba
Indian Affairs official, neither the “manner of administering the punishment nor thereport of the occasion” conformed with the recently released regulations.102 Neither,in fact, did they comply with the less demanding 1947 instructions issued by Neary.
While the investigation was going on, Davey wrote to the justice of the peace who was
responsible for the case that this was the first such complaint against the principal.103
Even though humiliating punishments, and strapping on any part of the body otherthan the hands, were officially prohibited, it is clear that many principals viewed themas being effective tools. In an address, “The Psychology of the Indian Residential
School Pupil,” at the 1955 conference of residential school principals, Lytton, British
Columbia, principal C. F. Hives said he had used the strap on average twice a year.
However, he told the audience that in 1941, his first year as Lytton principal, he had
strapped a group of runaways, including one who had boasted the principal would
never strap him. Hives said he called the boys up in front of the assembled male students. “I told them to take down their pants, which they did, and I strapped them.”104
Hives may have made greater use of the strap than his speech suggested. In 1957,
Helen Clafton, an ex-dormitory supervisor, wrote that at the Lytton school, “the ‘strap’is altogether too much in evidence.” There did not appear to be any limit on who could
administer such punishment: “The child can be punished, nagged, pounced upon or
threatened by anybody and this is carried to fantastic lengths.”105
In that same year, Betty-Marie Barber, an employee of the Social Welfare branch,
filed a two-page report on problems at the Lytton school. Three children were complaining of the discipline at the school. Two said their teacher hit them in the faceand strapped them. A third said that although she liked her teacher, she could hearchildren being strapped in another classroom.
Barber also passed on concerns that had been presented to her by the staff ofthe public high school in Lytton, which the older students from the residence wereattending. A home economics teacher had asked Barber to see if she could do anything “about children who were being beaten.” One boy had come to school with his
face and eyes so badly beaten that he could hardly open his eyes. When questioned
by Barber, he said he had been beaten by other boys at the school. Barber thought thiswas possible, but not likely. Six teachers from the high school told Barber that they
were worried about the conditions at the Lytton residence. Students came to school
tired, with their work not done, and exhibiting a “poor attitude.” They said that the students had told them that the Lytton principal, C. F. Hives, had told them “they are dirty
stinking Indians and no one has any respect for them.” The students also reported

Discipline: 1940–2000 • 385

that when the high school issued report cards, the principal inspected each student’s
report in front of the assembled students and disciplined those with poor reports. The
teachers said the students were fearful at report time, and some returned to the schoolwith black eyes several days after the reports were issued.
Barber met with two boys from the residence at the high school on November 28,
1957. They both had “severely swollen black eyes,” but were not willing to talk about
what had happened to them. That same day, she met with Miss Cameron, a teacher
who had been hospitalized for a rash she developed while working at the Lytton residential school. “She has verified the fact that the children are continually called dirty
Indians and told that they are not respected by the rest of the country, nor are theirparents any good.” She also said that the principal had announced in chapel that hewould punish anyone caught speaking to a girl who become pregnant while a student
at Lytton. “Miss Cameron also states that the older boys and girls who step out of line
or make any remarks to their teachers while walking down the halls are usually struck
or slapped in the face as they do so.” Three of the teachers at the school were leaving
the school by the end of the year.106
Indian Affairs official Bernard Neary had issued his rules on discipline in 1947 inresponse to problems at the Morley, Alberta, school. Disciplinary problems continued at that school, however, into the 1950s. In February 1951, several parents told
an Indian Affairs official that their children were poorly dressed, overworked, andsubject to too harsh a disciplinary regime. There were numerous complaints aboutmatron Florence Hodgson, who had been the object of parent complaints five years
earlier. She was judged to be “too cranky,” “cross,” and “a pretty cruel person.” Parent
Joe Kootenay said that he recognized that children needed an education so they could“have a better life,” but, in his opinion, “the school is there for slavery now.” One father
said that when he visited the school, he had overheard one of the teachers call the boy“a shit.”107 Principal R. Inglis presented his case before a meeting of parents and bandcouncillors on March 7, 1951. He started by noting that he had “great difficulty getting
qualified teachers in competition with Provincial schools.” The winter had been particularly difficult, since seventy students had come down with the mumps, leading
to a quarantine of the school. He said that “although her manner may seem abrupt
and a little cross,” Hodgson was “most interested in their childrens [sic] welfare.” Hisargument did not satisfy the parents and councillors, who continued to press for her
dismissal. Indian Affairs official R. F. Battle told the band councillors that “the adviceof the chiefs and councillors is sought and respected, but they had no official control
over the school.”108
The Alberta superintendent of Indian agencies, G. H. Gooderham, had concludedby this time that
the Reverend Mr. Inglis and Miss Hodgson have the wrong approach tothe positions which they hold. It is granted that they are very efficient and386 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

undoubtedly upright people, but so far as I can see, they lack that human touch
which is so necessary. They apparently rule with a rod of iron and do not indicatethat they have any particular love or consideration for the feelings of either thepupils or the parents.

Although he did not favour immediate dismissal, he thought there should be a newprincipal and matron by the beginning of the next school year.109
George Dorey, on behalf of the United Church Board of Home Missions, supported
the school staff, saying that “no matter who goes to Morley, they will have exactly thesame difficulty, if the proper discipline is to be maintained in the school.”110 Despite
this, Inglis was replaced in 1953, but not removed from the residential school system.111 By 1955, he was appointed principal of the Brandon, Manitoba, school (where
he replaced Oliver Strapp).112 The following year, R. F. Davey, the superintendent ofIndian Education, had concluded that the condition at the Brandon school was further evidence of Inglis’s “marked lack of ability to manage a school.” If Inglis were prepared to resign, he thought, his resignation should be accepted.113 After two years in
Brandon, Inglis resigned at the end of the 1956–57 school year.114
Inglis’s replacement at the Morley school also lasted for only two years. Parents
complained in 1956 that the assistant matron was too violent in her punishment of
the children. She had struck children on their shoulders and their backs (possiblyusing a clenched fist), and, in one case, slapped a student in the face for “provocation
and undue rudeness.” After reviewing the evidence, Indian Affairs official W. A. Betts
reported to his superiors in Ottawa that he felt there was “no evidence of maltreatment of pupils.”115 The regional supervisor of Indian agencies, R. F. Battle, had to pointout to Betts that there was evidence from his report that “unacceptable disciplinary
measures have been used.” Battle instructed Betts to inform the band council that if
there were further problems, Indian Affairs would ask that the matron be removed.116
Mass punishments were also still enforced. When, in the spring of 1955, the Sioux
Lookout, Ontario, principal cancelled playtime and sent all the senior girls to bed
early, the girls rebelled. The punishment had been imposed after a search of the dormitory revealed that several of the girls had stolen school supplies and hidden them intheir suitcases. The girls were angered, both by the mass punishment and by the factthat in carrying out the search, the matron had opened all their suitcases—breaking
the lock on one of the cases. According to the local Indian Affairs superintendent, thegirls “barricaded themselves in the room by using the large double deck beds to blockthe doorway and refused to allow any of the staff including the Principal to enter.
The door had to be forced and the girls could not be brought under control until the
Principal turned the hose on them.”
Three girls were brought up on charges before a local magistrate. While in the local
juvenile detention centre awaiting a hearing, one of them stole valuables from theDiscipline: 1940–2000 • 387

woman who operated the centre. She was sentenced to the Training School for Girlsin Galt. The other two were given suspended sentences and expelled from school.117
An event at the Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario, in 1956 suggests that the1953 rules governing punishment were not only being ignored, but also were, in fact,
unknown. When the school principal went to the Indian agent’s office to retrieve four
runaway boys, he grabbed one boy, twisting him by the ear in the presence of both theboy’s grandfather and the Indian Affairs official.118 The principal later said he regretted
the action, but said that “the motive was jointly to let the boy’s grandfather see that theboy was in the wrong and also to let the boy know that I do not fear his grandfather.”He added that the week before, the boy had been in magistrate’s court, charged withattempting to disrupt a train. The superintendent of Indian Education, R. F. Davey,
wrote to the principal, stating, “I find it necessary to ask you to abide by the regulations governing discipline in our schools, a copy of which is attached.” In response, theprincipal wrote, “I want to add that I have not previously seen the regulations which
you have enclosed. I will abide by it in the future.”119
The shaving of heads also continued. In the summer of 1957, R. F. Davey asked
H. B. Rodine, the Saskatchewan inspector of schools, to investigate concerns about
the principal at the Gordon’s school in Saskatchewan. He was alleged to have shaved
off the hair of two girls who had run away, punished one girl so severely that sheneeded hospitalization, and bullied students.120 Rodine discovered that the principal
had resigned and booked passage to England. While heads had not been shaved, thehair of runaway girls had been very closely cropped in previous years. On the adviceof local Indian agent W. J. D. Kerley, the principal had discontinued the practice. It
also appeared that a girl had been hospitalized a year earlier, apparently as the resultof punishment. Although Inspector Rodine found it difficult to obtain details, he concluded that “the general impression conveyed was that certainly bullying is quiteprevalent.” All but one member of the previous year’s staff had quit in frustration, due
to what Rodine described as the principal’s “overbearing attitude.”121
There were also continued reports of students being punched by staff. The parentsof a student at the Blue Quills, Alberta, school informed the school in 1959 that theirson had told them he was going to run away if the school did not replace its current
boys’ master. Their son said that the master was “too rough for the boys” and hit themwith his fists.122 The master was facing criminal charges at the time for an assault thattook place outside of the school and did not involve school pupils or employees.123

The schools as alternatives to jail
Schools were also used as places of incarceration. Young Aboriginal people whocame into conflict with the law might be sentenced to attendance at a residential

388 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

school. In 1940, the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school accepted three boys who
would otherwise have been sent to a reformatory.124 In British Columbia in 1947,
the Indian agent made it a practice to send young boys who had been convicted oftheft in juvenile court to the Fraser Lake residential school.125 Principals might also
arrange to have students who broke the law returned to the school rather than placedin a reformatory. In 1942, a group of boys from the Brandon, Manitoba, school discovered that a house near the school was empty. They began to take food from theschool to the house on Saturdays, and, using the wood stove in the house, prepare
themselves meals. In March of that year, they accidentally set the house on fire. Nineboys were arrested and charged with delinquency. Since it was felt that the boys had
not realized the potential consequences of using the stove, the case against them wasadjourned.126 Instead, they were turned over to the school principal for punishment.127
When the owner of the property sought compensation, Indian Affairs director Harold
McGill took the position that Indian Affairs was not liable for the damages, since theschool was operated by the United Church. “It would,” he wrote, “be in our judgment
exceedingly dangerous to accept responsibility for claims that may be made fromtime to time against institutions for the operation or administration of which we are
not responsible.”128
Under Principal Oliver Strapp, the Brandon school took on many of the aspects of ajail. In 1948, after a tour of the school, the Indian Affairs vocational training supervisor,
A. J. Doucet, noted that
there is one thing that is repulsive to me and that is the fact of a Principal
hanging on to a bunch of keys and having to unlock every door. This gives theimpression of a place of retention instead of a centre of education. In Brandon
there is even a large metal hallway gate which is closed with a padlock. I may be
wrong but to me, this leads to trouble.129

That same month, while inspecting the school, Regional Supervisor R. S. Davis,
although commenting that Strapp “appears to be running a good school,” noted theschool had “locked doors and takes on the appearance more of a jail than a school.
If the Department insisted that this practise [sic] was discontinued, I think we wouldfind that the children would take better care of the Department property and buildings.”130 In 1949, Inspector C. A. F. Clark noted with disapproval the fact that the dormitories and dining room were locked during the day.131

The failure to enforce policy, 1960–1990
The establishment of a nationwide discipline policy in 1953 did not bring an end
to abusive disciplinary practices. During the final thirty years of the system’s history,
the policies that existed were poorly enforced and often simply ignored. There areDiscipline: 1940–2000 • 389

examples of Indian Affairs officials supporting the use of harsh punishment. In 1961,
an unidentified Anglican Church official met with Sioux Lookout, Ontario, principal J.
F. Orman to discuss the serious truancy problem at the school. The notes of the meeting state that “Shaw and Swartman [the Indian Affairs district superintendent] haverecommended heavy strapping of offenders but it does no good.” Some “ring-leaders
have been expelled,” and it was thought that it might be necessary to expel “a hardcore of trouble makers” as well.132
After it was discovered that nine boys and four girls had visited each other in their
dormitories in the fall of 1963, the Alert Bay, British Columbia, principal, Rod Mayling,
strapped all thirteen on their bottoms in front of the assembled staff and students.
John Lawrance, the district inspector of Indian schools, investigated the matter andconcluded, “This incident could have its serious repercussions and I do think the incident could have been handled in a less violent manner. Frequent or mass strapping
is not a wise practice.” He also noted that although the students had been visiting,he had concluded that there had been no evidence of “indecent acts or was there
such intent.”133 At least two key elements of the discipline policy were being violated
in this case: the children were strapped on their bottoms, and the punishment wasdelivered in a manner intended to humiliate them. The principal faced no immediate consequence.
A year later, J. V. Boys, the Indian commissioner for British Columbia, was lobbying for the removal of the principal. Boys wrote that the principal “had neither thematurity nor the good judgment to qualify him for this position. Obviously church
authorities have disagreed with our evaluation of the man and his behavior and heremains Principal of the school.”134 By April of 1964, the church position on Mayling
had changed, and he was replaced by the principal of the Carcross, Yukon, school.135
Parents could not be sure that their complaints would be properly investigated.
In 1961, Wallace Regis, a member of the Innu band council at Maliotenam, Québec,complained to A. R. Jolicoeur, the Québec regional inspector of Indian schools, about
harsh treatment at the Maliotenam residential school. He characterized it as being“too hard.” Among other claims, he charged one of the school’s staff members (anOblate brother) with injuring the children too frequently by kicking them. He also
said that the community’s difficulty in convincing boys to attend the school was dueto their fear of the staff member. Regis informed Jolicoeur that the community had
already brought the issue to the attention of the school’s principal, to no avail, since hesimply referred them to the staff member in question. Regis concluded by stating that
if Jolicoeur could do nothing, he would take the issue to Ottawa.136 In order to assess
the validity of these complaints, Jolicoeur adopted precisely the approach that Regis
had denounced: he requested that the school’s principal, Father Léo Laurin, investigate.137 In the documents it has reviewed, the Truth and Reconciliation Commissionof Canada could locate no evidence that further action was taken in this case.

390 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In July 1965, Weekend Magazine, a magazine distributed by many daily newspapers across Canada, ran an article about the treatment of Aboriginal people in Kenora,
Ontario. Reporter Ian Adams wrote that a group of Aboriginal teenagers and adults
had told him that students at the Presbyterian school in that community
have rebelled against the harsh discipline by running away. Caught and brought
back, they are locked in a room with just a mattress on the floor, left only theirunder-clothes, and put on a bread-and-milk diet.
A woman who had once worked at the school told me that she had seen a childof 11 treated this way. She also told me she had once seen a pair of teenage
Indian girls humiliated by being made to come down and eat in the dining hall
dressed only in their underwear.

Principal S. T. Robinson initially told Adams that he had no comment to makeabout the allegations. When Adams reported that he pressed him on the issue,
Robinson said,“Well, I’ve been forced to use this punishment at times.”“Then the locked room, the mattress it’s all quite true?”“Yes.”“And the bread-and-milk diet?”“I have used that at times.”“Why do you leave them only their underwear?”“When they are brought back they’re hard to handle. I have a responsibility totheir parents to see that they don’t run away again.”138

The Indian Affairs regional supervisor, G. S. Lapp, spoke to Principal Robinson after
the article was published. According to Lapp’s report, Robinson said that he admitted
to the reporter that he had “confined two Indian children to their room in their underclothing with only bare mattresses in the room and provided a diet of bread and milk
only as a means of punishment for their having run away from the school. He said that
this was done with the consent of the parents of the children.”Robinson also said that the allegation that he had forced two girls to sit in the dining hall dressed in their underwear was a lie. Lapp added that Adams was a “CubReporter” with a chip on his shoulder. His parents had worked for the Kenora Indian
Friendship Centre, which was operated by the Presbyterian Church. According toLapp, the Adamses “did not work out too well” and had been pressured into quitting. Adams, he felt, had been trying to create a sensation and “hit back at the citizens of Kenora for the unfortunate experience his parents had in managing the Indian
Friendship Centre.”139

Discipline: 1940–2000 • 391

Indian Affairs official H. B. Rodine also met with Principal Robinson about the article. In a letter to his superiors, Rodine stated:
When specifically questioned concerning matters of discipline, Mr. Robinson
indicated that he is constantly endeavouring to apply disciplinary measures
which meet the individual need and the situation. From his conversations withme, I am certain the Branch can be assured the disciplinary methods to which
he admitted in the article, will not be repeated.140

It is worth noting that, in this instance, numerous Indian Affairs policies had been
violated. These violations had come to light not as the result of government supervision, but only through the work of a supposed “cub reporter.” Indian Affairs appears tohave spent a considerable amount of time and energy investigating the reporter andcasting aspersions on his motives. In none of the documents did Indian Affairs addressquestions such as how the department had not known of the violation of discipline
policy, whether similar violations were being committed, and what could be done toensure adherence to policy. Principal Robinson resigned at the end of the 1965–66
school year to take on the position of director of the Kenora Friendship Centre.141
Even with the resignation, there was still good reason to ask such questions, about
Kenora and elsewhere. In May 1965, K. Kerr, the regional supervisor of Indian Affairs
in Saskatchewan, discharged R. Jubinville from his position as the boys’ supervisor at
the Kamsack, Saskatchewan, school, after discovering that Jubinville had deliberately
inflicted burns on the arms and necks of several boys as a form of punishment.142 At thetime, the police took no further action. However, in the 1990s, complaints from former
students led the police to revisit the case. According to the Mounted Police, Jubinville
was convicted on three charges of assault causing bodily harm and fined $500.143
A month after Jubinville’s dismissal in May 1965, Indian Affairs ordered an investigation into allegations that runaway students from the Kamsack school had beenpunished by having their hair cropped. Instructions were issued to stop the practice
immediately.144 Part of the investigation was a review of the school files. Kerr and the
newly appointed principal, Reverend Turenne, could not find a copy of the IndianAffairs regulations regarding discipline.145
Those who raised concerns about disciplinary problems might, in turn, be punished for their actions. Juliette Pomerleau, a girls’ supervisor at the Hobbema, Alberta,
school, wrote to the Indian Affairs chief superintendent of education in May 1966 toreport that students at that school were being strapped on their bare bottoms, a practice she called “quite improper.” She also enclosed two statements from students.146
One student wrote of how she had been taken into an office by the father and told tokneel. “Then he pulled my skirt up and then he pulled my pants down and then hestarted to give me the strap.”147 A second girl wrote that she was told to remove her

392 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

jeans. “He gave me thirteen straps. He also waits a little moment every time I had
the strap.”148
In the documents it has reviewed, the Truth and Reconciliation Commissionof Canada has not been able to locate any documents describing the government
response to these complaints. However, it appears the letter was written on the same
day that the Hobbema principal, Paul Hudon, had dismissed Pomerleau. Without
providing details, Hudon informed his superiors that she had been “going from bad
to worst [sic] and was a very bad example to our students.” According to Hudon, “Thekind of punishment described by the girls is very inexact and exaggerated. I am surethat the girls did not mention anything about the fact they had been held back at theschool during the week-end or were given some scrubbing to do … etc.” Hudon said he
had arranged to have the girls transferred to “the Good Shepherd or Alberta Institutein Edmonton.”149
In 1967, another Hobbema staff member, Jacqueline Bisson, sought a transfer
because she “refused to teach under a Principal who’s [sic] method of discipline” was“bare bottom strapping of the girls.” She later complained that this refusal was being
held against her when she applied for a leave of absence.150
There were examples of the churches’ establishing and enforcing their own disciplinary policies. The 1967 Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school staff manual statedthat corporal punishment was to be used only as a last resort. It could be administeredonly by the principal or, in the absence of the principal, the vice-principal or seniorteacher. “Any staff member who strikes a child is liable to instant dismissal and possible
prosecution. Difficult disciplinary problems must always be referred to a senior staff
member.”151 This policy was enforced at another Anglican school in Saskatchewan thatyear. In April 1967, L. C. Bishop, an employee at the Gordon’s school in Saskatchewan,
was drawn to the boys’ dormitory by the sounds of a fight. There, Bishop saw a childcare worker strike a student in the face with an open hand. The man then pulled thestudent from his bed and gave him a kick in the side. Bishop inspected the student,
who complained of being beaten with a stick, and found “one ugly red mark along thelower back, four welts and two more red marks on his left buttocks.” Bishop noted thatthe beating had been administered “in a state of acute anger,” adding that there had
been previous reports of students’ being “kicked, slapped, and cuffed.”152 The sixtyfour-year-old employee was fired the following month.153

Changing attitudes to corporal punishment
The use of the strap for discipline in public schools also came under scrutiny inthe 1960s. The 1968 Report of the Provincial Committee on Aims and Objectives in the
Schools of Ontario condemned corporal punishment, saying there was no educational

Discipline: 1940–2000 • 393

benefit in pain or fear.154 No action was taken on the report at the time, but a Toronto
school trustee sought to have the strap banned in the following year. That attempt did
not succeed, but the Toronto Board of Education banned the strap in 1971, the first
Ontario school board to do so.155
In 1973, British Columbia banned corporal punishment, and, by 2009, Nova Scotia,
New Brunswick, Yukon, Prince Edward Island, Northwest Territories and Nunavut,
Newfoundland, Québec, Saskatchewan, and Ontario had all followed suit. A 2004
Supreme Court ruling held that the use of corporal punishment in Canadian schools
was not acceptable, but allowed that teachers could use reasonable force to restrain orcontrol students in certain situations.156
Some residential school principals appear to have accepted and incorporated
these public policy changes into their residential schools. In a lecture on disciplinethat he delivered in the 1960s, Kamloops, British Columbia, principal Allan Noonansaid, “Corporal punishment is now obsolete. Its passing I believe is due more to its
ineffectiveness than to humanitarian ideals. I still favor corporal punishment for certain individual [sic] for very serious offences, but these would be rare occasions.” Hethought that the days of harsh scoldings and sarcasm were also passed. He said, “ASupervisor with a sarcastic tongue is a curse for children have no protection fromthis type.” He also said children should not be sent to bed early or deprived of meals
as a punishment. It is equally clear that Noonan believed that principals had a rightto develop their own unorthodox and violent punishments. He thought that if older
boys got into a fight and refused to apologize, their supervisor should “put them in
the ring with gloves and supervise a boxing match until both boys are too tired to careany more. For a bully, this is good medicine too—let five little fellows with gloves onpush him around the ring. The bully will get tired especially if he is made to box on
his knees.”157
All this is clearly in violation of the 1953 discipline policy. It is not clear if that policy
was ever replaced. In May 1971, W. C. Thomas, the regional superintendent of education for Indian Affairs in Alberta, informed all principals and district superintendents
in Alberta that he considered corporal punishment to be “an archaic practice whichshould cease forthwith.” The directive applied to Indian day schools, which would
have included all former residential schools in Alberta that were now being run by
the federal government instead of by the churches.158 The fact that this directive camefrom a regional superintendent, and applied only to schools in one province, suggeststhat any policy on discipline was, once more, being developed on a piecemeal basis.
Strapping was apparently still acceptable at institutions in British Columbia. Whenfour girls ran away from the Williams Lake, British Columbia, residence in 1973 for thethird time in a “matter of a few days,” the child-care worker strapped each girl twice.
On the following day, he informed the residence administrator of his actions, so it was394 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

after the fact that the administrator reminded him that punishment could be administered only with his approval and in the presence of a witness.159
The cutting of hair also continued into the 1970s at some schools. Indian Affairs
investigators found in 1970 that the staff of the Anglican school in La Tuque, Québec,were cutting both boys’ and girls’ hair to between one to two inches (2.5 to 5 centimetres) in length, depending on the gravity of the infraction, as a common disciplinary
measure. The inspectors described the case of one student who was caught smoking
by a staff member during a visit by the student’s mother. The staff member locatedscissors and “proceeded to cut off some of her hair in front of her mother.”160

The closing years
By the mid-1970s, many of the residential schools in Canada were closed, and thefrequency of reported conflicts over corporal punishment declined. But they did not
go away. Conflicts among students, parents, and administrators contributed to theclosing of two Mennonite-sponsored schools in northwestern Ontario. The administration of the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school was unable to stamp out what appears
to have been an institutional culture of harsh and abusive discipline.

The Poplar Hill and Stirland Lake conflicts
In the late 1980s, conflicts erupted over discipline at the Poplar Hill and Stirland
Lake schools in northwestern Ontario. These schools were operated by the Northern
Light Gospel Mission, an independent Mennonite mission to Aboriginal people, andan offshoot of the mission called the Northern Youth Programs.161 The schools, which
had initially been established with support from Indian Affairs, received their funding
from First Nations-controlled education councils.
In 1989, the Northern Nishnawbe Education Council (nnec) decided to cut off
funding for children attending the Northern Light Gospel Mission school at Poplar
Hill. The decision, which forced the school to close, was made after agreement could
not be reached between the nnec and the Northern Light Gospel Mission over therole that corporal punishment would play in the school. According to Rodney Howeof the nnec, corporal punishment was administered by having one staff person hold astudent down on a table, while a second person struck the student with a leather strap.
The nnec wished to see corporal punishment abolished, while the school administration was prepared only to limit its use to children under the age of twelve. The chairof the school’s board of directors said, “Rather than giving up biblical principles, we
decided to stay within our guidelines [on the use of corporal punishment].”

Discipline: 1940–2000 • 395

Howe had been educated at the school and had later worked there as a counsellor.
His concerns over discipline were one of the reasons he left the school staff. Howe said
he did not believe children were abused at the school, but he was disturbed by reports
of a “counselling room” in which children were alleged to have been locked for hours
at a time.162 By January of the following year, the school had not reopened. Parents
from some communities were reportedly lobbying the nnec to reverse its decision on
funding.163 The controversy led police and child-welfare agencies to initiate an investigation into the school. Mennonite missionaries working in northwestern Ontario
also voiced their criticism of the school. Kate Kroeker said she had spoken to a former student who said that in the past, students had been beaten “black and blue.”164
Former staff argued that corporal punishment was used only as a last resort, andsaid that the conflict over discipline was, in reality, a conflict between the Northern
Nishnawbe Education Council and the Northern Light Gospel Mission over controlof the school.165 A critical report on the school appeared in the Mennonite Reporter,a publication of the Mennonite Central Committee, with which the Northern Light
Gospel Mission was not affiliated. The article prompted a former student to come forward in defence of the school. She said she credited her success in life to the eight
years she spent at the school. She also said she had been spanked while she was at theschool, but only after receiving several warnings.166
There had been complaints about discipline at the Mennonite schools in the past.
When two girls refused to return to the Poplar Hill school after the Christmas breakduring the 1964–65 school year, Principal C. Schnupp attributed their decision in partto the fact that after they had run away, he had punished them “rather harshly by strapping and forfeiting recreational and choir privileges for approximately one month.”167
Richard Morris of the nnec investigated complaints about discipline in 1979, reporting that, in most cases, students were punished by being required to work without pay,or through a system of fines, with the money being used to purchase gift certificates“for students who do well in school.” In the case of continual poor behaviour, students
were either sent home or subjected to corporal punishment, which consisted of “astrap in the rump.” Morris passed no judgment on this punishment, and the overallthrust of his report was that treatment of the students was fair and acceptable.168
A physical fight broke out on March 2, 1987, between students and staff at the
Stirland Lake, Ontario, school. Staff had found male and female students, ranging inage from fifteen to eighteen, together in dormitories. In the ensuing confrontation,
students were reported to have hit teachers with hockey sticks and pieces of firewood. One staff member suffered a broken cheekbone and six others were treatedfor cuts and bruises. The fifty-nine students at the school were sent home; some were
expelled. Sixteen students initially faced a variety of charges, including assault andmischief.169 One nineteen-year-old student pleaded guilty to assault causing bodily
harm and common assault in May 1987.170 The Stirland Lake school closed in 1991.171

396 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In February 1991, it was announced that no charges were being laid after the investigation into the Poplar Hill school, which had never reopened. The former directorof education of the Northern Light Gospel Mission said, “At this point, it looks likeresidential schools are a closed chapter across Canada.”172

The Gordon’s school
The Gordon’s school residence in Saskatchewan did not close until the late 1990s.
The school had a long history of poor management, sexual abuse of students, andcomplaints that discipline was harsh and abusive. It is apparent that throughout theschool’s later years, its management did not control the staff. The result was ongoingabuse of students. (The sexual abuse of students at this school is discussed in the following chapter of this volume.)
According to a 1970 disciplinary memo in his employee file, the senior boys’ childcare worker at the Gordon’s school overheard a boy ask a fellow student where herbrother was. The staff member interjected, “In the dump” where all the members ofher family “should be.” When the girl told the supervisor to shut up, he slapped her
across the face, causing her nose to bleed. The memo noted that when he was reprimanded, the employee “acted belligerently.”173
In 1975, a staff member at Gordon’s was instructed to stop swearing at the students,
to stop labelling students from certain reserves as being lazy and stupid, and to stopusing bodily force to get students to obey him.174 The man was disciplined two years
later when he hit a boy in the head and kicked him in the ribs to get him out of bed,
and then dragged the boy to the lounge. The boy had slammed his door to express
his frustration with the cancellation of a trip into town to attend a hockey game.175
Because the staff member had been previously warned about his “man-handling” ofstudents, he was suspended without pay for three days.176 In 1978, a child-care worker
struck a student with a broom handle, fracturing her arm. The student had apparently“talked back” to her.177
Discipline continued to be an issue in the 1980s. When a child-care worker locatedfive runaways, he strapped one of them, and told the rest that if they did not like lifein the residence, all he needed to do was ask their parents to have them discharged.
In a written report, the child-care worker said that he did not worry too much about
one boy who had run away, since he was seventeen and usually ended up at a friend’s
home. His report also noted that another student had told his grandparents that twochild-care workers had hit him with a broom, a charge that the two women denied.178
In the spring of 1986, students at the Gordon’s residence complained that the samechild-care worker had grabbed them by the throat and the hair, pushed them around,banged their heads against doors, and verbally abused them.179

Discipline: 1940–2000 • 397

In mid-1985, another child-care worker at the Gordon’s school was suspended forthree days after he threw a student out of bed.180 The agenda for a 1986 child-care
workers’ meeting noted that one of the employees had been seen pushing young children when he wanted them to get going. The author noted, “I think they are rather
small for that and I don’t think they respond all that well.”181
In 1987, thirteen female students at the residence were interviewed about thetreatment they were receiving from one of the child-care workers on staff. An internal investigation concluded that a child-care worker had sexually harassed one former employee, had shown “gross misjudgment in his physical contact and in his
intrusion of privacy with female students,” “gross incompetence in his counsellingof adolescent girls in matters of their sexuality,” and had thereby led many students
to leave or not return to the residence. As a result, he was dismissed.182 In 2001, two
women successfully sued the child-care worker for injuries and losses they suffered
as a consequence of being sexually assaulted by him while they were students at theGordon’s residence.183
The record shows that in 1987,• a child-care worker slapped a girl who “was being pretty lippy”;184• a staff member grabbed a student by the hair and walked him to the office while
holding his hair, because he believed the boy was lying when he said he did nothave any homework;185 and• a child-care worker, “Mr. B,” frustrated with a boy who had been bothering
younger students, banged the offender’s head against the wall.186
In 1988,• three boys were strapped ten times on each hand for causing other boys to blackout;187 and• a female student complained that her child-care worker had hit her on the headwith a broom.188 After an investigation, the residence administrator concluded
that the incident had not taken place.189
Problem staff continued to be employed. A March 14, 1991, letter summarized four
incidents in the previous six months for which a child-care worker had been disciplined for using too much force. These included: cuffing runaways on the back of theirheads; grabbing a boy by the neck and pushing him down on a sofa; striking a boy
on the side of the head with a closed hand; and slapping two boys, pushing the headof one of them into a locker. The only disciplinary action, however, was to advise thechild-care worker to seek assistance, and to warn him that the consequences of further misconduct would be “very severe.”190 In 1993, he was given a three-day suspension after hitting three members of the school hockey team on their helmets with ahockey stick to demonstrate his frustration with the team’s poor performance. This398 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissiontime, he was warned that “future incidents of this nature will be dealt with in a most
severe manner.”191
One of the few positive comments that can be made about this record is that itdemonstrates that administrators were attempting to control abusive discipline in
the school. The repeated infractions suggest that these efforts were not successful.
Students continued to be subject to violent and often humiliating punishments that
often were administered by people who had no authority to do so and who chose to
keep no record of what they had done.
The federal government failed to establish and enforce a comprehensive discipline
policy for the residential schools and residences that it funded. The testimony of former students speaks to the result: a series of institutions that were characterized byharsh, punitive, and humiliating discipline. These measures undermined the schools’
educational mission, caused many students to run away, and diminished the perceived value of schooling held by many Aboriginal students. In addition, the schools’
harsh disciplinary regime served, unintentionally, to distance many Aboriginal people
from the churches and missionary organizations that ran the schools and residences.
The failure to develop, implement, and monitor effective discipline sent an unspoken message that there were no real limits on what could be done to Aboriginal
children within the walls of a residential school. The door had been opened to theappalling level of physical and sexual abuse of students that is the subject of the following chapter.

CHAPTER 41

Abuse: 1940–2000

On October 30, 1990, The Journal, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s
flagship English-language current-affairs television program, broadcast
what would come to be seen as an historic interview with Grand Chief of theAssembly of Manitoba Chiefs Phil Fontaine. The interview had been sparked by a visit
Fontaine had paid recently to Roman Catholic officials to discuss his proposal that an
inquiry be held into the operation of residential schools in Canada. He told Journal
host Barbara Frum that at the meeting, he had been asked how prevalent sexual abusehad been in the schools. Fontaine, who had attended the Fort Alexander, Manitoba,
school, said, “To illustrate my point, I had suggested that if we took as an example, mygrade three class, if there were twenty boys in this particular class every single one of
the twenty would have experienced what I experienced. They’ve experienced some
aspect of sexual abuse.”1
Fontaine’s decision to speak of his personal experience focused national attention
on the extent and nature of abuse in residential schools in an unprecedented manner.
His courage also inspired many other former students to break their silence and comeforward with their own personal accounts of abuse.
The full extent of that abuse in the period from 1940 until the closing of the schools
is likely to remain unknown and unknowable. Many victims are now dead. Many more
have been unwilling to speak of their experiences. It is possible, however, to reach anumber of significant conclusions about this abuse through an examination of threeimportant sources of information:
1)

The statistics generated by the Independent Assessment Process (iap) andthe Common Experience Payment (cep) program established by the Indian
Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (irssa)

2)

The documentary record, particularly as it relates to prosecutions for abuse in
the schools

3)

The statements of the former students, whether made to the Truth andReconciliation Commission of Canada or in other forums

400 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

This chapter provides information based on the first two sources of data. Student
statements related to abuse are included in the Truth and Reconciliation Commissionof Canada’s publication entitled The Survivors Speak.
The abuse discussed in this chapter goes far beyond harsh discipline: much of itis sexual in nature. It was painful and humiliating when it occurred, and left people
damaged long after—often for life. The fact that there were few police investigations
into these abuses, or criminal prosecutions of perpetrators, during the period of timethat the schools were in operation is yet one more sign of the failure of the federal
government to take its responsibility towards Aboriginal children seriously. For the
churches or the government to say that they did not know about the extent of theabuse amounts to an admission of a failure to properly manage the institutions under
their control. Those who were aware of the abuse and failed to intervene appropriately
were complicit in the abuse.

Settlement Agreement data relating to abuse
The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement established the Independent
Assessment Process as a mechanism to compensate former students from 139 residential schools for sexual and physical assaults or other wrongful acts committed by schoolstaff (whether employed by the government or the churches), by other adults who were
lawfully on the school premises, or by fellow students. Claims could be made by former residential school students, by individuals who had attended residential schools as
day students, or by individuals who were under the age of twenty-one at the time of theabuse and had been permitted to participate in school activities by an adult employee.
Through the iap, compensation could be provided for the harm experienced at theschool, for the cost of future care, and for loss of employment opportunity caused by
the harm.2
As of January 31, 2015, the iap had received 37,951 claims for injuries resulting fromphysical and sexual abuse at residential schools. By the end of 2014, the iap had resolved
30,939 of those claims, awarding $2,690,000,000 in compensation.3 The cep recognized
the claims of 78,748 former residential school students. Although claims for compensation under the iap could be made by non-residential school students who were abusedat the schools, the vast majority of iap claims were made by former residential school
students. The number of claims for compensation for abuse is equivalent to approximately 48% of the number of former students who were eligible to make such claims.
This number does not include those former students who died prior to May 2005.
As Table 41.1 demonstrates, former students from Saskatchewan account for 24% of
the claims accepted under the cep (19,132) and 24% of the admitted iap claims (7,494).
(An “admitted claim” refers to an application made by anyone eligible for compensation

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 401

under the agreement that lists an allegation eligible for compensation under the irssa.)
The province with the next highest number of claims was British Columba, with 17% of
the accepted cep claims (13,573) and 18% of the admitted iap claims (5,502). Sixteen
per cent (12,236) of accepted cep claims and 21% (6,694) of the admitted iap claims
were from Alberta. As shown in Table 41.1, the percentage of claims for compensationin each province or territory is roughly the same as the overall percentage of claims forcompensation under the Common Experience Payment program.
Table 41.1. Eligible Common Experience Payment claims as of December 31, 2012, andadmitted Independent Assessment Process claims as of September 14, 2014.
Provinces andTerritories

Eligible CEP
ClaimsCEP Claims asa Percentage
of Eligible CEP
ClaimsAdmitted IAP
ClaimsIAP Claims as a
Percentage ofTotal Admitted
IAP Claims

Alberta

12,236

16%

6,694

21%

British Columbia

13,573

17%

5,502

18%

Manitoba

8,861

11%

4,273

14%

New Brunswick

134

0.2%

67

.2%

Newfoundlandand Labrador

23

.03%

5

0.02%

Northwest
Territories

5,354

7%

1,383

4%

Nova Scotia

378

.5%

193

1%

Nunavut

2,465

3%

344

1%

Ontario

8,243

10%

2,773

9%

18

0.03%

Prince Edward
Island43.05%

Québec

5,870

7%

1,776

6%

Saskatchewan

19,132

24%

7,494

24%

Yukon

1,457

2%

438

1%

979

1%

253

1%

31,213100.00%Unknown/
Outside Canada
Total

78,748Source: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Common Experience Payment (CEP) Data from
September 19, 2007, to December 31, 2012; IAP Data from “Data for the TRC – October 7, 2014,” electronic
document received from the Indian Residential Schools Adjudication Secretariat attached to email from Shelley
Trevethan to Kim Murray, 10 October 2014.

Schedule D of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement sets out theabuses and consequences for which a claimant is entitled to be compensated. The
schedule lists acts for which compensation is allowed (Table 41.2) and provides a
description of the potential range of abuse that was inflicted on residential school402 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

students. (The H3, H4, and H5 levels mentioned in the final two points refer to thethree highest levels of harms, which are described elsewhere in the schedule.)
Table 41.2. Compensable acts under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement
Agreement.
SL5• Repeated, persistent incidents of anal or vaginal intercourse.
• Repeated, persistent incidents of anal/vaginal penetration with an object.

SL4• One or more incidents of anal or vaginal intercourse.
• Repeated, persistent incidents of oral intercourse.
• One or more incidents of anal/vaginal penetration with an object.

SL3• One or more incidents of oral intercourse.
• One or more incidents of digital anal/vaginal penetration.
• One or more incidents of attempted anal/vaginal penetration (excluding attempted digitalpenetration).
• Repeated, persistent incidents of masturbation.

PL• One or more physical assaults causing a physical injury that led to or should have led tohospitalization or serious medical treatment by a physician; permanent or demonstrated
long-term physical injury, impairment or disfigurement; loss of consciousness; broken bones;
or a serious but temporary incapacitation such that bed rest or infirmary care of several days
duration was required. Examples include severe beating, whipping and second-degree burning.
SL2• One or more incidents of simulated intercourse.
• One or more incidents of masturbation.
• Repeated, persistent fondling under clothing.

SL1• One or more incidents of fondling or kissing.
• Nude photographs taken of the Claimant.
• The act of an adult employee or other adult lawfully on the premises exposing themselves.
• Any touching of a student, including touching with an object, by an adult employee or other

adult lawfully on the premises which exceeds recognized parental contact and violates thesexual integrity of the student.
OWA• Being singled out for physical abuse by an adult employee or other adult lawfully on

the premises which was grossly excessive in duration and frequency and which caused
psychological consequential harms at the H3 level or higher.
• Any other wrongful act committed by an adult employee or other adult lawfully on the premises
which is proven to have caused psychological consequential harms at the H4 or H5 level.
Source: Schedule D: Independent Assessment Process (IAP) for Continuing Indian Residential School Abuse
Claims, www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/schedule_d-iap.pdf.

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 403

Table 41.3 sets out the factors that were recognized by the Settlement Agreement as
aggravating the abusive acts outlined above.
Table 41.3. Aggravating factors under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement
Agreement.
• Verbal abuse• Racist acts
• Threats• Intimidation/inability to complain; oppression• Humiliation; degradation• Sexual abuse accompanied by violence• Age of the victim or abuse of a particularly vulnerable child• Failure to provide care or emotional support following abuse requiring such care
• Witnessing another student being subjected to an act set out on page 3 [the page that lists

the acts described above]• Use of religious doctrine, paraphernalia or authority during, or in order to facilitate, theabuse• Being abused by an adult who had built a particular relationship of trust and caring with thevictim (betrayal)
Source: Schedule D: Independent Assessment Process (IAP) for Continuing Indian Residential School Abuse
Claims, www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/schedule_d-iap.pdf.

Such abuses have serious impacts. Table 41.4 sets out the following five levels ofconsequential harms.
Table 41.4. Compensable harms under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement
Agreement.
H5 Continued harm resulting in serious dysfunction.
• Evidenced by: psychotic disorganization, loss of ego boundaries, personality disorders,pregnancy resulting from a defined sexual assault or the forced termination of such pregnancy
or being required to place for adoption a child resulting therefrom, self injury, suicidal
tendencies, inability to form or maintain personal relationships, chronic post-traumatic state,sexual dysfunction, or eating disorders.
H4 Harm resulting in some dysfunction.
• Evidenced by: frequent difficulties with interpersonal relationships, development of obsessive-

compulsive and panic states, severe anxiety, occasional suicidal tendencies, permanentsignificantly disabling physical injury, overwhelming guilt, self blame, lack of trust in others,
severe post-traumatic stress disorder, some sexual dysfunction, or eating disorders.
H3 Continued detrimental impact.
• Evidenced by: difficulties with interpersonal relationships, occasional obsessive-compulsive andpanic states, some post-traumatic stress disorder, occasional sexual dysfunction, addiction
to drugs, alcohol or substances, a long term significantly disabling physical injury resulting
from a defined sexual assault, or lasting and significant anxiety, guilt, self-blame, lack of trust404 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissionin others, nightmares, bed-wetting, aggression, hyper-vigilance, anger, retaliatory rage andpossibly self-inflicted injury.
H2 Some detrimental impact.
• Evidenced by: occasional difficulty with personal relationships, some mild post-traumatic stressdisorder, self-blame, lack of trust in others, and low self-esteem; and/or several occasions andseveral symptoms of: anxiety, guilt, nightmares, bed-wetting, aggression, panic states, hypervigilance, retaliatory rage, depression, humiliation, loss of self-esteem.
H1 Modest detrimental impact.
• Evidenced by: occasional short-term, one of: anxiety, nightmares, bed-wetting, aggression,

panic states, hyper-vigilance, retaliatory rage, depression, humiliation, loss of self-esteem.
Source: Schedule D: Independent Assessment Process (IAP) for Continuing Indian Residential School Abuse
Claims, www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/schedule_d-iap.pdf.

Table 41.5. Distribution of Independent Assessment Process settlement amounts
to September 30, 2014.
Provinces and Territories

Total$1–$49,999# of claims% ofnational
total# of claims% ofprovincial
total

Alberta

4,098

19.9%

714

17%

British Columbia

4,130

20.1%

547

13%

Manitoba

2,792

New Brunswick
Newfoundland and Labrador
Northwest Territories
Nova Scotia

13.6%

341

12%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

1,216

5.9%

143

12%

200

.98%

20

10%

Nunavut

92

.45%

10

11%

Ontario

1,932

9.4%

233

13%

Prince Edward Island

0%

0

0%

Québec

1,111

5.4%

138

12%

Saskatchewan

4,620

22.5%

711

15%

315

1.5%

81

26%

3

.01%

1

33%

Yukon
Unknown/Outside Canada
Total
Share of National Total

020,5092,939
14%

Source: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Map of Independent Assessment Process (IAP)
Settlements by Compensation Amount, Data from September 19, 2007, to September 30, 2014.

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 405

In addition to the above, the iap provided compensation for loss of opportunity andthe need for future care. Compensation was provided on the basis of a point systemthat considered both the acts of abuse and the consequences. Table 41.5 sets out the
distribution of Independent Assessment Process settlement amounts to September
30, 2014.
As the table demonstrates, in 21% of the cases, the awards were greater than$150,000. Awards of this size are reflective of the most violent, intrusive, and aggravated acts, and the highest levels of harm. Not only was abuse prevalent at schools
throughout the country, but, for a large percentage of former students, it was also
extremely violent, intrusive, and harmful.

$50,000–$99,999$100,000–$149,999$150,000–$199,999# ofclaims# ofclaims# ofclaims% ofprovincial
total

% of
provincial
total

% of
provincial
total$200,000+# ofclaims% ofprovincial
total

1,282

31%

1,402

34%

489

12%

211

5%

811

20%

1,495

36%

864

21%

413

10%

838

30%

1,007

36%

455

16%

151

5%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

368

30%

434

36%

202

17%

69

6%

61

30.5%

97

48.5%

15

7.5%

7

3.5%

31

34%

35

38%

13

14%

3

3%

532

27%

758

39%

284

15%

125

6%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

410

37%

387

35%

114

10%

62

6%

1,435

31%

1,743

38%

554

12%

177

4%

54

17%

106

34%

55

17%

19

6%

0

0%

2

67%

0

0%

0

0%

5,822

7,466
28%

3,045
36%

1,237
15%

6%

406 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Table 41.6 breaks down the Independent Assessment Process claims by gender.
Men made 51.5% of the claims, and women made 48.5% of the claims.
Table 41.6. Distribution of Independent Assessment Process claims by gender as of
September 14, 2014.
Provinces andTerritories

Alberta

Female

Male

Total

Total

Percentage
of Provincial
Total

Total

Percentage
of Provincial
Total

3,403

51%

3,291

49%

6,694

British Columbia

2,720

49%

2,782

51%

5,502

Manitoba

2,128

50%

2,145

50%

4,273

New Brunswick

31

46%

36

54%

67

Newfoundland andLabrador

3

60%

2

40%

5

Northwest Territories

621

45%

762

55%

1,383

Nova Scotia

90

47%

103

53%

193

Nunavut

172

50%

172

50%

344

Ontario

1,317

47%

1,456

53%

2,773

9

50%

9

50%

18

Prince Edward Island
QuébecSaskatchewan

789

44%

987

56%

1,776

3,487

47%

4,007

53%

7,494

Yukon

222

51%

216

49%

438

Unknown/Outside
Canada

158

62%

95

38%

253

Total
Percentage of National
Total

15,15016,06348.5%

31,21351.5%

Source: Secretariat database (SADRE), 14 September 2014, “Data for the TRC – October 7, 2014,” electronic
document received from the Indian Residential Schools Adjudication Secretariat attached to email from Shelley Trevethan to Kim Murray, 10 October 2014. [Data for the TRC–October 7, 2014]

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 407

Table 41.7 reports on all compensated iap claims (as of September 2014) by themost serious proven act of abuse in each claim, a breakdown according to gender.
Table 41.7. Compensated claims by gender and the most serious
proven act of abuse.
Female

Male

Total

SL5

649

1,393

2,042

SL4

1,820

2,401

4,221

SL3

2,379

1,465

3,844

PL

646

828

1,474

SL2

627

960

1,587

SL1

1,193

606

1,799

OWA

12

21

33

Total

7,326

7,674

15,000Source: Secretariat database (SADRE), 14 September 2014, “Data for the TRC – October 7,
2014,” electronic document received from the Indian Residential Schools Adjudication
Secretariat attached to email from Shelley Trevethan to Kim Murray, 10 October 2014.

Male students were compensated at the most serious and damaging category ofabuse at a greater rate than female students.

408 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Table 41.8 shows the distribution of admitted iap claims by denomination.
Table 41.8. Distribution of admitted IAP claims by denomination as of
September 30, 2013.
Provinces and Territories

AnglicanRoman Catholic

BaptistNumberofclaims

Share
of
prov.
total

Numberofclaims

Share
of
prov.
total

Numberofclaims

Share
of
prov.
total

Alberta

588

10%

4,815

81%

0

0%

British Columbia

627

13%

3,550

76%

0

0%

Manitoba

577

17%

2,093

63%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

New Brunswick
Newfoundland and Labrador

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

255

20%

974

76%

0

0%

Nova Scotia

0

0%

300

100%

0

0%

Nunavut

0

0%

72

33%

0

0%

Ontario

977

35%

1,380

50%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

268

18%

1,163

79%

0

0%

2,916

39%

4,528

61%

0

0%

64

32%

28

13%

40

21%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

Northwest Territories

Prince Edward Island
QuébecSaskatchewan
Yukon
Unknown/Outside Canada
Total
Share of National Total

6,242

18,903
22.5%

40
68%

Source: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Map of Independent Assessment Process(IAP) Claims by Church Organization, Data from September 19, 2007, to September 30, 2013.

.14%

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 409

Nondenominational

Presbyterian

Mennonite

United Church

Total

Numberofclaims

Share
of
prov.
total

Numberofclaims

Share
of
prov.
total

Numberofclaims

Share
of
prov.
total

Numberofclaims

Share
of
prov.
total

NumberofclaimsShare ofnational
total

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

556

9%

5,929

21%

76

2%

0

0%

0

0%

407

9%

4,660

17%

35

1%

190

6%

0

0%

448

13%

3,343

12%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

51

4%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

1,280

4.6%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

300

1%

145

67%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

217

.8%

1

.04%

275

10%

133

5%

14

.5%

2,780

10%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

36

3%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

1,467

5.3%

7,446

27%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

2

.03%

68

33%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

0

0%

412

465
1.5%

133
1.7%

1,427
.5%

200

.7%

0

0%

27,6225%

410 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The number of schools and residences under the administration of each denomination fluctuated considerably. Enrolment also varied drastically. For example, while
the federal government operated a large number of non-denominational hostels innorthern Canada in the 1960s, enrolment in these hostels was often ten students or
fewer. Table 41.9 compares each denomination’s share of the national total of admitted iap claims with the denomination’s share of the number of schools recognized by
the Settlement Agreement that were in operation in 1940, 1960, and 1980.
Table 41.9. Distribution of admitted IAP claims by denomination as of September 30,
2013.
ChurchShare of National Total
of Admitted IAP Claims

Anglican

22.5%

Share of National Total of
Settlement Agreement Schools
1940

1960

1980

25%

22%

13%

Baptist

.14%

0%

1%

0%

Mennonite

.5%

0%

0%

.4%

Non-denominational

1.5%

0%

7%

2%

Presbyterian

1.7%

2%

2%

0%

Roman Catholic

68%

57%

60%

65%

United Church

5%

16%

7%

0%

Source: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Map of Independent Assessment Process (IAP)
Claims by Church Organization, Data from September 19, 2007, to September 30, 2013, and opening and closing
dates of Settlement Agreement schools.

As can be seen, the percentage of claims made against each denomination is reflective of the denomination’s share of the number of schools in operation in the post1940 period.
Claims could also be made under the iap for compensation for abuse experienced
at the hands of other students. Table 41.10 shows that one-third (8,470) of admitted iap
claims (26,261) have been related to the abuse of students by students as of September
30, 2013. This relationship varies significantly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In
Nova Scotia, such claims account for 63% of the admitted iap claims made from thatprovince. The issue of student abuse of students is discussed in the following chapter.

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 411

Table 41.10. Distribution of Independent Assessment Process claims by student-tostudent abuse as of September 30, 2013.
Provinces and Territories

Admitted
Student-to-Student
ClaimsTotal Admitted
ClaimsStudent-to-Student
Claims as a Percentage
of Admitted Claims For
Each Jurisdiction

Alberta

1,649

6,173

27%

British Columbia

1,057

4,960

21%

Manitoba

1,628

4,072

40%

New Brunswick

0

0

0%

Newfoundland and Labrador

0

0

0%

Northwest Territories

383

1,690

23%

Nova Scotia

190

302

63%

Nunavut

59

244

24%

Ontario

1,246

3,028

41%

0

0

0%

Prince Edward Island
Québec

441

1,513

29%

3,836

7,860

49%

Yukon

86

330

26%

Unknown/Outside Canada

2

3

67%

10,57730,175

Saskatchewan

Total
Percentage of National Total

35%

Source: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Distribution of IAP Claims with Student-to-Student
Abuse Map, Data from September 19, 2007, to September 30, 2013.

Taken together, the data from the Independent Assessment Process and theCommon Experience Payment provide strong evidence that
• abuse was widespread throughout the residential school system;• a significant percentage of the acts of abuse were of a serious nature withpotentially lifelong impacts;• male and female students were abused at equal rates;• male students were compensated at the most serious and damaging category ofabuse at a greater rate than female students;• students were at risk in all institutions, regardless of the denomination of thereligious order in charge of the institution; and• student abuse of fellow students was a serious and widespread problem.
The rest of this chapter is based on documentary evidence and the limited numberof criminal investigations and prosecutions that have been undertaken into the abuseof residential school students. (Civil court cases are discussed in a later chapter on thedevelopment of the Settlement Agreement.) It provides stark evidence of the violent
and destructive side of residential schooling in Canada.

412 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

This section makes it clear that the government and churches were well aware of
the potential for abuse in the schools. Despite this risk, for reasons of economy, thegovernment and churches failed to effectively screen and monitor staff. As is noted
elsewhere in this report, due to the low level of government funding, the churches
were not able to offer competitive salaries. This meant that they were often reduced tohiring whoever applied. Although teacher salaries improved significantly during thepost-1940 period, the salaries offered to dormitory supervisors remained very low. It
is also clear that in some cases when school and government officials encountered
incidents of abuse, the abusers were fired and not prosecuted. Churches and religious
societies in charge of the schools did not always report incidents of abuse to the federal government or the police. Even when they did, allegations of abuse were often not
fully or properly investigated. For most of the system’s history, the government andchurches paid no attention to the needs of abused students or their families. There islittle evidence of families’ being contacted once it was recognized that students had
been abused, and, for most of this period, there is no record of any sort of support
provided to the victims or their families.

The documents and the criminal prosecutions
In May 2012, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (trc) wrote
the federal government to request copies of all records in Canada’s possession orcontrol for every criminal conviction relating to residential schools. The letter from
Commission Chair Justice Murray Sinclair also requested the production of all documents related to these convictions. The government did not address this request. The
trc also made similar requests through a number of working groups that had been
established as part of the trc process. Canada’s response was that it did not maintain a list of convictions. In the 2013 court proceedings that considered claims in relation to the St. Anne’s residential school at Fort Albany, Ontario, it became apparent
that Canada does, in fact, maintain records relating to residential school convictions.
The following summaries have been prepared without the benefit of access to therequested federal government documentation.4
The records of Indian Affairs and the churches, combined with the records of criminal prosecutions for the abuse of residential school students, provide insight into how
the government and the churches responded to abuse. By 1940, no one in authority could claim that they were not aware that residential schools might attract sexual
predators as employees. They were well aware of the opportunities they were creating
for abuse. Yet, the evidence is clear that, in numerous instances, the government andthe churches failed in their responsibilities to students and their parents. This failure
manifested in the following ways.

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 413• Failure to acknowledge the legitimacy of Aboriginal reports of abuse. In
1944, an Indian Affairs official disparaged the veracity of Aboriginal people whobrought forward complaints about abuse.5 There are reports that in the 1950s,
complaints about the activities of two men were made to the principal of theLower Post school in British Columbia. According to the complainants, no action
was taken at the time.6 One of the men was convicted many years later for assaults
committed at the school.7 The other died before he could be prosecuted.8• Failure to take action. The Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school engineer was
kept on staff after he was convicted of assaulting a female student.9 In Inuvik,
Northwest Territories, despite complaints from co-workers and suspicions
raised by staff, there was no investigation into the behaviour of an employee at
Grollier Hall. Instead, the employee, who was later discovered to have abusedseveral students, was allowed to work to the end of the school year.10• Failure to investigate complaints impartially. Charges of sexual impropriety
made against the principal of the Gordon’s school were investigated by thesenior teacher in 1956.11• Church failure to report abuse to either Indian Affairs or the police. The Truth
and Reconciliation Commission of Canada could locate no record to indicatethat allegations made against the principal of the Gordon’s school in 1956 werereported to Indian Affairs or the police.12 In 1960, Indian Affairs officials were of
the opinion that United Church officials were not sharing detailed information
on abuse at the United Church’s Edmonton school.13 At the same time, United
Church officials became aware of the actions of a second abuser at the Edmonton
school, but, by that time, the man had left the school. The trc has not located any
evidence to indicate that United Church officials forwarded concerns about theindividual’s activities to the police or Indian Affairs.14 Similarly, in 1961, Anglican
Church officials decided not to involve the police in a case of abuse by a staff
member (who had left the school).15 When the principal of the Lytton, British
Columbia, school learned in 1973 that an employee was abusing students, hefired the man but did not report the assaults or his decision to fire the perpetrator
to either the police or Indian Affairs.16• Government failure to report abuse to the police. When federal government
officials concluded that an employee at Coudert Hall in Whitehorse, Yukon, wasabusing students, he was dismissed. No report was made to the police.17• Failure on the part of Indian Affairs field staff to report properly on theprosecution of residential school staff. In 1964, Indian Affairs officials in Ottawa
were not able to get detailed reports from their field staff on the conviction of ateacher at the Morley, Alberta, school.18

414 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission• Failure to screen effectively when hiring. In 1966, a man who had been
convicted of a sexual assault just months earlier was hired at the Qu’Appelleschool in Saskatchewan.19 In 1974, the Lower Post, British Columbia, school
principal hired a man to work as the school’s night watchman, even though
he was known to have been recently convicted of “molesting” boys.20 The
government of Canada was reluctant to press the churches to put appropriate
screening and monitoring processes in place, out of respect for the churches’
need for ‘flexibility.’ Northern Affairs officials recognized that to ensure thatsuch processes were in place would require more resources than the federal
government was then providing.21• Failure to protect students from abuse by other students. For example,
sexual and physical abuse of students by other students at the Gordon’s school
continued into the 1950s with little control.22 (This issue is discussed at greater
length in the following chapter on student victimization of fellow students.)• Failure to assist victims. Although, in one case, there is evidence that a groupof victims were assessed by a psychologist—who was actually in the community
to assess their abuser—the Commission has not been able to locate evidence todemonstrate that the government or the churches provided any organized form of
support or information to abused students, their parents, or their communities.23
The failings were not limited simply to the school system. When reports of physical abuse at the Kamsack, Saskatchewan, school were made in the 1960s, the police
were satisfied with the dismissal of the employee. Thirty years later, the individual wasprosecuted and convicted for the abusive acts committed in the 1960s.24 Paul Leroux,a supervisor at Grollier Hall, was convicted of a sexual assault in 1979 involving a student at Grollier Hall.25 The Commission has not found any documentation to suggestthat an investigation was carried out at that time to determine if Leroux had assaulted
any other students at either Grollier Hall or the Beauval, Saskatchewan, school where
he had previously worked. Decades later, Leroux was convicted of additional assaults
at both Grollier Hall and Beauval.26

Abusers and their methods
Many of the people who were convicted of abusing students were dormitory supervisors. They oversaw student activities from the moment the students woke up until
they went to bed. During this period, teachers often lived in separate accommodations, and (depending on the school and location) were not intimately involved in thedaily lives of the students outside the classroom. Supervisors, though, were usuallyprovided quarters in the same building as the students they were supervising. A group

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 415

of students might be under the same supervisor’s authority for a period of two to three
years. The supervisor escorted students to meals, directed their chores, was responsible for their personal hygiene, oversaw their recreation and study time, took themon outings, and saw them to bed. And, although it was often counter to Indian Affairs
policy, supervisors also administered discipline.27
A supervisor’s power and presence were all-encompassing. Abusive supervisors
were able to use their authority to manipulate student behaviour, usually by employing a mixture of threats and bribes. Given the opportunity to confront an abusive
supervisor many years later at his trial, one former student said, “I was your slave,your puppet, for almost three years.”28
At Grollier Hall in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, Martin Houston, who was later
convicted on numerous abuse charges in relation to his activities at the residence,
gave boys toy guns, candy, soft drinks, and pens as favours. He also warned his victims
not to tell anyone about what had been done to them.29 At the Kuper Island, British
Columbia, school, Martin Saxey, who was a handyman, not a supervisor, lured young
boys into his room with promises of candy.30 At Coudert Hall in Whitehorse, Yukon
Territory, Claude Frappier bribed students with candy and threatened to take away
privileges and to disclose to others that they had engaged in sexual activities.31 At theAlberni school in British Columbia, Arthur Plint employed bribes, threats, and physical force in his ongoing campaign of sexual terrorism.32 One of his victims was tenyear-old Willie Blackwater. In 1964, shortly after Blackwater had arrived at the schoolfrom his home on the Kispiox Reserve in northern British Columbia, Plint called him
into his room, claiming that Blackwater’s father was on the phone. Once the boy was in
his room, Plint sexually assaulted him. Several days later, he assaulted him once more.
When Plint discovered that Blackwater had told his father of the assaults, Blackwater
says, Plint beat him so badly that he had to be treated in the school infirmary.33
At the Lytton, British Columbia, school, Derek Clarke initiated his abuse of a student
by fondling him under the blankets in the morning. The excuse given was that he waschecking for “things.” He provided boys he was abusing with small treats or favours
such as chocolate, soda pop, gum, or access to his record collection. He would also
take them, with the principal’s permission, on weekend field trips. He took advantageof this additional level of control and privacy to abuse many of the boys who accompanied him. The boys who had been abused often became the object of ridicule in theschool, being referred to as “Clarke’s boys.”34
At the Williams Lake, British Columbia, school, boys’ supervisor Harold McIntee
would slip into the third-floor boys’ dormitory at night. There, he would fondle themin their sleep. Some boys would object and force him to stop. When they objected, hesaid that he was simply checking them for lice. The older boys were aware of McIntee’s
activities and taunted him.35 At the Beauval, Saskatchewan, school, Paul Leroux took

416 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

boys into his room, provided them with alcohol, showed them pornographic movies,
and then sexually molested them.36
When residential schools began hiring Aboriginal staff, some of the individuals they recruited had themselves been abused when they had attended residential
school. From as early as 1947, there are examples of students abused by supervisors
who had also been abused when they had attended residential school.37 Whether or
not they had attended residential school, many of the convicted abusers had been
abused as children; in some cases, in institutional settings.38
Not all convictions arose from sexual abuse. In the 1950s, at least three students
who could not keep down their daily dose of cod liver oil at the Fort Albany, Ontario,
school were forced to eat their own vomit. If they vomited the food up a second time,a staff member forced them to eat it again. One child was given nothing but regurgitated food to eat for three days.39 A police investigation led to charges and conviction
in relation to this punishment.40
Most prosecutions and convictions, however, have been for sexual abuse. According
to trial reports, the victims were often young, between the ages of six and thirteen,
and highly vulnerable. They were subject to unwanted inspection, fondled, forced toengage in oral sex, sodomized, and raped.41
The focus in this section is on abuse that was identified in the schools throughdocuments and criminal prosecutions. It is not an examination of the limitations ofeach of the prosecutions. Despite this, a number of points must be made about theprosecution of abusers. A large percentage of the prosecutions took place after theschools had closed and many years after the assaults had taken place. The failure toprosecute abuse when the schools were in operation is a reflection of numerous factors: the powerlessness of the abused; the threats that their abusers made; and theunresponsiveness of the churches and government, and sometimes parents, to thosecomplaints that were made. The increase in prosecutions in the 1990s reflects a growing societal recognition of the likelihood that students in orphanages and boarding
schools had been subjected to abuse. The highly publicized revelations in 1989 of thedecades-long abuse at the Mount Cashel Orphanage in Newfoundland was a turning
point in Canada in recognizing the extent and severity of abuse of students.42
Even though the issue did not come to national attention until the 1990s, the abuse
was not unknown to the organizations that were running residential schools. To makesure that unacceptable staff members were not rehired at other schools, in 1960, theAnglican Indian School Administration (isa) established a confidential character code
system. When staff members retired or were dismissed, the principal was to notify theisa head office and assign the person to one of the following five categories.
Category A: Unfit for reason of instability, financial difficulties, chronic complainer,etc.

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 417

Category B: Lazy and indifferent
Category C: Suspected moral grounds
Category D: Definite knowledge of lack of suitability on moral grounds
Category Z: Satisfactory staff members
The isa would then send out circulars of names and the appropriate categories(which were identified solely by the appropriate letter of the alphabet) to principals
and administrators.43 A list sent out in April 1962, for example, listed two people incategory C.44
Indian Affairs established a similar ‘Caution List’ in 1968. All Indian Affairs school
superintendents were required to submit the names of all former teachers who had“created problems” and were no longer employed by Indian Affairs.45 The first list wassent out in June 1968. No one on the list was to be hired without the approval of the
Indian Affairs office in Ottawa.46
There is no simple way to present the following material. A jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction approach has been selected, since it allows for the portrayal of ongoing problems
at a number of specific institutions. It also provides for a discussion of specific police
investigations that were limited to single jurisdictions. One of the limitations of thisapproach arises in the cases of individuals who worked (and abused children) in morethan one jurisdiction.
The Commission has not been able to identify any convictions in either Nova Scotia
or Québec. However, the Commission is convinced by the statements it received, andby the evidence provided through the iap process, that students were also abused atschools in both those jurisdictions.

Alberta
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has been able to locate
records of prosecutions for incidents at the Morley and Edmonton schools in Alberta.

The Morley school, 1944
In 1944, Indian Affairs officials consulted with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
about allegations that the principal of the Morley school had engaged in “misconduct”
with female students. The allegations had been brought forward by a couple who said
they had heard stories of events that had taken place several years earlier. A decision
was made not to proceed with the investigation unless the couple would provide thenames of either the parents or the students they believed had been victimized. In

418 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

assessing the complaint, Indian agent C. Pant. Schmidt wrote, “Indian parents andIndian pupils who develop a dislike against a residential school principal, are apt tomake statements from time to time which cannot be supported by the facts.”47
Documents reviewed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission did not revealthat any further investigation took place.

The Edmonton school, 1960
The Edmonton school was consumed by crisis in September 1960. In the middleof September, a United Church missionary, the Reverend Earl Stotesbury, accompanied a number of students from Saskatchewan to the Edmonton school. Stotesbury
became suspicious of the relations between the school chaplain, James Ludford, andsome of the male students. Stotesbury took affidavits from a number of the students,
the content of which confirmed his suspicions that Ludford was having sexual relations with some students. Fearing for the safety of the students he had brought to theschool, Stotesbury arranged alternate accommodations for them. He also alerted several church officials about his concerns. Since they failed to act with the speed hethought the matter required, he called the police. And, when he saw that Ludford had
packed his bags and was preparing to leave the school, Stotesbury felt obliged to physically detain him—leading to a violent encounter between the two men.48
Ludford was arrested and pleaded guilty to acts of gross indecency with one otherperson between February 1 and June 30, 1960. He was given a one-year suspended
sentence. As a condition of his sentence, he was to report to the provincial mental hospital and not participate in activities with individuals under the age of twenty-one.49
It is clear that First Nations people had a better understanding than did the government or the administrators of what was going on at the school. In December 1960,
three months after the abuse had been uncovered, members of the Kitwancool Bandannounced that their children who attended the Edmonton school would not be
returning to the school after the Christmas holidays. One of the band leaders told local
Indian Affairs official J. E. Inget:
For a number of years now we have been hearing unfavourable rumours about
the Edmonton school. We did not want to send our children to that school thisyear and did so only because the Agency Superintendent promised us that theywould be returning to Kitwancool at Christmas. Our children write to us sayingthat they have been subjected to some personal abuse by some of the otherchildren. We are, also, told that there has been immorality in that school. One
girl wrote to her mother saying, ‘please send for us if you do not want us to comehome in caskets.’ We are very much concerned for the welfare of our children
and want them back home at the end of the school term.

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 419

Inget wrote that he did not “for one moment believe that things are as bad as allthat.” He proposed that the children remain in the school until he had carried out an
investigation. However, he said, “they are so highly emotionalized about this that theyfeel, regardless of what such an investigation might reveal, it would not restore theirconfidence in the school.”50
Dwight Powell, the superintendent of Home Missions of the United Church for
Alberta, informed Indian Affairs that, in his opinion, only a small number of students,
most of whom had left the school by then, had been victimized by Ludford. The namesof the students were not provided to school principal Oliver Strapp, who announced
that he was resigning at the end of the year.51 Ludford’s abuse of students was hushed
up within the church: the minutes of the Edmonton school committee meeting heldon October 27, 1960, merely stated that Ludford had become ill and had to leave theschool, and that Strapp would be retiring at the end of the school year.52
On November 30, 1960, L. C. Hunter of Indian Affairs in Alberta informed R. F.
Davey, his superior in Ottawa, that “at least one other staff member had been involvedin acts of sexual deviation.” According to Hunter, that staff member had resigned“ostensibly for other reasons.” A Reverend MacMillan, the chair of the Edmonton
United Church Presbytery, and Dwight Powell had the details of the cases but failed
to disclose them to Indian Affairs. Hunter did report to Davey that “we have every
reason to believe that the over-all situation at the Edmonton Residential School is far
from being wholesome.” Both MacMillan and Powell agreed with Hunter that Strapp
should be dismissed immediately, since his “continuation as principal may prove to
be exceptionally embarrassing to the United Church and irreparably damaging to
the students.”53
Church officials continued to focus on covering up the issue. On November 25,
1960, Powell wrote to E. E. M. Joblin, the United Church’s associate secretary for Home
Missions, about the situation in Edmonton. Reminding Joblin of the “difficulty that theRev. J. C. Ludford got himself into,” he went on to say that “similar things have beensaid” about a recently departed staff member. Powell said that Strapp was defending
the individual’s reputation, but Powell believed that “there certainly seems to us tobe more to these things that are being said that [sic] just an effort to discredit someone wrongfully.”
Powell also reported that boys had been getting into the girls’ dormitories at night.
Strapp blamed the problem on Indian Affairs official Hunter, who had insisted that
Strapp stop locking the dormitory doors. Powell had reached the conclusion that
Strapp had “little of love or charity in his attitude to the Indian child.” He continued,“We hear of corporal punishment being meted out with the buckle ends of belts, severe
enough to raise welts on bodies; Mr. Strapp says that he has put a stop to that. But
our feeling is that there is too much of slapping and physical force in punishments.”
Although Strapp had originally indicated he would leave at the end of December, he420 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

had concluded that not to work until the end of June would be an admission of failure.54 Within days of Powell’s letter, however, Strapp also wrote to Joblin, noting thatthe school had been a “trouble spot through the years.” Strapp said he thought hewould be ill if he stayed longer. As a result, he was prepared to go as soon as possible.55
He was replaced in January 1961 by the recently retired A. E. Caldwell, who had been
the principal of the Alberni, British Columbia, school since 1944.56
At the end of January 1961, Caldwell wrote a harsh and, at times, offensive assessment of the staff, wondering how “Strapp managed to aggregate such a bunch of cripples.” He said there was only one of the women on staff worth keeping. One had aserious heart problem, one had fainting spells, one was a “Sectarian fanatic,” and hehad previously dismissed another, whom he termed “brainless,” when she had worked
for him at the Alberni school. He concluded by noting that “from numerous statements I have unearthed, it would seem that Strapp had another ‘homo’ on the staff
from last March to November.” This was the same individual about whom Powell had
raised concerns.57 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s file review
has not located any documents indicating that the United Church informed IndianAffairs or the police about its concerns about this former employee.
The United Church also allowed James Ludford to continue to work with Aboriginal
people. From 1961 to 1964, he worked at the Fraserdale, Ontario, mission, and from1964 to 1970, he worked at the Parry Sound, Ontario, mission.58 Ludford died in 1990.59
Hiring a new principal did not end the mistreatment of students at the Edmonton
school. In 1962, Lonnie George Young wrote to his parents in Skidegate, British
Columbia, that the new supervisor at the Edmonton school was making life miserable
for the students.
Just because he is an ex-cop I guess he thinks he can get away with anything,
like drinking and making us work when ever it pleases him to do such. Like thismorning at 2 a.m. he woke us up and started to preach to us on how stupid theIndian was. Christ I got mad me and another boy from Port Simpson were theonly ones who sat up to show we were mad too. Then he comes up to me andaskes [sic] me if I want to fight. Then this morning at 5 a.m. he got us up to go andscrub the basement. It was there I desided [sic] I’d like to go home because heslapped me around for not getting haircut that morning.60

The boy’s father passed the letter on to Indian Affairs. An investigation concluded,“George Young’s report on the situation at this school is true, at least to some extent.”
Indian Affairs official L. C. Hunter wrote that the supervisor in question was told that
he would “be dismissed immediately should he, in the future, resort to corporal punishment or any form of harsh discipline of the students.”61

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 421

The Morley school, 1963
In May 1963, Morley, Alberta, school principal Ron Campbell suspected oneof the staff members, Robert G. Pooley, of engaging in “homosexual activities.” An
Indian Affairs report on the matter noted that there was no evidence to substantiate
the allegation, adding that the principal was “watching Mr. Pooley very carefully.”62
Three weeks after the Indian Affairs report was written, Pooley resigned his position at the school.63 The Mounted Police arrested him on June 3, 1963. According to
A. MacKinnon, the school’s supervising principal (the principal was responsible toa supervising principal), Pooley was charged with having engaged in “homosexual
activities with young boys.” MacKinnon believed the evidence came from “boys in theschool.” After pleading not guilty before a magistrate, Pooley was sent to the Ponoka,
Alberta, mental institute to determine if he was fit to stand trial.64 He was convicted in
the fall of 1963. While correspondence from Indian Affairs officials reported that hewas convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile, newspaper accountsof the day stated that he was convicted of indecently assaulting a fifteen-year-old boy.
Pooley, who maintained his innocence, was given a one-year sentence to be served at
a provincial mental institute.65
The assistant director of education for Indian Affairs, R. F. Davey, found it impossible to get Alberta regional staff to provide him with definitive information on thecase.66 A number of church and government officials appear to have believed that
Pooley’s conviction was a miscarriage of justice.67 Despite his conviction, Pooley wasdetermined to continue his career as a teacher, and sought work with school boards
in Ontario and Alberta. In doing so, he used Indian Affairs officials as references. In
his response to a query about Pooley from a school board, M. Brodhead, the IndianAffairs district school superintendent for southern Alberta, made no mention of his
arrest or conviction. In one letter, Brodhead wrote, “I would not hesitate in recommending him for employment in your district.”68 Pooley got the job; by October 1964,
he was teaching in the Spirit River School Division in Alberta.69 When, earlier that year,
he had sought employment with Indian Affairs as a teacher, R. F. Davey recommended
against hiring him.70

British Columbia cases
British Columbia is the province with the largest number of prosecutions of former residential school employees for abuse. At least sixteen former employees of ten
schools have been charged with the abuse of students. These charges led to the conviction of eight individuals. Only one of the individuals was tried and convicted in the422 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

period shortly after the abuse occurred. In all other cases, the prosecutions took place
years later.
This was partly because parental concerns were often disregarded. When communities made accusations of abuse, they were often greeted with official skepticism. The
Sechelt Band Council petitioned Indian Affairs for a number of changes at the Sechelt
school in early 1959. In particular, they asked that one of the staff be transferred toanother school.71 In presenting the petition, the band councillors were reported tohave “hinted in their conversation with the Commissioner that [this staff member]
was even making improper advances to the boys.”
In reporting the matter to his superiors, school principal Bernardo wrote,
I pointed out that this was completely ridiculous, more, it was diabolical and did
not even deserve consideration. But to assure the Inspector who was charged
with the unpleasant task of repeating the inference to me, I stated that I and all
past Principals give [the staff member in question] our complete confidence andvouch for his integrity without limit.

Bernardo wrote that, “for the sake of his blood pressure,” he did not speak to theindividual about the allegation.72 In response, Oblate Provincial L. K. Poupore wrote,“I would prefer not to discuss the matter with [Indian Affairs] officials here [in Ottawa]
until I have talked with you at the time of the Chapter. I often heard that the Indiansat Sechelt were a rather difficult crowd to handle.”73 Indian Affairs official J. N. Neville
was asked to look into the complaints. It does not appear that he spoke to any of thestudents or the staff members who were accused. He wrote that the individual was“a courteous, well-spoken, well-mannered man.” He concluded, “Unless complaints
can be specific and charges substantiated, to make accusations which might smear
the twenty-nine year record of service in the cause of the Indians themselves, seems
irresponsible on the part of the Councillors.”74 This individual was still at the school in
1962, and by 1966, he was working as a supervisor at the Mission, British Columbia,
school.75 Indian Affairs and church officials all chose to treat this as a case in which afew self-seeking agitators had used the band council to make irresponsible and inaccurate allegations to further their own ends.76 This is typical of the way Aboriginal concerns were dismissed and minimized.
It was largely in response to ongoing Aboriginal pressure that, in the 1990s, a province-wide police investigation into residential school abuse was undertaken. In 1992,
the Nuu-Chah-Nulth Tribal Council in British Columbia carried out a study of the
impact of residential schooling on their community. The study identified more than
100 people who said they had been either physically or sexually abused at residential
school. In November 1994, tribal council representatives presented their findings tomembers of the Port Alberni Royal Canadian Mounted Police (rcmp) detachment.

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 423

At that time, the rcmp was involved in an investigation into the activities of Arthur
Plint, a former supervisor at the Port Alberni school. The courts were dealing withcharges against Bishop Hubert O’Connor, the former principal of the Williams Lake
school. Several other former Williams Lake employees were under investigation, as
were employees of the Lower Post school on the British Columbia–Yukon border. In
the late 1980s, two former employees of the Lytton school had been tried on abusecharges. One was convicted; the other was acquitted. In light of the number of potential cases that the Nuu-Chah-Nulth inquiry might give rise to, the rcmp establishedthe Native Indian Residential School Task Force. The task force commenced its
work in 1995. Over the following eight years, it investigated 974 allegations of criminal misconduct.
Four hundred and fifty-three people reported being victimized. Another 245 people were identified as possible victims, meaning that, while there was credible evidence to believe they had been victimized, they had not contacted the police. Thissuggests that there were nearly 700 potential victims. The task force identified 396
suspects. Complaints came from former students of fifteen of the residential schools
in British Columbia. There were 515 alleged sexual assaults (involving 374 victims),
435 alleged physical assaults (involving 223 victims), and 24 other alleged offences(involving 19 victims).
The investigation concluded that one-third of the suspects were dead. Eventually,
148 sexual assault charges and 11 physical assault charges were laid.
The rcmp’s final report did not state how many people were charged or convicted
as a result of its work. The trc’s review of documentation supplied by the rcmp concludes that the task force led to the prosecution and conviction of three men who had
previously been charged and convicted of abusing residential school students (Derek
Clarke, Glenn Doughty, and Arthur Plint). Two other individuals, who had never beenpreviously convicted (Gerald Moran and Donald Haddock), were also charged andconvicted with abusing residential school students. In three other cases, charges werestayed or the accused were not brought to trial for a variety of other reasons.77
The British Columbia cases (some of which, as noted above, predate the rcmp’s
province-wide inquiry) are described below according to church denomination and,
where appropriate, according to school.

Alberni school convictions
Arthur Plint first went to work at the Alberni residential school as a dormitory
supervisor in 1948. He left in 1953 to become a postal worker. In 1963, he returnedto the school as a supervisor and remained there until 1968. He sexually abused students at the school during both periods of his employment. In 1995, Plint pleaded

424 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

guilty to eighteen counts of indecent assault and was sentenced to eleven years in
jail. In sentencing Plint, Justice D. A. Hogarth wrote that “so far as the victims of theaccused in this matter are concerned, the Indian Residential School System was nothing but a form of institutionalized pedophilia, and the accused, so far as they are concerned, being children at the time, was a sexual terrorist.” In 1997, Plint pleaded guilty
to an additional seventeen charges of abuse arising from his years at the school. He
was sentenced to serve eleven years concurrent to his original sentence.78 Plint was
granted day parole in 2003. At the time, he was eighty-five years old.79
Charges were laid against two other former employees of the Alberni school. Oneof them was Bruce Donald Haddock. Like Plint, Haddock went to work at the Alberni
school in 1948. While he was there, he committed sexual assaults against both maleand female students. He was charged for these offences in 2003, convicted on four
counts of indecent assault, and sentenced to twenty-three months in jail in 2004.80 In
addition to working at the Alberni school, Haddock also worked as a supervisor at the
Anglican school at Alert Bay, British Columbia, a position he left in 1952.81
David Forde worked as a boys’ supervisor at the Alberni school from 1959 to 1960.82
In 2003, he was charged with four counts of sexual assault, dating back from his timeat the school. When he was charged, he was living in Puyallup, Washington.83 He diedin April 2005 before his case came to trial.84

Staff convictions at Anglican schools
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was able to identify prosecutions at two Anglican residential schools in British Columbia: the Alert Bay school
and the Lytton school.

Alert Bay, 1970
In February 1970, the power engineer at the Alert Bay school, Harry Joseph, wasdismissed because he had “entered the senior girls dormitory without authorizationand endeavoured to persuade a fourteen year old female student to leave the dormitory with him. When the girl refused, Mr. Joseph then interfered with two other girls
by removing bed covers and fondling them.” The matter was referred to the Mounted
Police.85 Joseph pleaded guilty to a charge of indecent assault on May 13, 1970. At thetrial, the school principal testified to Joseph’s previous good behaviour. Joseph wasgiven a suspended sentence.86
LyttonThe prosecutions at the Lytton school reveal a callous pattern of behaviour in which
abuse was excused and covered up in an effort to protect both the system and theAbuse: 1940–2000 • 425

perpetrators. In February 1966, Principal Anthony Harding accepted the resignationof a staff member. He thanked the staff member for his past services and wrote thathe trusted that he would “soon find a type of employment that will give greater scope
to your undoubted abilities.”87 In reality, Harding had forced the man to resign after
finding him in bed with a thirteen-year-old female student. Harding had previously
warned him and the student about the dangers of the emotional attachment that hethought was forming between them. In this instance, the girl said the staff member
had forced “her (while he was under the influence of alcohol) to have intercoursewith him.” Principal Harding informed the British Columbia director of student residences for Indian Affairs of the manner in which he had handled the matter. Thereis no record to indicate that the police were contacted. The Truth and Reconciliation
Commission’s file review has not located any documents in which Indian Affairs took
issue with Harding’s approach in this case.88
A few months before this individual was fired, Derek Clarke started working at
the Lytton school. Clarke had completed Grade Eight and had spent one term as a
student in the St. Christopher’s School for Emotionally Disturbed Children in North
Vancouver. Prior to coming to Lytton, he had been a child-care worker at another
Anglican Church institution (the source documents do not name the institution). He
had been asked to leave that institution because of his lack of qualifications, but, evenas he was letting Clarke go, his supervisor arranged for him to get a job in a similar
position at the Anglican-run residential school in Lytton. In what may have been areflection of the difficulty that residential schools had in recruiting staff, the Lytton
administration hired Clarke without a job interview or a review of his references.89
This was in 1966, when the Anglican Church was already well aware of the risks inhiring employees who had not been screened; as noted earlier, the church had alreadyinitiated its own ‘do-not-hire’ list in 1960.90
At Lytton, Clarke was the junior/intermediate boys’ supervisor. He used his authority and control over the dormitory to initiate a reign of sexual terror. In May 1973, ateacher at the local elementary school attended by students from the Lytton residence
overheard a group of boys talking about a supervisor “doing things to boys.” She took
the information to her principal, Joseph Chute. He contacted Anthony Harding, who
was then the Lytton residence administrator. Harding and Chute questioned a numberof boys, who spoke of the sexual abuse they had been subjected to by Clarke. Because
the abuse had taken place at the residence, which was supervised by Harding, andnot at his school, Chute said he did not believe he had a responsibility to report it to
the police.
Harding confronted Clarke, telling him that if he did not resign, the case would beturned over to the police.91 On May 20, 1973, Derek Clarke resigned his position at the
Lytton residence as a child-care worker. In his letter of resignation, he stated that his
reasons for resigning were “personal to myself.”92 In accepting the resignation, Harding426 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

wrote, “Your past services in the field of practical Child Care have been appreciatedand we trust that your personal problems will soon be cleared up.”93 Clarke eventuallyfound work as a janitor at the Central City Mission in Vancouver.94
Harding never contacted Indian Affairs or the police. Harding did inform Anglican
Church officials of Clarke’s behaviour and of the action he had taken in response. The
boys’ parents were not informed of what had happened, and no attempt was made at
the time to provide the boys with any form of counselling or support.95
Fifteen years would pass before Clarke would be held to account for the abuse heinflicted. In April 1988, he was convicted on eight counts of buggery and six counts
of indecent assault, all committed while he was a dormitory supervisor at the Lytton
school. He also pleaded guilty to three charges of buggery committed at the Central
City Mission. He was given a twelve-year prison sentence. The trial judge concluded
that Clarke was responsible for at least 140 illegal sexual encounters. The total number,he said, might be as high as 700. The victims were between nine and eleven years ofage. One of his victims committed suicide months before the trial started.96 Additional
allegations about Clarke’s behaviour at Lytton emerged in 1995. The following year, he
was charged on four additional counts and given an additional two-year sentence.97
The year after Clarke’s 1988 conviction, Anthony Harding, the former administrator of the Lytton residence, who had been informed of Clarke’s behaviour and hadforced him to resign in 1973, went on trial himself. He was charged with three countsof gross indecency and one charge of buggery. The charges related to events that were
alleged to have occurred between 1969 and 1976.98 One of the assaults was alleged tohave involved a former student, who said that he had lived in Harding’s home undera fostering arrangement in 1975. Among other things, it was alleged that Harding had
assaulted a student after the student informed Harding of the sexual abuse of boys at
the school by Clarke.99 Harding was acquitted.100
In a 1998 civil case in which former students sued Canada and the Anglican Church
for damages, witnesses testified that Harding, who lived in rooms adjoining the Lytton
residence, had also provided senior students with access to alcohol in his room before
sexually assaulting them. Justice Janice Dillon of the British Columbia Supreme Court
noted that although Harding had been tried and acquitted on sexual assault charges,
she accepted the evidence regarding Harding’s behaviour. She further suggested thatthe evidence explained Harding’s decision not to report Clarke to the police or to
Indian Affairs.101 (Harding had died in 1992.)102

Roman Catholic cases in British Columbia
Criminal and civil courts have confirmed that students were sexually abused at
six Roman Catholic–operated schools in British Columbia after 1940. Three people

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 427

have been convicted for abusing students at the Williams Lake school; two people
have been convicted for abusing students at the Mission school. The courts have also
confirmed that abuses occurred at the Christie, Kuper Island, Kamloops, and Fraser
Lake schools.

Christie school
In May 1951, Martin Saxey, a member of the Cheeleshat Band in British Columbia
and a former residential school student, was convicted of manslaughter for killinga man after an argument over a driftwood log. After his imprisonment, his wife andchildren were allowed to live at the Christie school on Meares Island, off the coastof Vancouver Island. Upon Saxey’s release from jail in 1955, the school administration hired him to work as a baker, boat driver, and maintenance worker. While he wasworking at the school, Saxey sexually abused children. In the case of at least one boy,the abuse continued for five years, from 1957 to 1962. The victim did not report any ofthese incidents to the police until 1995. By then, Saxey had been dead for nearly ten
years, so no criminal charges were laid. However, a civil court confirmed that Saxey
had abused students while he was at the school.103
Although the Christie school administration failed to protect students from Saxey,
it did act in another case where school officials believed another staff member wasdeveloping an inappropriate relationship with a student. In June 1957, Kamloops
principal James Mulvihill wrote that Christie principal M. D. Kearney was anticipating having a priest removed from the Christie school before the summer holidays.
Kearney feared that scandalous relationships were developing between the priest
and a female student. In December 1957, Kearney destroyed a letter from the studentthat described her attachment to the priest.104 An Oblate newsletter in the fall of 1957
announced that the individual had “left for the East.”105
Mission and Kamloops
Gerald Moran, who worked at both the Mission and Kamloops schools, was convicted of twelve charges of sexual abuse and given a three-year sentence in 2004.
Prior to his trial, he had been living in a monastery in Saskatchewan.106 The Truth andReconciliation Commission of Canada has not been able to determine the complete
period of time that Moran had worked at residential schools. A letter from 1961 indicates that Moran had previously worked under the direction of M. D. Kearney, who
was principal of the Mission school from 1960 to 1963.107 Undated documents say that
Moran worked at the Mission school when H. F. Dunlop was principal.108 Dunlop heldthat position from 1964 to 1973.109
In 2002, a warrant was issued for the arrest of a former Mission school dormitory
supervisor. He faced charges of indecent assault and gross indecency. In 2006, he428 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

was arrested in Thailand and returned to Canada.110 He made his first court appearance in March 2007.111 In September 2007, a pretrial hearing for his case was set for
October 18, 2007. His trial was set for January 21 to January 24, 2008, in Abbotsford,
British Columbia. One of the men he was accused of having abused died in the summer of 2007.112 He was acquitted on all charges in March 2009. Justice Grist said thecase had not been proved beyond a reasonable doubt, pointing to discrepancies inthe evidence.113
Keavin Amyot was appointed to a position with the federal Department of theSecretary of State in February 1966.114 At some time in that year, he was convicted in
Ottawa of committing an act of gross indecency on a child. In that case, he assaulted
a neighbour’s child he was babysitting. He received a suspended sentence on August30, 1966.115 A month and a half later, on October 12, 1966, Guy Voisin, the executive
secretary of the Oblate Indian and Eskimo Welfare Commission, wrote a letter to theprincipals of Oblate residential schools, recommending Amyot for employment as asupervisor. Voisin informed the principals, “He seems to me to have good principles
of education and personal life.” Voisin noted that Amyot was working for the federal
Secretary of State, but was prepared to accept a pay cut to work in the missionary
field.116 Voisin’s recommendation appears to have been successful: by November,
Amyot was working as a supervisor at the Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, school.117 He
worked eight months at the Qu’Appelle school, starting in November 1965. In the fallof 1966, he went to work at the Mission, British Columbia, school.118 An undated document from the Mission school indicates that he worked there as a supervisor for atleast two years.119 He resigned his position at Mission in July 1969.120 Three years later,
he was convicted of indecent assault on a child in Edmonton. He was again given asuspended sentence.121
Almost twenty years later, in April 1987, Amyot pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting
four Inuit boys in Sanikiluaq, Northwest Territories. The assaults took place in 1985
and 1986, while Amyot was employed as a social worker by the government of theNorthwest Territories.122 He was sentenced to two years less a day in jail, followedby three years on probation.123 In British Columbia, former students of the Mission
school informed the rcmp residential schools task force that they had been abused by
Amyot at that school in the 1960s. Amyot died in 2003 before charges against him withregard to those allegations could be finalized.124

Williams Lake and Kuper Island
Four separate sets of charges were eventually laid against former staff membersof the Williams Lake, British Columbia, school. Harold McIntee was an Oblate priest
who was appointed to work at the school in 1959. He, along with other Oblates, wasquartered on the fourth floor of the building. While he was at the school, he sexually
abused male students. After four years, McIntee left the Williams Lake school to serve

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 429

as the parish priest in Duncan, British Columbia. When a thirteen-year-old Aboriginal
boy who had been sexually abused at a local Catholic school came to McIntee forcounselling, McIntee established a sexual relationship with the youth that lasted for
two years. He left the priesthood in the 1970s, but returned to it in the 1980s and served
as a parish priest in British Columbia. During this period, he committed or attempted
to commit a number of sexual assaults on young men he met through his ministry.
McIntee’s activities came to light only in 1988, when the Mounted Police conducted an investigation into allegations of abuse allegedly committed by a boy who
had been abused by McIntee at Williams Lake. As the judge presiding over McIntee’s
trial noted, the officer investigating that case “came to realize he had opened a veritable Pandora’s box: Father McIntee’s name kept jumping out.” McIntee was convicted
in 1989 on charges of sexually assaulting seventeen Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal
boys over a period of twenty-five years. Thirteen charges related to assaults committed at the Williams Lake school. He was sentenced to two years on each charge, to beserved concurrently, and three years of probation.125
Glenn Doughty joined the Oblate order in 1960.126 By 1964, he was listed as working at the Williams Lake school.127 He later went to work at the Kuper Island school.
Doughty resigned his position as the child-care worker for the senior boys there in
December 1972, citing personal reasons.128 He was arrested in 1990 and charged withfive counts of indecent assault and five counts of gross indecency. At the time of his
arrest, he was the chaplain of Lakehead University, in Thunder Bay, Ontario.129 In 1991,
he pleaded guilty to four charges of gross indecency arising from his treatment of students while he worked at the Williams Lake school. He was sentenced to one year in
jail. Four years later, he pleaded guilty to charges of indecent assault and gross indecency arising from his abuse of students at the Kuper Island school. He was sentenced
to another four months in jail.130 In 2000, thirty-six more charges were laid against him
for the abuse of students at both the Williams Lake and Kuper Island schools.131 He
was sentenced to an additional three years in jail.132
Edward Gerald Fitzgerald worked as a dormitory supervisor at both the Fraser Lake
and Williams Lake schools in British Columbia between 1965 and 1973. Twenty-one
charges were laid against him in 2003. He was charged with ten counts of indecent
assault, three counts of gross indecency, two counts of buggery, and six counts ofcommon assault. At the time that he was charged, Fitzgerald was living in Ireland.133
Because there is no extradition treaty between Canada and Ireland, he had not, asof 2006, been returned to this country to stand trial.134 At that time, Mounted Police
spokesperson Mike Pacholuk said that even if there were an extradition process inplace, getting the then eighty-two-year-old Fitzgerald back to Canada before his deathwould be unlikely.135 In 2011, the rcmp believed that Fitzgerald was still alive.136
Hubert O’Connor was principal of the Williams Lake school from 1961 to 1967.137
By 1969, he was responsible for Oblate relations with Indian Affairs officials in British

430 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Columbia.138 In 1971, he was elevated to the position of Bishop of the Diocese of
Yukon.139 He later became Bishop of Prince George in northern British Columbia.140
In 1990, O’Connor was charged with two counts of rape and two counts of indecent
assault. All the assaults were alleged to have occurred while O’Connor was principal of the Williams Lake school. All of them involved women who had been students
at the school. Two women stated that they had been raped by O’Connor when they
were employees of the school, and a third woman said she had been raped when she
was a nineteen-year-old student. In at least one case, one of the women had become
pregnant and O’Connor had arranged for the child’s adoption. O’Connor did not denyhaving sexual relations with at least one of the women. However, he maintained thatthey had been consensual relations.
There were repeated defence motions to have the proceedings stayed. In December
1992, the presiding judge stayed the charges because the prosecution had not madefull disclosure of its evidence. In 1995, the Supreme Court ordered a new trial. At thesame time, it required that the complainants’ therapeutic records be disclosed tothe accused. At the new trial, O’Connor was convicted of one count of rape and oneof indecent assault, and was sentenced to two and a half years in prison in 1996.141
He served six and a half months before being released on bail, pending an appeal ofthe decision.142
In 1998, the British Columbia Court of Appeal acquitted O’Connor on the indecent assault charge and ordered a third trial on the rape charge.143 After this decision,
the complainant, her community, the Crown, and O’Connor agreed to an Aboriginal
healing circle as an alternative to yet another trial. At the circle, O’Connor said hewanted “to apologize for my breach as a priest and my unacceptable behavior, which
was totally wrong.”144 The victim told the media afterwards that she “chose to participate in this healing circle to empower myself. I was able to confront him with the hurts
and pains he has caused me. I have had to live with this pain for over 30 years.” Looking
back on the experience of the preliminary hearing and the two previous trials, she said
that she had been “victimized by the courts. They can be cold and calculating.”145

Manitoba
There is only one recorded prosecution for the abuse of residential school students
in Manitoba. In 2005, Ernest Constant, who had attended the Dauphin school in theearly 1960s and worked there in the late 1960s as a supervisor, was convicted of indecently assaulting seven Dauphin students. He was sentenced to two years less a day.146

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 431

Northwest Territories
In the Northwest Territories, there have been abuse convictions in relation to two
residences: Grollier Hall in Inuvik and the Anglican Fleming Hall in Fort McPherson.
Three of the men convicted of abuse at Grollier Hall were also convicted of abusing
students in schools in other provinces.

Grollier Hall
Grollier Hall opened in September 1959.147 As the Roman Catholic hostel in the
newly established community of Inuvik in the Northwest Territories (nwt), it had an
initial capacity for 240 students.148 It was administered by the Roman Catholic Church
until 1985. The nwt government administered it until 1997, when it ceased to operate
as a residence for public school students, and was transferred to Aurora College.149
The following men worked at Grollier Hall as student supervisors:• Joseph Jean Louis Comeau: 1959 to 1965150• Martin Houston: 1960 to 1962151• George Maczynski: 1966 to 1967152• Paul Leroux: 1967 to 1979153
While they were employed at Grollier Hall, each of these men sexually assaulted students who were living in the residence. Their collective employment records make it
clear that there was at least one sexual abuser on staff for each of the residence’s firsttwenty years of operation. The first of these men to be prosecuted was Martin Houston.
On August 15, 1962, Martin Houston was arrested in Ottawa on a charge of distributing obscene literature (handwritten notes that he left in public washrooms, soliciting sexual partners). He told the police he was a teacher at a federal day school in
Inuvik. In fact, he was a dormitory supervisor at Grollier Hall. He pleaded guilty to thecharge and was sentenced to twenty-one days in jail. In the course of their investigation, police discovered that he was staying in a hotel in the company of a fifteen-yearold boy from the Northwest Territories.
The police investigation revealed that the boy had been enrolled at Grollier Hall.
Houston had been sexually abusing the boy since December 1960. Prior to returning
to his home community for the summer of 1962, Houston had convinced the boy tomeet him in Norman Wells, Northwest Territories. From there, the two had travelled
to Ottawa.154 Further investigation indicated that Houston had been sexually abusing
a number of boys for at least two years.155
Houston pleaded guilty to charges of buggery and gross sexual indecency, involving five students, in 1962. That same year, he was declared a dangerous sex offenderand given an indefinite sentence.156

432 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In reviewing the case, Ben Sivertz, director of the northern administration branchof the federal Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources, wrote:
I find it difficult to believe that this could take place in such close proximity toa group of young teenage boys without arousing suspicion and comment thatwould come to the attention of the hostel administrator—if the administrator
was exercising the kind of supervision over the officers of the hostel we have aright to expect.157

The administrators of Grollier Hall had been suspicious of Houston, who had cometo work at Grollier Hall in the fall of 1960 as the senior boys’ residence supervisor.158
Oblate Father Max Ruyant stated that he had decided to dismiss Houston in June
1962, having concluded Houston was “not a good influence on the boys.” During theRoyal Canadian Mounted Police investigation, Ruyant told the police that Houston
had “dealt out excessive punishment for minor behaviour which punishment usuallyconsisted of strappings.” Ruyant also suspected Houston had “carried on indecently
with the senior boys.” On two occasions, boys had been found to be in his room pastmidnight. The boys were supposed to have been in their own beds at 10:15. The Sisterof Charity responsible for the junior boys had complained to Ruyant several times that
she believed Houston had been “acting indecently with the senior boys.” On one occasion, she said, she had heard Houston apparently taking a bath with a boy.159 It should
be noted that despite these concerns, Houston was allowed to work at the residence
until the end of the 1961–62 school year. In his statement to the police, Houston said
that, rather than being fired, he had resigned from the school because “I thought I was
becoming too friendly with the boys and did not want to keep on the relations withthem because I realized then the mistake it was and the damage it could do to the children.”160 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s file review has not located any
documents demonstrating that Houston was actually dismissed or had resigned prior
to his being arrested. The evidence in this case makes it clear that the school administrators were aware that Houston was engaged in unacceptable behaviour, although
they may not have known the extent of it. Despite this knowledge, they failed to intervene in a timely and effective manner.
In the summer of 1962, Northern Affairs official Sivertz instructed a departmental
official to meet with Bishop Paul Piché of the Roman Catholic mission at Fort Smith
to discuss the situation at Grollier Hall. Sivertz’s instructions for this meeting underscored the fundamental weakness of the government position in relationship to thechurches. While the government expected that qualified people would be employed
and that they would be well supervised, it was not prepared to provide the funding
needed to make sure that its expectations were met. Since the churches were preparedto manage the hostels for less money than it would cost the government to operate

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 433

them, the government was unwilling to place too many demands on the churches.
Sivertz warned the government official investigating conditions at Grollier Hall that:
Care must be taken in your examination of this problem, particularly in
discussions with the Church authorities to avoid any action or suggestion which
would alter, or appear to alter, the degree of responsibility which rests with the
management (Church authorities) for the proper operation of contract hostels.
In the first place we do not have the resources to look after the details involved
in day to day operations. Secondly, and perhaps more important, is the factthat it would be unreasonable to expect the Church authorities to manage thehostels in an efficient manner unless they are permitted considerable flexibility
in matters of detail such as the recruitment and hiring of hostel staff. On theother hand, the hostels are an integral part of our school system. They are
owned by the government and all reasonable operating expenses are paid by
the government.161

David Searle, a lawyer in private practice who prosecuted Houston on behalf of thefederal government, recommended that, to ensure that “single, male homosexuals”
were not hired as supervisors, only married couples should be hired to work in these
positions. If that was not possible, he recommended that the Mounted Police conduct
a background check “on each and every single man and woman who accepts such a
position of authority over youngsters.”162 While Searle was correct in drawing attention to the need for improved screening, his letter reveals the limitations of official
thinking of the era. At the time of his writing, all homosexual acts in Canada wereillegal, and those people suspected of being homosexual had difficulty finding andkeeping employment as teachers. But Searle—and others—was making no distinction between homosexuality and pedophilia. His preference for hiring married couples reveals a naïve belief that married individuals would not abuse children (or, more
likely, a belief that married men would not abuse male children). The focus on homosexuals suggests that homosexual abuse of children was viewed as being worse thanheterosexual abuse. In reality, the threat to students came from the behaviour of those
who preyed sexually on children—pedophiles of any sexual orientation.
According to Ruyant, there had been a limited background check on Houston: he
had received a recommendation from the Oblate father provincial in Winnipeg andfrom a former schoolteacher.163 Houston was born in the Pine Falls region of Manitoba
in 1937 and educated in Powerview, the community that borders the Fort Alexander
Reserve in Manitoba.164 According to Houston, in his youth, he had been sent to areform school. There, he told the police, “the older lads had committed indecent
acts on him.”165 He later attended the Oblate-run St. John’s Junior Seminary on theFort Alexander Reserve from 1956 to 1958. The Oblate Indian Record, a publicationthat reported on Oblate work among Aboriginal people, indicated in November

434 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

1957 that the twenty-year-old Houston was a “Non-Treaty” Grade Nine student at
the seminary.166
The seminary had opened as a boarding school in 1954.167 Despite its name, St.
John’s was not a seminary, but, in fact, a private high school for Aboriginal students,
run by the Oblates in the rectory on the Fort Alexander Reserve.168 Indian Affairs had
been initially unwilling to provide funding to the school, but from the mid-1950s to theearly 1960s, it did provide tuition supports for First Nations students at the school.169
After leaving St. John’s, Houston went to work at the Oblate-run residential schoolin Kamsack, Saskatchewan, as a supervisor of young boys for the 1958–59 school
year.170 From there, he went to Grollier Hall.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (rcmp) investigation conducted after
Houston’s arrest in 1962 concluded that while he was a student at St. John’s, Houston
had, to use the words of one investigator, engaged in “homosexual conduct.”171 The
report is not clear as to whether Houston was being abused by either staff or students,
was abusing fellow students, or was engaging in consensual relations with fellow students at St. John’s. However, of his later time at Kamsack, the rcmp concluded that
Houston was “known to have instigated and carried out acts of gross indecency andbuggery with at least three Indian youths, two of whom were 15 at the time and one 18
years of age at the time.”172
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s file review has not locatedany documents indicating that there was further investigation into these allegations.
Neither has it located any documents to suggest that counselling was provided to anyof the students who would have been abused by Houston at the Kamsack school.
Searle, the lawyer who prosecuted Houston, believed that if a proper investigation
had been carried out prior to Houston’s hiring, his “previous homosexual conduct
would have been easily uncovered.”173 It is clear that there was no significant screening
process in place.
In the fall of 1962, psychiatric examinations were conducted on five of the Grollier
Hall boys who had been abused by Houston,174 but no documents have been locatedthat demonstrate that the students or their families were provided with counselling
after those assessments. However, the fact that they were assessed demonstrates thatby 1962, there was recognition that such abuse could have serious traumatic impact
on the victims.
After his conviction in 1962, Houston spent nine years in jail and was releasedon full parole in 1971.175 In 1975, he violated his parole and was convicted of three
counts of indecent assault (these assaults did not have a residential school connection).176 He was given two years’ supervised probation and was hospitalized in the
Selkirk, Manitoba, mental hospital for seven months.177 In later years, he made two
unsuccessful attempts to become a Roman Catholic priest. On both occasions, he was
asked to leave the seminary in which he was studying, due to what were described as

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 435“behaviourial issues.”178 However, his third attempt was successful. Against the adviceof Catholic orders in Alberta and the Northwest Territories, he was accepted into aseminary in Manitoba.179 He was ordained in 1990.180 When Northwest Territories
Bishop Denis Croteau discovered that Houston had become a priest, he contacted
Manitoba Bishop Antoine Hacault to see if he was aware of Houston’s past. According
to Croteau, Hacault told him “he was aware of it but that ‘we cannot hold someone
prisoner of his past if he has not done anything reprehensible in the past 25 to 30
years.’”181 In Manitoba, Houston served as a priest in Lac du Bonnet and Carman. In
both communities, he generated numerous complaints from parishioners, who found
him unstable and verbally abusive. He resigned from his position with the Carmanparish when the Edmonton Journal publicized his background in 2002.182
Two years later, he was back in court, facing charges that stemmed from his timeat Grollier Hall. In 2004, Houston pleaded guilty to one count of sodomy and two
counts of indecent assault at Grollier Hall in the early 1960s. The forty-two-year delay
between the acts of abuse and the convictions underscores the failure of Northern
Affairs, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Mounted Police to conduct a thoroughinvestigation in 1962. Houston was sentenced to three years’ probation, the Crown
attorney taking the position that the 1962 assaults would not have added to his earlier
sentence if they had been included in the earlier prosecution.183 He died in Winnipeg
in August 2010.184
Joseph Jean Louis Comeau worked alongside Martin Houston. Comeau, whoworked as a bank manager during the day, was a part-time supervisor at Grollier Hall
from 1959 to 1965.185 Although concerns had been raised after Houston’s arrest about
the need to ensure proper supervision at Grollier Hall, Comeau’s abuse of students
was either undetected or tolerated. It was not until 1998, thirty-three years after he left
Grollier Hall, that he pleaded guilty to two indecent assaults that took place between
1962 and 1963. The victims had been eleven and thirteen years of age at the time.
Shortly before his 1998 conviction for the assaults in Inuvik, he had been convictedof committing similar assaults in British Columbia (although not in a residential
school). For the Inuvik assaults, he was sentenced to one year in jail on each charge,
to be served concurrently at the completion of his two-year sentence for the British
Columbia offences.186 In 2003, Comeau was once more arrested and charged with fivecounts of sexual assault.187 Comeau died that year, before he could be brought to trial
on these final charges.188
The year after Comeau left Grollier Hall, George Maczynski went to work at the residence. In his career, he worked at both Grollier Hall and the Lower Post school innorthern British Columbia. He started at Lower Post, which drew much of its enrolment from northern British Columbia and Yukon. Maczynski worked as an instructor
there from 1956 to 1958.189 He then worked as a welfare officer for the Yukon government. In 1964, he was in a car accident that left him permanently injured.190 He

436 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

returned to work with the Yukon government, but his performance was found to beunsatisfactory. He was reportedly prone to “violent emotional outbursts and generally behaved in a very unprofessional manner.” He was suspended from his job in
October 1965.191 By 1966, he had found employment at Grollier Hall as a supervisor.192
He appears to have lasted there only one year. The last payroll record the Truth andReconciliation Commission of Canada could locate for Maczynski was from 1967.193
In 1973, Maczynski returned to the Lower Post area, where he had worked in the
1950s. There, he organized a summer camp for young boys. Later that year, Maczynski
was convicted and sentenced to two years in jail for “molesting” boys at the camp.
This is the first record the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has located of his
being prosecuted. After serving ten months in jail, Maczynski was paroled, and hereturned once more to Lower Post in August 1974. After consulting “with several professional colleagues,” E. Morriset, the administrator of the Lower Post residence, hired
Maczynski in September 1974 to work as the residence’s night watchman. He statedthat Maczynski was on-site only from ten in the evening until six in the morning, andresidence staff members were in the dormitories during those hours.194 In October
1974, Harry Lavallee, the field supervisor for Native Courtworkers in British Columbia,
protested and drew the hiring to the attention of Indian Affairs.195 Morriset defended
his decision, writing that Maczynski now lived by himself in a cabin about a mile (1.6
kilometres) from the residence. He had returned to the community and done “a greatamount of volunteer welfare work for the local Indians.”196 Maczynski resigned fromthis position in November 1974.197
In 1993, he was charged with sexually assaulting students when he worked at theLower Post school in the 1950s.198 Two years later, he was convicted and sentenced tosixteen years in jail for committing and attempting to commit indecent assault andbuggery on students at Lower Post.199 In 1996, he was given a seven-year sentence forsexual assaults committed on two Dawson City children in the Yukon in the 1960s.
The assaults would have been committed when he was a social welfare officer. The
sentence was to be served concurrently with the Lower Post sentences.200 In 1997,
Maczynski pleaded guilty to additional charges of indecent assault, gross indecency,
and buggery arising from the period in the mid-1960s when he worked at Grollier Hall.
He was sentenced to four years of incarceration. That sentence was to be served after
the original sixteen-year sentence had been served.201 Maczynski died in jail in 1998.202
Maczynski was not the only person on the Lower Post staff to be charged with sexually abusing students. Oblate Brother Ben Garand worked as a boys’ supervisor at theschool in the 1950s. In June 1993, he was charged with four counts of sexually assaulting male students. At the time of his arrest, Garand was already in jail. He had been
convicted and jailed in 1993 on a variety of non–residential school charges of sexualassault. Garand died in jail before he could be tried on the charges relating to his timeat Lower Post.203

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 437

There are reports that in the 1950s, complaints about Maczynski’s and Garand’s
abuse of students had been made to the principal of the school, Yvon Levaque.
According to the complainants, no action was taken at the time.204
Maczynski left Grollier Hall in 1967.205 That same year, Paul Leroux started work
there as the senior boys’ supervisor. He remained at the hostel until 1979.206 Prior
to that time, he had worked at the Beauval, Saskatchewan, school. (His time at that
school is discussed elsewhere in this chapter.)207 While he was living in Inuvik, Leroux
also served as a justice of the peace and a judge in the family juvenile court, coachednumerous sports teams, and volunteered as a Big Brother.208 He was, in short, a personof some authority in the community.
In 1979, Leroux was convicted of having a two-year-long sexual relationship with afifteen-year-old male resident of Grollier Hall and sentenced to four months in jail. He
later sought and received a pardon for that offence.209 The Truth and Reconciliation
Commission has not encountered any evidence to indicate that after this conviction,
any further investigation was carried out at that time to determine if he had assaulted
other students at either Grollier Hall or the Beauval school. It is reasonable to expectthat such investigations should have been made. Certainly, such investigations werecarried out more than a decade earlier, after the arrest of Martin Houston in 1962.
By 1980, Leroux had found work with the Employment Development Branch of thefederal government. He left that position in 1981 to take a position with the Canadian
Human Rights Commission.210 He worked with the commission until 1997. In thatyear, complaints from former Grollier Hall residents led to a police investigation.
When police searched Leroux’s Vancouver residence, they found a large collectionof child pornography.211 He was arrested in June 1997 and charged with thirty-two
sexual assaults involving fifteen victims between the ages of fourteen and eighteen.212
Leroux was convicted of attempted buggery, attempted indecent assault, three counts
of indecent assault, and four counts of gross indecency. He was given a ten-year sentence.213 He was paroled after serving less than four years of his sentence. In 2003, he
was arrested and charged with eleven additional counts of indecent assault and grossindecency.214 The Crown stayed the prosecution on these charges in 2004. The rationale for this decision provided to the Mounted Police was the reluctance of certain
complainants to testify at the preliminary inquiry and a “re-assessment of the prospects of conviction.”215
There is evidence to suggest that students did complain about Leroux’s behaviour
while he was still working in the school. In the 1990s, a former Grollier Hall resident
stated that when he was living at the hall in the 1970s, he had informed a guidancecounsellor at Samuel Hearne Secondary School that Leroux was taking nude photographs of students living at the residence. No records made available to the Truth
and Reconciliation Commission of Canada indicate that the individual reported suchinformation, if he received it, to authorities. According to the student, the counsellor

438 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

instead instigated a sexual relationship with him. The counsellor was tried twice onthese charges, but in both cases, the juries were unable to agree on a verdict.216
In late 1997, the victims of sexual assault at Grollier Hall formed a support group,
under the leadership of Harold Cook and Lawrence Norbert. Cook, who had been astar athlete at the school and a member of the Territorial Experimental Ski Training
program, referred to the school as “Sing Sing,” saying he “skied to get away from theresidence.” He said the students had remained silent for so many years for two reasons: shame and doubts that anyone would believe them.217
The impact of the abuses of the 1960s never went away. In a letter to the court, oneof Martin Houston’s victims wrote, “Every day since this happened, I remember what
he did to me. I drink to try to forget what happened to me, but drinking only makes
me angry.” One former victim wrote in his victim-impact statement that he had often
contemplated suicide. The victim said that the memory of the abuse had led others tokill themselves.218

Fleming Hall
In two unrelated events, two men who worked at Fleming Hall, the Anglican hostel in Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, were convicted of having inappropriate
relations with young people who attended the local day school. The Northern Canada
Power Commission (ncpc) operated the power and heating plants at Fleming Hall.219
The company had an agreement to board engineering staff at the hostel.220 In May
1963, ncpc employee William Hamilton apparently was staying at the hostel.221 At
some time between then and March 1964, Hamilton was arrested, charged, and convicted of engaging in sexual acts with male students attending the local day school. He
was sentenced to three years in jail.222
Donald Perdue started work as the cook at Fleming Hall in Fort McPherson in
January 1963.223 On March 12, 1964, he was convicted of contributing to the delinquency of juveniles—he had been found swimming naked with a number of juveniles.224 Initially, Anglican Church officials who operated the residence took theposition that there were “extenuating circumstances” that justified keeping Perdue on
staff.225 David Searle, the lawyer who had prosecuted Martin Houston, wrote a letterof complaint to the Justice Department, recommending that it seek to have Perdue
dismissed. He said that, based on police reports and “statements from the girls [likely
the juveniles Perdue was swimming with] Mr. Perdue has tendencies towards sexual
exploration with young girls.”226 After reviewing the evidence presented at the trial, T.
E. Jones, the Anglican director of residential schools, concluded that Perdue should
never have been hired.227 According to his application for employment with the federal Department of Transport in 1965, he left work at the hostel in July 1964.228

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 439

Nunavut
During the residential school period, Nunavut was still part of the Northwest
Territories. In the 1990s, there was an extensive police investigation into abuse at the
Roman Catholic Turquetil Hall in Igluligaarjuk (formerly Chesterfield Inlet), which
had closed in 1960.229

Turquetil Hall
In the summer of 1993, approximately 150 former students of the Turquetil Hall
residence attended a reunion in Chesterfield Inlet, Northwest Territories. The event
had been organized by three former students: Piita (also known as “Peter”) Irniq,
Jack Anawak, and Marius Tungilik.230 In 1991, at a hearing in Rankin Inlet of the Royal
Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Tungilik had spoken about his experience ofbeing sexually abused at the Chesterfield Inlet residence. He was one of the first former students to speak out publicly about such abuse.231 In a later memoir, he wrote:
I was really undecided as to whether I should openly speak about it because it
was not done. I was tormented inside because I knew it was the right thing to do
and I felt I did not have the courage or the strength. I felt I was going to die if I
said anything publicly. But luckily I was able to spend some time out on the land,
not by choice. I got lost out on the land for three days just by myself. I was okay.
It was in the late fall, November. But those three days alone gave me enough time
to make up my mind. Yes, I’m going to do this no matter what.232

According to Irniq, the three former students decided to hold a reunion because
they felt they “had to do something to restore our health and history and pride.”233
Also in attendance at the reunion were representatives of the government of thenwt, and members of the Oblates and the Sisters of Charity, the two Roman Catholicorders that had been involved in the operation of the residence and the day school
associated with it. Many of the people at the reunion spoke of the physical, sexual, andemotional abuse they had experienced at the residence. According to news reports,
Bishop Reynald Rouleau said that it was “undeniable” that sexual abuse had takenplace at the school. The reunion led forty-nine former students to petition the government of the Northwest Territories to hold a public inquiry into the operation of
the facility.234
Although no public inquiry was held, Yellowknife lawyer Katherine Peterson was
appointed to carry out an investigation. At the same time, the Mounted Police undertook a criminal investigation into the school. Two officers spent over a year investigating 115 allegations of physical assault and 78 allegations of sexual assault. Petersen

440 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

spoke with fifty-five former students in Igloolik, Kangiqliniq (Rankin Inlet), Churchill,
and Yellowknife, and by telephone. She also held community meetings.235
She concluded that “serious incidents of physical abuse occurred at the Chesterfield
Inlet school. These incidents of abuse exceeded reasonable measures of discipline,
even should one take into account the time during which the school was in operation and the differing views accorded to discipline appropriate to that time.”236
It was also her opinion that successful prosecutions on charges of physical assault
might be unlikely because, in some cases, the students could not identify the assailant with certainty. In other cases, the assailants were either dead or not “available
for prosecution.”237
Students stated that they had been sexually assaulted by both male and female
staff. According to Peterson, “The allegations of abuse include fondling of the breast
areas of female students, the genital areas of female students, the genital areas of malestudents and inappropriate sexual exhibition. An aura of fear, confusion and silence
appears to surround the students’ experiences at the time.”238
She said that many students felt “powerless to prevent repeat occurrences.”239 It was
her own conclusion that “serious incidents of sexual assault did in fact occur at the
Chesterfield Inlet school during its years of operation.”240
Peterson reported that she understood that “two prosecutions of physical assault
are potential or may be recommended to the Federal Department of Justice.”241 As aresult of the barriers to prosecution noted above, it was expected that “approximately
3 counts of indecent assault on a male, and 2 counts of indecent assault on a female
may result in prosecution.”242
Peterson made ten overall recommendations. The first was that former students
be given financial assistance in exploring the extent to which “civil legal relief isavailable in the form of an action in tort or negligence.” She felt that “due to the factthat class actions involve rigid guidelines of what constitutes a ‘Common Interest,’”this avenue should not be seriously explored. She called on the government of theNorthwest Territories to negotiate with the federal government and the Roman
Catholic Church to identify resources that could be “committed to healing, therapy
and counselling services for former students and their families.” More directly, shecalled on the Northwest Territories government to provide counselling and support
services to former students. She felt that a public inquiry into the events at the school
should be held only if “negotiations with the Church and federal government do notproceed satisfactorily.”243
In June 1995, the Mounted Police announced that the Department of Justice had
decided that “the evidence and circumstances do not support criminal charges.”244

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 441

Ontario
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was able to locate records
for convictions at two schools in Ontario: the Fort Albany school and the Sioux
Lookout school.

The Fort Albany cases
In 1992, former students of the Fort Albany school organized a reunion that
attracted 300 people. Thirty of them spoke to a special panel about the physical andsexual abuse they had experienced at the school.245 The report of the panel stated:
Of the 19 men who gave testimony, 10 were sexually abused. Almost all of themwere physically abused in other ways; spiritually abused, humiliated, strapped,
hit with rulers, hair pulled and dragged by the hair, stabbed with a pencil, madeto eat their vomit, etc. etc.
Of the 11 women who gave testimony, 2 were sexually abused. Almost all of themwere physically abused in a variety of ways, including strapping, being made to
sit in the electric chair, being made to eat their vomit, being made to kneel on
concrete floors, locked away in dark basements, being wrongly punished forthings they did not do, etc. etc.246

One of the organizers of the reunion, Mary Anne Nakogee-Davis, later told the
media that she had been sexually abused by a priest when she had been a student at
the school.247
The reunion report also made reference to the use of an electric chair at the school.
Several people talked about the electric chair that was used in the girls playroom.
It seems odd how an electric chair can find its way into a Residential School;
however, it seems to have been brought to the school for fun. Nevertheless, all
the people who remembered the electric chair do not remember it in fun, butwith pain and horror.248

Edmund Metatawabin spoke of how he and other students at the Fort Albany
school had been punished by being placed in what students referred to as the “electricchair.” According to Metatawabin, this was a metal-framed chair with a wooden seatand back. After students were buckled into the chair, an electric current from a handcranked generator was run into their bodies. The chair had been constructed by Brother
Goulet, the school’s electrician, and had apparently been used initially as an entertainment. However, it came to be used as an instrument of punishment. Metatawabin
said he had “sat on the electric chair three times.”249 Mary Anne Nakogee-Davis told
the Globe and Mail, “They would put children in it if they were bad. The nuns used it asa weapon. It was done to me on more than one occasion. They would strap your arms

442 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

to the metal arm rests, and it would jolt you and go through your system. I don’t knowwhat I did that was bad enough to have that done to me.” Andrew Wesley recalled thatthe chair was originally used for community events: “I remember my father sitting on
it one time, just competing with other men to see who would last longer sitting in it.
It was an entertainment. But eventually, somehow somebody got a hold of it in thebasement and started using it to do discipline, especially on the girls.”250
After the reunion, Metatawabin, who was then the chief of the Fort Albany First
Nation, asked the Ontario Provincial Police to investigate complaints of the treatmentthat students received at the school in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1997, seven former staff
members were charged with a variety of offences.251
One of the nuns at the school, Sister Anna Wesley, was convicted in the spring of1999 of three charges of administering a noxious substance and five counts of assault.
Judge Robert Boissoneault imposed no sentence on the seventy-two-year-old woman,saying that in her case, the conviction was punishment enough.252 Jane Kakeychewan, anun, was convicted of assault in 1998 and given a conditional sentence.253 Marcel Blais
was convicted on one charge of indecent assault but did not serve time in prison.254
John Rodrique pleaded guilty to five counts of indecent assault and was sentenced toeighteen months in jail.255 Claude Lambert pleaded guilty to indecent assault and wassentenced to eight months in prison.256 Charges against Claude Chenier were dropped
because the complainant did not appear in court. John Cushing was acquitted of indecent assault.257 None of the documents made available to the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada indicate that charges were ever laid in relation to the use of
the electric chair.

Sioux Lookout
Leonard Hands served as a counsellor and substitute teacher at the La Tuque,Québec, school from 1964 to 1966.258 He went to work at the Sioux Lookout, Ontario,
school in 1966.259 He resigned from his position at the Sioux Lookout school in thefall of 1971 to take a position with the Anglican Church in Red Lake, Ontario.260 Whilehe was at Sioux Lookout, Hands worked as a boys’ dormitory supervisor, where hesexually abused male students. 261 One of them was Garnet Angeconeb. Hands started
abusing Angeconeb in 1968, when he was eleven years old, and continued until
Angeconeb left the school the next year.
Phil Fontaine’s public disclosure of the abuse that he had experienced at theFort Alexander school inspired Angeconeb to talk about his own experiences. He
attempted to contact Hands, who was then an Anglican priest working in Kingston,Ontario. At first, Hands refused to speak with him. Angeconeb pursued the matterwith Anglican Church officials. Eventually, Bishop Tom Collins arranged a meeting

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 443

between Angeconeb and Hands at the Sioux Lookout school site. Angeconeb later
recalled that meeting: Hands not only denied having abused Angeconeb, but he also
accused Angeconeb of trying to blackmail him.
Angeconeb took his complaint to the Ontario Provincial Police. The police force
had already received a complaint from another former student, Brian Brisket, andwould receive eighteen more complaints about Hands.262 In 1996, Hands pleaded
guilty to nineteen counts of indecent assault and was sentenced to four years in jail.263

QuébecThe Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has not been able to locate
any records of convictions relating to the abuse of students at Québec residential
schools for this period. However, the records do reveal a number of complaints. In
November 1969, the federal Treasury Board recommended the discharge of a cookfrom the La Tuque residence for sexual misconduct with a student. The male employee
had taken a ten-year-old female student into a staff washroom, and, according to two
co-workers, kept her there for half an hour.264 However, apart from his discharge, noother action appears to have been taken against him.
Another alleged case of sexual abuse came to light at the Anglican school at La
Tuque in 1971. In May of that year, Jean Bonnard, the residence’s administrator,
informed Indian Affairs’ Québec office that he had asked the police to investigate thecase of a child-care worker at the residence. Roger Michaud, Indian Affairs’ regional
superintendent of personnel in Québec City, said the administrator had suspected forsome time that the employee was having “certain ‘activities’ of a sexual nature” withstudents living at the residence. The La Tuque police took witness statements fromfour boys, all of whom Bonnard had indicated as potential victims. According to thesestatements, “the activities involving these four (4) boys have taken place one (1) or two(2) years ago, which shows that [the staff member’s] behavior is not of recent advent
but has been going on for quite some time.” Québec Regional Director R. L. Boulanger
requested that the police suspend their investigation before speaking with more boys
because he and Michaud felt that “the actual evidence is sufficient and that any further investigations would create among the younger boys a serious psychologicalimpact.” The police complied with this request, but Michaud noted that, “if needed,
this investigation may be pursued.”265 Bonnard suspended the employee without pay
for an undetermined period while the investigation was ongoing.266
In 1970, Jacques Serre, a child-care worker at the La Tuque residential school,
wrote to Indian Affairs, claiming, among other things, “Shortly before her departure[a student] confided to someone that an employee had taken liberties with her in thepresence of a third party.”267 After receiving this letter, G. D. Cromb, the director of444 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Indian Affairs’ Education Branch, instructed the Québec regional director to conduct
an enquiry into Serre’s concerns.268 The report asserted that the investigators had been
unable to determine whether the alleged sexual abuse had actually taken place. The
student who had made the original complaint had left the school at the end of the
1968–69 school year, and, as a result, the investigators did not speak with her.269 The
evidence suggests that this was one more case in which the authorities failed to carryout a thorough investigation.

Saskatchewan
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was able to locate records
for convictions for events that occurred at four schools in Saskatchewan: Gordon’s,
Beauval, Kamsack, and Prince Albert. Problems emerged at the Gordon’s school in
the 1940s and continued into the 1990s. Because of the length of time in which theyoccurred, events at that school dominate the following discussion.

The Gordon’s school
From 1949 to its closure in 1997, the Gordon’s school (later, the “Gordon
Residence”), operated by the Anglican Church in Punnichy, Saskatchewan, was oneof the worst-run schools in the entire residential school system. Students were at riskof harsh discipline and physical and sexual abuse for extended periods of time. There
was little in the way of stable leadership at this school. For example, between the fall of1944 and the fall of 1945, the Gordon’s school went through four principals.270 It is also
clear from the Gordon’s school history that the staff abuse of students contributed
to student abuse of fellow students. The following discussion of the school’s history
focuses on the sexual abuse of the students, but, by necessity, includes discussion of
the general and ongoing mismanagement of the institution.
In January 1945, Reverend J. H. Corkhill, the acting principal of the Gordon’s
school, raised concerns about the influence that the school engineer, E. Holfeld (given
in other documents as “Schofield” and “Holdfeld”), was having on the older boys.
Corkhill wrote, “His craving for intoxicants is such that it is difficult to keep him here
for many full days at a time.” The principal said that he did not want to give Holfeld his
notice until a replacement had been found. Corkhill was so worried about being left
without an engineer that he had not even threatened Holfeld with dismissal. Drinking
was not the only problem. In a letter, Corkhill referred obliquely to what he called
Holfeld’s “worst habit,” saying “there are also several other things in his makeup which
are quite bad for one mixing with young children as he does.”271 By the spring of 1945,

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 445

the situation was far more dire. Holfeld had been convicted of having committed common assault on one of the female students. Despite this, he still was not fired.272 Therewas more to come. In July of that year, Holfeld was convicted on two charges of buggery and one of attempted buggery, and sentenced to two years in jail. The record
does not indicate who the victims were, but the complainant in the case was the new
Gordon’s school principal, D. L. Dance.273
Holfeld’s legacy was devastating. In 1947, a student at the Gordon’s school was
diagnosed with venereal disease. Under the questioning of a Mounted Police officer,
he revealed that he had been sodomized by the boys’ supervisor, William McNab,a nineteen-year-old former student. McNab was arrested, tried, and sent to jail forsix months. McNab claimed that, in the past, he had been abused by Holfeld. Indian
agent R. S. Davis was of the opinion that “this thing has been going on in the schoolfor years.” He had taken statements from some of the boys and concluded that “thewhole school is poluted [sic] with it.” The church authorities, he wrote, “have fallen
down badly in the upbringing of these children, by engaging people who are misfits.”
He thought the problem might “date back to the time when Mr. Frayling was Principal.
It might have been found out by one of the principals and hushed up, until today.”274
Frayling had served as principal from 1930 to 1944. (At the time of his retirement, he
was seventy-four years old.)275
In responding to the criticism, H. A. Alderwood, the superintendent of the Anglican
Indian School Administration, pointed out the difficulties in recruiting qualified staff.
All around Gordon’s school, he wrote, “rural teachers are receiving twice as muchas we have been able to offer. I have personally interviewed a number of applicantsand have done my utmost to secure them for this school, but our low salary scale hasapparently discouraged them from joining our staff.”276
Through the mid-1950s, Gordon’s was consumed by controversy. On April 30,
1955, a new principal was appointed. That same day, two young girls ran away andspent the night with two young men on the Gordon’s Reserve. The men were arrested,
prosecuted for contributing to juvenile delinquency, and jailed for four months. The
girls were expelled. The principal blamed the problems at the school on the previous administration.
Since both girls are now free at home the general opinion in the school is that
we can do nothing of any importance to anyone who disobeys school rules. This
does not have any serious effect on morale for it is difficult to imagine any schoolwith less discipline than existed here on May 1st as a result of the two year policyof ‘free expression’ on the part of the children.277

In November 1955, the principal catalogued some of the school’s recent problems.
A school supervisor had impregnated a student, an act for which he had been prosecuted and fined. (The principal’s letter does not indicate the specific offence for which446 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the individual was convicted.) Another school employee had been fired for bringing
men from the reserve into her room at the school at night. The school’s farm instructor
not only ran a bootlegging establishment out of his home, but he had also facilitated
his son’s affair with one of the teachers, by helping her slip in and out of the school
without detection. The affair resulted in her becoming pregnant. Another male supervisor, named Courtney, had been sent to jail for “tampering with some of the Indianboys in his charge.”278
In January 1956, three girls alleged that the Gordon’s principal had touched them
improperly. He denied the charges, reported them to the bishop, and demanded aninvestigation.279 It was carried out by the head teacher, who concluded that the allegations were unfounded.280 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s file review has
not located any documents indicating that the allegations, or the teacher’s investigation and report, were ever further reported to either Indian Affairs or the police. Afterbeing cleared by the member of his staff, the principal announced his resignation. In
doing so, he expressed his frustration with Aboriginal people, saying he had long sinceconcluded that they “do not want to be helped and every effort I have made has been
blocked on the reserve. They want their children clothed and fed at no cost to themselves and they are not very interested in whether they get an education or not.” There
was “no low trick to which Indians will not subscribe to further their own ends.”281
In the month that he announced his resignation, the principal had to report on thecase of a student who, he said, was “imposing himself sexually upon little boys in theschool.” He wrote that he had noticed a significant change in the boy’s behaviour overthe previous six months, saying he had become “morose and sullen and his work inclass has fallen off. He has isolated himself from all his former friends among the boys
and seems to always be keeping himself aloof.”282
It also appears that an employee who was suspected of developing an inappropriate relationship with students was allowed to transfer to a different school. In 1957, a
supervisor at the Gordon’s school asked to be sent to the Carcross school in the Yukon.
Henry Cook, the superintendent of the Anglican Indian School Administration, helped
arrange the move. At the time, he wrote to the staff member, saying that he had spoken
with the principal about the problems the staff member had recently encountered at
the Gordon’s school that had led to his request for a transfer. Somewhat cryptically,
Cook wrote,
All I can say is that it is unfortunate but understandable. One can, at times, be
too easy with youngsters for their own good. Having once established an easygoing routine with a group of lads it is impossible to successfully alter things.
The only worthwhile result from an unsuccessful experiment is knowledge not torepeat the same procedure and at your next appointment you’ll know to be strict
perhaps from the very first.283

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 447

After the staff member left for Carcross, J. J. Johnstone took over as principal of
Gordon’s. He concluded that the staff member had been having “immoral relationships with some of the boys” at Gordon’s, and passed on his information to Cook. As aresult, the Carcross administration was instructed to make sure that the staff member“was removed from direct contact with boys and his Principal was warned to watch
out for any signs of his resuming his homosexual practices.”284 Given the concerns thatexisted at the time, this measure was inadequate.
The employee in question was dismissed from Carcross by 1961 and placed on
the Anglican Church’s “confidential character code listing as being unfit for further
employment with the administration.” In writing about the issue in 1961, Principal
Johnstone said there had been two reasons for not taking legal action in relation to
the employee’s behaviour at the school: the hearsay and circumstantial nature of theevidence, and the “resultant unfortunate publicity and effects upon the children concerned.”285 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s file review has not located any
documents indicating that the employee’s behaviour was communicated to either
Indian Affairs or the police. There is also no record that any services were provided tothe students who had been abused.
Principal Johnstone faced ongoing problems at the school. In 1958, he sought treatment for a fourteen-year-old boy who had been caught on three occasions “attempting a form of intercourse with younger boys.” Johnstone thought the boy either was
hoping to be discovered or did not care if his activities were discovered.286
In 1968, William Peniston Starr was appointed director of the Gordon Residence.
It was a position he held until 1984.287 Starr had previously been the principal of the
Anglican school at Fort George in Québec, and on the staff of the Anglican school in
Cardston, Alberta.288 In 1956, he had worked as a physical training instructor at the
Gleichen school in southwestern Alberta. He left the school after an unidentified conflict arose between him and the senior boys. According to a letter from Indian Affairs
official W. P. E. Pugh, the conflict centred on the activities of the “gymnasium tumbling team he had been training.” The conflict was resolved by transferring Starr toanother school.289 During his residential school career, Starr collected numerous positive evaluations. An Anglican assessment of his work from early 1954 noted, “Nothing
but good reports of this worker from Mr. Pugh, the Bishop and the Cadet authorities.
Under his leadership the Cadets did remarkably well at the Annual Inspection in
Strathmore and his gymnasium team goes all over the country putting on demonstrations.”290 Later that year, it was thought that it “might be a good move to make him
vice-Principal or Assistant Principal when a new man is appointed.”291 Under Starr’s
administration at Gordon’s, the residence became well known for its cultural andsporting organizations. The Gordon Dancers, for example, travelled across Europe.
The school also had a highly regarded boxing team. Starr resigned in December 1984.
At the final meeting of the Gordon Student Residence Advisory Board, he was thanked

448 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

by the chair of the board for “his many years of hard work.” He, in turn, thanked theboard for its “moral support.”292
Throughout his time at the school, Starr had been using his position to sexually
exploit students. He instituted a system of bribery and intimidation to establish aregime under which he could sexually assault students. Those who refused to participate were punished through the denial of privileges.293 He was arrested on March 5,
1992, on twelve charges relating to sexual and child abuse, all arising from the years
that he worked at the Gordon Residence. According to an internal government document at the time, “the department had not received any complaints relating to sexual or other abuse” during the time that Starr was employed at the residence.294 On
February 2, 1993, Starr pleaded guilty to ten counts of sexually assaulting ten boys
between the ages of seven and fourteen while he was the administrator of the Gordon
Residence.295 He was sentenced to four and a half years in jail.296
Under Starr’s administration, there had also been continual staff and student problems. In 1972, a thirteen-year-old boy who had been convicted of indecent assault wascommitted to the care of the Saskatchewan Minister of Social Services for a one-year
period, with the understanding that he “be sent to the Gordon’s Residential School to
be with his brother and sisters.”297 In 1975, Starr reprimanded a residence employee,
instructing him not to take students out of the residence, “whether it be for weekend
visits, days off or miscellaneous activities,” without his approval. The employee wasalso forbidden to have students in his private staff room. Starr had issued these orders
in light of “unfavourable gossip” regarding the staff members’ “drinking and homosexual activities” among students in the Yorkton area.298
The problems that Starr had fostered at Gordon’s continued after his resignation. In
October 1988, a girl complained that the night watchman had made improper sexual
advances to her while she was suspended from the school.299 He was suspended fromhis job and convicted of touching a person under the age of fourteen for sexual purposes and setting traps to cause bodily harm. He was fined $300.300
There were ongoing problems with staff members’ losing control of their tempers in dealing with students in the residence. Between November 1990 and March
1991, one staff member cuffed two boys on the back of the head for running away;
grabbed a boy by the neck and pushed him down into a sofa for deliberately missing
the school bus; struck a boy on the side of the head with a closed hand; and slapped
two boys in the head, pushing one into a locker. He was sent a disciplinary letter andrequired to seek assistance through the employee assistance program.301 In April 1991,
a father complained of the way one of the child-care workers was treating students. He
claimed that the staff member was using the bigger boys to physically discipline thesmaller ones; was speaking of the boys’ parents, particularly their mothers, in disparaging terms; had come to work intoxicated and attempted to get some of the students

Abuse: 1940–2000 • 449

drunk; and had refused to let students play pool unless they were willing to play formoney.302 In another incident, a staff member hit a student with his crutch.303

BeauvalThe Gordon’s school story is a clear example of government and church failure tohire qualified staff, and to ensure the protection of children. It is far from being theonly example of extensive abuse of students in Saskatchewan.
A 1993 thesis on the Anglican and Roman Catholic schools at Onion Lake,
Saskatchewan, included reports from former students of two incidents of sexual
abuse. According to one former student, a boys’ supervisor was fired from the Anglican
school in about 1943 for sexually molesting a boy. A former student of the Catholicschool at Onion Lake said that an Oblate father impregnated one of the students, who
was sent home to have the child.304 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s filereview has not located any additional documents related to either of these incidents.
In 2004, Norbert Dufault, the former principal of the Beauval school, was sentenced
to two years in jail for sexually assaulting eight young girls during the 1950s and 1960s.
The assaults took place when the Oblate priest was the parish priest at the remote
Dene community of Dillon, Saskatchewan.305
Dufault became the principal of the Beauval school in 1963. Many of the girls he had
assaulted in Dillon were also sent to Beauval. When one of these girls discovered that
Dufault had arranged to have her younger sister see him after class, she confronted
him. She told him that if he assaulted her sister, she would publicize the assaults that
had taken place at Dillon. The girl’s stand saved her sister from assault, but led to her
own dismissal from the school, cutting short her education.306
When he left Beauval in 1965, Dufault continued to work in northern Saskatchewan
and Manitoba. In the later years of his career, he worked in southern Manitoba and in
Winnipeg.307 In 1990, an Oblate superior confronted him with allegations regarding
his activities at Dillon in the 1950s. According to Dufault’s lawyer, the priest acknowledged the allegations to be true. At this point, again according to Dufault’s lawyer,
the Oblates removed him from active duty and placed him in a residence in Lorette,
Manitoba. He lived there until his trial in 2004.308 In 2011, the Oblate publication Info
Lacombe published a two-page profile on Dufault that mentioned the years he spentin Dillon and Beauval, emphasizing the personal sacrifices he had made in his career.
No mention was made of his convictions.309
Dufault was not the only abuser who worked at the Beauval school in the 1960s.
From 1959 to 1967, Paul Leroux worked as a supervisor at the school. There, hedirected a boys’ choir; played a key role in the development of intramural hockey,
and competitive fastball and softball teams; and coached the Beauval Warriors to450 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissiona regional hockey championship.310 The choir, known as the “Beauval Indian Boys,”recorded an album under Leroux’s direction.311 (After leaving Beauval, Leroux worked
at the Grollier Hall residence in Inuvik, in the Northwest Territories. His career at that
residence is discussed elsewhere in this chapter.)
In September 2011, Leroux was charged with abusing boys during the time that heworked at Beauval.312 In November 2013, he was convicted of molesting fourteen boys
at the school on charges of indecent assault and gross indecency.313 He was sentenced
in December 2013 to three years in prison.314 He was paroled in February 2015.315

Kamsack
Not all abuse was sexual. In May 1965, the nurse at the Kamsack, Saskatchewan,
school reported that at least seven students had been burned by the boys’ supervisor,
an R. Jubinville. The burns were on their arms and hands and had been inflicted with alighter. The school principal, E. Turenne, concluded that “these incidents reveal a definite sign of sadism on the part of this man” and recommended that he be discharged.316
Jubinville was discharged the day after the incident was drawn to the principal’s attention. Indian Affairs official K. Kerr discussed Turenne’s actions with a member of thelocal Mounted Police detachment, who “agreed with the action taken.”317 At the time,
the police took no further action. However, in the 1990s, complaints from former students led the police to revisit the case. According to the Mounted Police, Jubinville wasconvicted on three charges of assault causing bodily harm and fined $500.318(Martin Houston, who was convicted of sexually assaulting boys at Grollier Hall in
1962, worked at the Kamsack school in the late 1950s. His activities at the Grollier Hall
school are discussed elsewhere in this chapter.)

Prince Albert
Between 1976 and 1983, George Zimmerman, the husband of a dormitory supervisor at the Prince Albert Indian Student Education Centre, sexually assaulted nine
girls living at the residence. In 1995, Zimmerman was convicted on nine counts ofindecent assault, one count of attempted sexual intercourse, and two counts of sexualintercourse. He was given a five-year sentence.319

Yukon
In the 1960s, Claude Frappier worked as a child-care supervisor at the Assumption
School in Assumption, Alberta. According to one Indian Affairs document, he wasAbuse: 1940–2000 • 451

working there in 1967 and had four years’ experience.320 He went to work at Coudert
Hall, the Roman Catholic residence in Whitehorse, Yukon, in 1970. Just one year later,
the federal government dismissed Frappier after conducting an investigation into
allegations of sexual assault on hostel residents. Government officials did not inform
police or parents about the findings of the investigation. It was not until 1990 that hewas charged and convicted on thirteen counts of indecent assault on boys ranging
in age from eight to eleven.321 He was given a five-year sentence.322 After his conviction, an internal Indian Affairs review of its files could find no “written investigation”
into the events surrounding his dismissal, and neither could Indian Affairs locate any
information on “whether or not the rcmp were notified at the time.”323

Conclusion
It is clear from the preceding account, which focuses primarily on cases that actually made it to the courts and convictions, that residential students were abused inlarge numbers. The number of claims for compensation for abuse is equivalent toapproximately 48% of the number of former students who were eligible to make suchclaims. The federal government and the churches failed in their responsibility to children. That failure was massive in size and scandalous in nature. The colonization andmarginalization of Aboriginal peoples created a situation in which children were vulnerable to abuse, and civil authorities were distant, hostile, and skeptical of Aboriginalreports of abuse. As a result, there were very few prosecutions for abuse while theschools were in operation. Poor pay, poor screening, limited supervision, the reassignment of perpetrators, and the ‘normalization’ of abusive behaviour all increased
the vulnerability of students to adult and student predators. It is also clear that abuse
was often ‘hushed up’: people were dismissed rather than prosecuted, parents were
not informed, and children were not provided with supports or counselling. The
police investigations that took place in the 1990s were almost invariably mounted in
response to organized efforts on the part of the former students themselves. The province-wide investigation in British Columbia should have been replicated in the restof the country. The thousands of victims of residential school abuse in every regionof our country, as exemplified in this chapter, experienced childhood traumas with
impacts that have endured throughout their lifetimes. It is a clear and absolute conclusion of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada that there is a critical, continuing need to ensure that counselling, treatment, and healing supports are
made available to former students, their families, and communities, and that it is morally incumbent upon Canada to do so.

CHAPTER 42

Student victimization of
students: 1940–2000

R

esidential school administrators set the tone for life in the schools. Discipline
was harsh—and, in many cases, unrestrained. From the students’ perspective,
rules were strict and arbitrary. Newly arrived students were lonely and traumatized. As of September 14, 2014, claims for compensation that were admitted underthe Independent Assessment Process of the Indian Residential Students Settlement
Agreement had been made by 31,213 people. This fact demonstrates that the threat ofphysical and sexual abuse was constant throughout the system. Many students havespoken of how emotions of fear and anxiety dominated their lives.1
But school staff members were not the only ones responsible for abuse: by
December 14, 2012, over 8,470 claims had been made by individuals who said thatthey had been victimized by fellow students.2 This is a stark demonstration of thedegree to which violence and abuse constituted an unspoken but very real residential school reality. Every school system has to deal with bullies, cliques, and conflict
between students. It is part of the socialization process. Ideally, corrective lessons in
how to treat others well are given by example. The residential schools had a responsibility not only to model such behaviour, but also to protect students from being victimized by their fellow students. In many cases, they failed to provide that protection.
Although conflicts between students are not unique to residential schools, they takeon greater significance in a residential school setting in which children cannot turnto adult family members for comfort and support. The moral influences that a child’s
home community can exert are also absent. The residential schools failed to live up to
their responsibility to protect students from being victimized by other students.
Older or bigger students used force—or the threat of force—to establish their dominance over younger students. In some cases, this dominance was used to coerce
younger or smaller students to participate in sexual acts. In other cases, bullies forced
vulnerable students to turn over their treats, their food, or their money, or to steal
on their behalf. Bullies might also simply seek a measure of sadistic satisfaction frombeating those who were weaker. Bullies might operate individually, or in groups. These
groups were often formed initially as a defensive response to the level of violence454 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

within the school, but, over time, might take on their own bullying characteristics.
In some cases, such groups not only focused their anger and/or frustration on otherstudents, but also sought to disrupt the general operation of the school. The fact that
Catholic and Protestant church leaders continued to disparage one another’s religions throughout this period meant that conflicts between students could also takeon religious overtones during this period, particularly in communities with more than
one residential school.

Bullying
For fear of reprisals, many students would be unwilling to report acts of bullying.
Despite this reluctance to report, there is evidence of student victimization of students throughout this period. A seventeen-year-old girl at Mount Elgin, near London,
Ontario, forced younger girls to steal items for her in 1940. When some of the other
older girls discovered her activities, they began to shame her. As a result, she ran
away. It was only on her return that the administration learned that she was bullying
the younger students. Consideration was given to discharging her from the school.
However, this step was not taken, since it might lead other students who hoped to bedischarged to mimic her behaviour.3
Although bullying was often persistent and ongoing, student victimization of students could also take the form of a single violent confrontation. In 1945, a sixteenyear-old boy stabbed a fellow student at the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school with aknife. The attacker said he had stabbed the boy for calling him names, but the victim said the attack was unprovoked. According to a police report on the incident, theattacker was taken to the “Psychopathic Ward” for observation.4
Constant and systemic bullying of fellow students led the principal of the Sioux
Lookout, Ontario, school to ask Indian Affairs to expel four students in 1962. The boys’
victims were reported to be “too scared to admit who gave them the beatings, bruises,
cut wrists, etc.” It was only during the Christmas holidays, when the bullies were awayfrom the school, that the victims spoke out. The principal said,
The type of brutality used was—blacking the eyes of other boys, holding themdown and blacking their eyes or pounding them on the chest, or whipping themwith a heavy electric cable. Some of this was done at night in the dormitory, after
the staff had retired. The boy would be gagged so that he could not cry out andtwo boys would hold him down while the others attacked him. Some was donein the same fashion at the day school in the noon hour.5

In the fall of 1962, S. T. Robinson, the principal of the Cecilia Jeffrey Presbyterianschool in northern Ontario, reported to Indian Affairs that a number of older boys
were “exercising strong-arm tactics with the younger students.”6 Some of the boys wereStudent victimization of students: 1940–2000 • 455

reported as being “in constant fear” of one bully. “Many have run away stating that
this is the reason.”7 Despite his efforts to end the practice, he concluded that it would
best be resolved by discharging one of the students.8 A few months later, Robinson discharged a second student he had found beating another boy. When Robinson brokeup the fight, the boy attacked the principal.9
In 1966, a boy asked to be transferred from the Kuper Island, British Columbia,
school because “there was too much trouble there. The children are rude and cruelto me.” He said he was picked on because his older brother had sexually assaulted a“Kuper Island girl.” In a letter to an official, he wrote, “I sure don’t like to be picked on.
That’s a terrible place up Kuper. Please help me out with the situation.”10
In 1967, a male student at Grollier Hall, in Inuvik, who had had a good record untilthat point, began getting into fights, usually with much younger students. Residence
supervisor M. Ruyant reported, “The other boys are afraid of him, but he still goes after
them without any good reason.” Ruyant wondered if he was simply acting out in order
to be sent home.11 (One of the boy’s supervisors was George Maczynski, who was later
convicted of sexually abusing students at the residence during this period.)12
A mother from Inukjuak (Port Harrison) in northern Québec was concerned in1968 about bullying at the residence where her children were living.
We send them a little bit of spending money whenever it’s possible.
They have been complaining that their school mates take their money fromthem. One of my children was treated so badly that he does not want to go backto school now.13

The schools also had to deal with problems that arose when students formed
cliques. In 1955, a group of day students from the Cote Reserve who were attending
the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school were passing “rude and coarse” notes about otherchildren. They also sent notes to the principal, calling for the dismissal of supervisors.
In some cases, they signed the notes “The Kamsack Girls.”14
A group of girls at the Roman Catholic school in Cardston, Alberta, formed a groupin 1968, which went by the name of “The Impossibles.” They organized what was
described as a “revolt” against a Grade Nine teacher, based on a scene from a popular
film of the time, To Sir, With Love. The school’s senior teacher, E. O. Drouin, recommended that the group’s leader be “sent to some institution.” According to Drouin, thegirls constantly quarrelled and played one student off against another. He said thatthreats of being stripped of their underwear, beaten, or poked with needles had beenused to coerce some girls into participating in the protest.15
Bullying could make school life unbearable. One student at Yukon Hall in
Yellowknife complained in 1966 that he had been “receiving a certain amount of
unfair treatment from several of the other boys who share the same quarters he did.”
The administrator, K. W. Johnson, spoke to the boys and felt that the situation had

456 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

been brought under control. However, a few weeks later, when facing the prospect ofdischarge for his profane language, the boy came to Johnson’s office and broke intotears. “He said that certain of the boys were making his life so miserable that he wasgoing to leave the Residence that very evening.” Johnson moved him to a different,
more private, dormitory. However, ten days later, after being denied permission to go
to Dawson City for the weekend, the boy ran away.16
Three girls who ran away from the Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, school in October
1967 said they had left because they were being mistreated by some of the other students.17 In 1973, David Seesequasis, the administrator of the Duck Lake student residence, informed a father that his daughter had run away once more. Seesequasis said
that he suspected the girl was “having difficulty in having the other girls accept her.”18
She was subsequently located and brought back to the residence, but it was recommended that, due to her continuing loneliness, she be allowed to return to her homecommunity.19 Although this may not have been a case of direct bullying, it demonstrates the way acceptance into a group could be withheld, and also the pain that
could arise from such exclusion.
The residential school world remained violent into the 1980s and 1990s. The principal of the Ermineskin primary school in Hobbema, Alberta, reported in 1984 thatmany children were refusing to come to school because of the way they were being
treated by older students on the buses coming from the residence. The complaints
included the theft of lunches, ripping clothing with knives and nail clippers, burning
hair, forcing heads out of open windows, and shoving school patrols out of the bus.20
In the autumn of 1990, three girls at the Gordon’s school used wire hangers to tie up
another girl. They then whipped her with a hanger and threw her into the shower. The
child-care worker who reported on the matter said she thought the girl had been targeted because she “always tries hard at what she does.” The child-care worker reported
that she “reamed” out the three girls and then grounded them.21

Sexual abuse
There are documented reports of the sexual abuse of students by other students,
starting from the beginning of the 1940s. In January 1940, a father withdrew his sonfrom the Anglican school in Cardston, Alberta, because “the older boys were illtreating [sic] him and using him as a woman.” The boy told the police that other boys hadtaken him into the toilet, pulled down his pants, thrown water in his face, and thrownstones at him. The boys denied the charges. According to the police report, the boy’s
father “took a very antagonistic attitude, claiming that his boy when being questioned
was afraid of the older boys who were present when they were being accused.” The
officer noted that the father, “although he speaks English is very ignorant and has no

Student victimization of students: 1940–2000 • 457

sense of decency which was quite apparent by his actions.” The officer concluded that
“nothing serious had happened” and that the complaint was largely an exaggeration.22
In March of that year, the school principal, S. H. Middleton, wrote that the father had
told him he was now of the opinion that the matter was a “frame up” and he regretted
having raised the complaint.23
In 1947, the maintenance man at the Anglican Mohawk Institute in Brantford,
Ontario, stumbled on a troubling scene in an upper dormitory at the school. A boy,
while being restrained by one boy, was being sexually assaulted by another boy. The
rest of the boys in the dormitory were, in the words of Principal W. J. Zimmerman,“watching these disgraceful proceedings.” Zimmerman said he did not know how todeal with the boys’ behaviour. In his view, since his “various approaches” and appeals
to reason had failed, Indian Affairs had placed too many restrictions on the use of
corporal punishment. In a letter to Indian Affairs, he described himself as being “oldschool,” saying that “if we were permitted in these extreme cases to spank their posterior ends it might do some good. If you strap them on the hands they go down to theplayroom and say they were not strapped hard.”24 Indian Affairs responded by providing him with a copy of the rules restricting corporal punishment to blows to the hands,
administered with a strap.25
Parents felt Principal G. R. Inglis was to blame for providing inadequate supervision at the United Church school in Morley, Alberta, when, in March 1950, four boys
forced a girl to go under a basement staircase with them. Indian Affairs official J. E.
Pugh wrote, “The girl herself does not definitely state that she was morally attacked,
but that the boys had done certain actions immorally.”26 The girl was examined by a
medical officer, who concluded that she had not been raped.27
In 1955, two male students forced their way into the girls’ dormitory at the Catholic
Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school. In informing Indian Affairs that one of the boys
and his brother were being expelled, Shubenacadie vice-principal R. E. Lauder wrotethat the brothers “have been under suspicion and threat of expulsion since they committed indecent assault on some girls during the summer.”28 In 1962, two boys weredismissed from the Anglican school in Cardston for “molesting girls in the school.”29
Students were not always expelled in cases of sexual victimization. In 1956,
Lauder reported that a sixteen-year-old boy had sexually abused younger boys at the
Shubenacadie school on at least six or seven occasions. It appears he had been doing
so for at least four years. Up until 1956, the boy had been admonished and also subjected to corporal punishment. After four years of such behaviour, the school finallycontacted a local child-guidance clinic to see if the boy could be “taken under observation.” In the documents it has reviewed, the Truth and Reconciliation Commissionof Canada was not able to locate any record of the school’s providing assistance ortreatment for the boys who had been victimized.30

458 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In the fall of 1958, a former student of the Carcross, Yukon Territory, school wasarrested and charged with indecently assaulting a girl the previous June. At the time of
the assault, both were students at the school. According to the girl, the boy had forced
her to go off into the bush, where he assaulted her. An initial police investigation recommended against laying charges, “in view of the fact that all the witnesses involved,
including the complainant and the accused, are Indians and very young.” In the documents it has reviewed, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was notable to locate a record of the final disposition of the case.31
Indian Affairs official E. Jampolsky recommended to his superiors that the case ofa thirteen-year-old student at the Christie, British Columbia, school be turned overto the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in December 1962. Although Jampolsky did
not go into the details of the charges against the boy, he wrote that “rape is a serious
charge.”32 In the files it has reviewed, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada was not able to locate a record of the final disposition of the case.
In at least one case, students sought to be transferred so they could avoid student violence. In 1961, three sisters wrote a letter saying that they wished to go to
the Anglican Sioux Lookout school, rather than the Presbyterian school in Kenora,
Ontario. They were afraid because the “boys in Seniors fight and when the girls go out
they drag them away to the bushes and take the girls plants [sic] down. The boys whip
the girls with the whip.”33
Indian Affairs official J. Lockhart wrote that the girls were to be instructed to returnto the Presbyterian school and advised that they were to “be protected against any
molestation.”34 It is questionable whether there was sufficient staff at the school toprovide the sort of protection that Lockhart claimed to guarantee. Five years later, thecoroner’s jury looking into the death of a student who had run away from the schoolconcluded that the school “needs more supervisory staff to adequately control thenumber of students involved.”35
There were a number of cases of student sexual victimization of students at the
Roman Catholic school in Cardston, Alberta, in the 1960s. In the fall of 1966, threeboys sexually assaulted a fourth boy in the washroom. The boy fought off his attackers,
but, in the scuffle, his head was banged against the toilet bowl. Each of the assailants
accused the other of instigating the assault. The school principal felt that the best way
to deal with one boy was to inform his parents of the facts so that they could “deal withit.”36 If the assailants were expelled, it was not for long, since all three boys were on the
February 1967 school register.37 Two years later, four boys took a young girl behinda school building, threw her to the ground, and rolled on top of her. Two of the boys
were punished for this assault by being kept in during recess.38 Later that year, twoboys were found forcing a third boy into an act of simulated sex.39 One of the boys
involved in this attack was suspended but readmitted the following school year.40

Student victimization of students: 1940–2000 • 459

In 1989, the Lestock, Saskatchewan, residence suspended two boys for theirinvolvement in “an assault with sexual overtones” on a female student. After a police
investigation and a meeting with the parents of the students involved, the boys
were reinstated.41
In the spring of 1990, it was reported that the junior boys (nine and ten years old)at the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, residence were engaging in a variety of sexual acts.
Supervisors identified one boy as the leader; he said he had been taught the practices
by an older boy. Although some of the activity might be described as “sexual exploration,” the investigation indicated that threats of physical violence were made againstboys who did not wish to participate. According to one report, an attempt was madeto force one boy to eat feces.42
One of the issues that arose was the lack of any policy or procedure to deal withproblems of this nature. The following excerpt from the minutes of a meeting of childcare workers at the Gordon’s residence is illustrative of how overwhelmed staff were.
Three children were being sent for psychological assessment and it was felt that theactivities of a number of students, including those who had been bullied into engaging in sexual relations, should be monitored.
Also a group set-up with these boys to discuss group issues & concerns would
be good but a formal teaching/explaining session might be considered to assess
whether or not they need specific intervention (Child & Youth) eg. This might[be] very good if we had the resources & permission from whoever to do thisin depth (detail). Basically a life skills/sexual dev. program this age group?????
Parent might get hyper.!43

Student victimization of students was an element of the broader abusive and coercive nature of the residential school system. Parents were unable to withhold theirchildren from this system legally. Underfed, poorly housed, and starved for affection,
students often formed groups based on age, community of origin, or First Nation.
Such groups both provided protection to their members and dominated more vulnerable students. A lack of adequate supervision meant that such domination could give
way to physical and sexual abuse. Complaints were infrequent, as students had goodreason not to report their abuse. Some feared that bullies would retaliate if they werereported. Others were ashamed of what had been done to them. Some did not fully
understand what had been done to them. Many feared they would not be believed—or would be blamed for somehow bringing the abuse upon themselves. Still others
were further punished when they did tell. So, rather than report the abuse, many students chose to fight back, to seek admission into a receptive group, or to endure thepain in silence. This victimization left many students feeling intensely betrayed, fearful, isolated, and bereft of home teachings and protection. This betrayal by their fellow
students has contributed significantly to the schools’ long-term legacy of continuing

460 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

division and distrust within Aboriginal communities. The residential school system’s
shameful inability to protect students from such victimization, even from among
themselves, represents one of its most significant and least-understood failures.

CHAPTER 43

Sports and the arts: 1940–2000

In commenting on the gymnastics team at the Christie, British Columbia, schoolin the early 1940s, Ian (sometimes known as “Jan”) Eisenhardt, the director of theYoung People’s Work program for the British Columbia government, wrote to theschool principal, “Personally, I have never seen better executed pyramids anywhere,
for the age group with which you are dealing, and one of your pictures, the group withthe girls, as regard to expression, is the very finest I have ever seen.” Indian Affairs
official R. A. Hoey also congratulated the Christie school principal for the gymnastics team’s accomplishments, adding that he regretted that the department had “notbeen able to do more in the organization of physical culture classes at our residential schools.”1
In 1945, Eisenhardt, who was by then the director of physical fitness for the federal government, witnessed a display of tumbling, springboard stunts, and partner
work that the gymnastics team from the Mission, British Columbia, school put on ata meeting of the Canadian Physical Education Association in Vancouver. He was so
impressed by the “high standard of physical training” provided at the Mission school,
much of which, he said, was “carried on by young Indian men,” that he attempted tohave the National Film Board make a short film about physical training at the school.
Such a film would be “a worthwhile item insofar as not only would it credit the Indianswith this training and focus attention upon how far Indians could go with good leadership, but it would also be a stimulator to the white people in Canada when they arechallenged with these documentary facts to the ability of Indian boys and girls.”2 Healso sought funding from Indian Affairs to send the school’s gymnastics team on across-Canada tour.3
Members of the public were also impressed by the athletic skills of residential
school students. After watching a gymnastics exhibition by students of the Kamloops,
British Columbia, school in the summer of 1950, George Beete wrote, “If all our young
people were trained by the same method where learning walks side by side with decorum and good behavior; where Christian precepts are imparted we would hear no
more of hoodlums and gangs.”4

462 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In that same year, Alberni, British Columbia, school principal A. E. Caldwell wrotethat the process of integrating residential school students into public schools
has been greatly furthered in our school generally by participation in league
sports, soft-ball [sic], football, etc, with all the Sunday Schools of the community
and with teams from industrial plants and other organizations. Although
our teams were, on the average, better than opponents, often of older ages,
the good spirit engendered, and the real friendships formed, have been
most encouraging.5

These four stories highlight many of the important themes revealed by a study ofsports, recreation, and the arts in residential schools. The first point to be made is thatwhen given access to resources—even very limited resources—Aboriginal students
achieved impressive levels of skill and accomplishment. Second, government andchurch officials saw sports and cultural activities, including the arts, as being potential ways to steer young Aboriginal people away from becoming involved in criminal
activity and to assimilate them into Canadian society. It was also felt that the publicdemonstrations of Aboriginal athletic skills would be positive public relations for thework that Indian Affairs was doing.
Given the fact that sports and culture were often justified as measures intended
to further the ‘civilization’ and assimilation of residential school students, two additional points are worth bearing in mind. The first is that the federal government neverinvested heavily in sports, recreation, and the arts in residential schools. If these activities were indeed tools of assimilation, they were underutilized by the federal government and the churches. Second, students valued these activities, which provided
them with a refuge in a world that was, for many, harsh and alienating. For some students, this refuge meant a chance to travel to distant places for sports- and arts-related
outings; it could also mean extra or better portions of food, and relief from having to
do some of their normal chores. Some students drew a sense of accomplishment andconfidence from their involvement in the arts or sports. In some cases, students wereable to create lifelong careers based on skills that they developed in these areas while
they were in the schools. Others simply said that without the release they found in
sports or the arts, they would never have survived the residential school experience.
Christina Kimball attended the Roman Catholic school near The Pas, Manitoba,
where she experienced physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. She believes that it
was only through her involvement with sports that she made it through residential
school: “I was very sports-oriented. I played baseball. Well, we play baseball, and evenhockey. We had a hockey team. That was benefited, benefited me in a way ’cause I
loved playing sports.”6 Noel Starblanket said that sports were all that kept him returning to the Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, school: “I didn’t want to go back for the teaching,
for the teachers, for the, the Christian indoctrination, or, or the strapping, or any of theother abuses. I wanted to go back for the sports.”7 Geraldine Shingoose took refuge inSports and the arts: 1940–2000 • 463

extracurricular activities at the Lestock, Saskatchewan, school: “I would join trackmeet, try and be, and I was quite athletic in boarding school. And I also joined theband, and I played a trombone. And, and that was something that took me away fromthe school, and just to, it was a relief.”8 At a Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada Public Dialogue in the school gymnasium in Inuvik, Northwest Territories,
Paul Andrew recalled that he “ran around this gym a lot of times, and this gym wasa saviour for a lot of things because we were good at the physical stuff, we were goodathletes, we were good at the sports.”9 John Kistabish was another of the students who
took refuge in sports: “I really liked to play hockey. I liked it a lot because we helped
each other, you weren’t alone, because I wanted to win. And, we had fun because wehelped each other a lot.”10 Sometimes, however, the coaches took the pleasure out ofsports. Pierre Papatie played goalie for the Amos, Québec, school hockey team. He
said, “When we were losing, we were getting beaten with a ruler. We always had to win.
We didn’t know how to lose. It was always, win, win.”11

Sports: “I could achieve a goal”
Federal government support in the post-war period
At the end of the Great Depression of the 1930s, Canada’s residential schools had
minimal recreational facilities or opportunities. In response to the observation of thelocal Indian agent that the Lac la Ronge, Saskatchewan, school lacked recreational
activities, Anglican Church representative T. B. R. Westgate wrote that anyone who
had seen “the rocky nature of the spot on which the School stands, and of the surrounding area, will realize how difficult it is to secure suitable playing fields.”12 Despite
an acknowledged lack of facilities or resources, Indian Affairs was not prepared tofund improvements. Indian Affairs official R. A. Hoey informed Florence Lang of the
Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Society in 1940 that he was convinced “from experience, that excellent work can be done in physical instruction and in the promotionof manual training, while still avoiding the necessity of expenditures on costly equipment.”13 Three years later, in responding to a request for sports equipment for theMission, British Columbia, school, Hoey pointed out that virtually all sporting goods
produced in Canada were being shipped to the armed forces.14 (During the war, sporting goods were declared a “non-essential industry,” and no able-bodied man between
the ages of seventeen and forty-five could be legally employed in their manufacture.
As a result, they were in limited supply.)15
Indian agent G. A. Swartman noted in 1945 that at both the Sioux Lookout and
McIntosh schools in northwestern Ontario, the “lack of recreational and athletic
opportunities is very noticeable.”16 Conditions did not improve in the post-war period.

464 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In its 1946 report, the Anglican Church’s Indian Work Investigation Commission
noted that, according to “one observer” at one school, “no one organised any games.
The fields surrounding the school provided plenty of space, but were not used for recreation. Upon enquiry I learned that they had one baseball and bat, ‘but the girls hadtaken it.’” The report also touched on the “almost-underground playrooms, and thesmall playground outside with the wire fence separating the boys from the girls.”17
When, in 1946, British Columbia Indian Commissioner W. S. Arneil forwarded a listof sporting goods supplies being requested by the principal of the Mission school, heobserved that it included badminton equipment, “which is not normally supplied by
the Department.” He supported its inclusion because the school badminton team participated in a league made up of non-Aboriginal teams. “In view of the benefit which
the Indian pupils undoubtedly receive from this association it is recommended thatencouragement be given to this activity by the supplying of the items requested.”18
Despite this argument, the request was turned down.19
When asked to supply skates and hockey sticks to the Sandy Bay, Manitoba, school,
in 1949, Philip Phelan, the chief of the Indian Affairs Education Division, responded
that Indian Affairs did not supply schools with skates. He did agree to purchase sticks
for the school.20 This ban was not applied consistently. Eight days later, Phelan himself
authorized the purchase of $75 worth of hockey equipment for the McIntosh school
and $100 worth of sports equipment for the Sioux Lookout school.21
Limited funding made it difficult for schools to keep qualified coaches. The
Qu’Appelle school lost its sports organizer, Edward Doll, at the end of the 1949–50
school year. School principal P. Piché said that Doll had taken “a more assured andbetter position,” but thought he could be lured back if he were offered “an adequate
salary.”22 Indian Affairs had planned to build a new gymnasium at the school at
Spanish, Ontario, but, according to Indian Affairs official B. F. Neary in 1950, the plan“suffered somewhat with the cut” imposed by Parliament.23 A commitment to build
a new gymnasium at the Alert Bay, British Columbia, school was also deferred thatyear.24 The same year, repairs were also needed to physical fitness facilities at schools
at Kuper Island in British Columbia and Lac la Ronge in Saskatchewan.25

A brief period of interest: 1948–1951
In 1948, it appeared that Indian Affairs was actually going to make a substantial
investment in Aboriginal sports and recreation. In that year, Hugh Keenleyside, thedeputy minister responsible for Indian Affairs, wrote that “one of the most useful steps
that could be taken in this field would be the development of one or more Indian athletes who could win championships in Canada or represent Canada in games abroad.”
He recommended that Indian Affairs staff be encouraged to “keep a sharp eye on any

Sports and the arts: 1940–2000 • 465

young boys or girls who show an aptitude for athletic events. If some promising candidates can be developed I think we would make money available to assist them in theirtraining.”26 In keeping with this thinking, in 1950, Indian Affairs created a position ofsupervisor of physical education and recreation for Aboriginal people.
Ian Eisenhardt was appointed to the position. Born and raised in Denmark,Eisenhardt had been the Danish junior cross-country running champion; playedsoccer for both the French and Danish national teams; and won championships inboxing, tennis, track and field, and fencing. After working as a playground instructor
for three years in Vancouver, in 1932, he was appointed as the city’s superintendentof recreation.27 In that position, Eisenhardt helped establish a highly regarded recreation and fitness program. It paid special attention to the needs of the large number of young, unemployed Canadians who congregated in Vancouver during theDepression. Building on this foundation, he went on to direct the British Columbia
Recreational and Physical Fitness Branch. The branch’s work extended far beyond
the organizing of competitive sports teams: its focus was on fitness and health, andit included a variety of social and artistic activities in its programs. Remarkably fora public recreation program of the time, over half of its participants were female.28
Eisenhardt served in the Canadian military during the Second World War as the
Canadian army’s sports officer.29
When the federal government adopted the National Physical Fitness Act in 1943,
a National Physical Fitness Council set the goal of creating a mass-participation fitness program. Eisenhardt was hired to administer the program. Much of the program’s limited budget was, however, to be administered by provincial and territorial
governments. The federal government soon proved unwilling to act on the council’s
recommendations, or to increase program funding. Eisenhardt resigned in frustration in 1946. The Act itself was repealed in 1954.30 Before his resignation, Eisenhardt
had recommended that the federal government treat “Indians and Eskimos as the10th Province under the National Fitness Act.”31 (He may well have been the firstsenior Canadian government official in the post-war era to advocate such a government-to-government approach to address Aboriginal affairs.) In 1946, he took a position with the United Nations, and in 1949, he served as secretary to an international
commission on education reconstruction in Europe.32 The following year, he went towork for Indian Affairs.
Shortly after being hired at Indian Affairs, he conducted a cross-country tour, visiting twenty reserves, twenty-one day schools, and thirty-two residential schools. In
addition to noting sports and recreation, he took notes on health, hygiene, clothing,and sanitation.33 To his displeasure, Eisenhardt was told that during this tour, he was
not to consult with Aboriginal leaders.34
In 1950, Eisenhardt prepared an inventory of the sports and recreation facilities
at each school, and the elements of the recreational and sports programming. He

466 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

recorded whether there were handicrafts, music, singing, or drama programs. He also
noted the presence of Boy Scouts troops and units of the Junior Red Cross. The listof sports that he looked for included two traditional Aboriginal activities: lacrosseand snow snakes (“snow snakes” is a competition that involves throwing a wooden“snake” along a grooved track in the snow). He also took note of whether girls participated in the sports. At the Blue Quills, Alberta, school, for example, he reported thepresence of handicraft, music, singing, and drama programs. He identified a need formore sports equipment: the only two sports that were offered on an organized basis at
the time were skating (boys only) and volleyball.35
After his visit to Blue Quills, he pressed Indian Affairs official B. F. Neary to provide money for the completion of the gymnasium at the school. Construction of thebuilding had been started eight years earlier but never completed.36 He also arranged
to have musical instruments shipped to the school.37 After Eisenhardt’s visit to the
Hobbema Reserve in Alberta, a local sports club had been reorganized and a hockey
team established. In a report to Eisenhardt, Hobbema principal G. M. Latour wrote:
Our Midget team is good this year but will not enter in the provincial league.
The brrom-ball [sic] team too is very popular with the girls and the older men.
A game es [sic] played nearly every evening. We have received, with yourcooperation the two “Striking Bags” and the 200 feet “Braid Sash Cord”. You
should see the boys, punching at the bag when it is too stormy outdoors. Many
thanks for these [sic] sports equipment.38

It is apparent that Eisenhardt urged principals to make small but immediate
improvements. After his visit to the Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario, the principal arranged to have a soccer field marked off in front of the school. According to theprincipal, “It proved to be a very popular game with all who played.”39 Eisenhardt also
provided the principal with a booklet on lacrosse and suggested students be encouraged to play that game on the soccer field as well.40 He tried many ways to address
the existing budgetary problems, including attempting to induce other residential
schools to donate unused equipment to schools that were in need.41
In 1951, Eisenhardt published an article on Indian Affairs’ new Aboriginal healthand recreation initiative in the Journal of the American Association for Health, Physical
Education, and Recreation. He wrote that although some schools were achieving considerable success, “this picture is not general.” As a result, Indian Affairs was developing a “program of health and recreation for all Indians in schools, on the reserves, andin the hospitals.” This program of fitness and activity would make each First Nations
person “an active agent in his own social betterment.” Eisenhardt wrote that the following description of conditions at an unnamed residential school was typical of thecondition of recreational facilities in most schools:

Sports and the arts: 1940–2000 • 467

We have 200 Indian children. Separate small play-changing rooms for juniors
and seniors, both boys and girls. Boys and girls play softball in season on a fairly
well-levelled playground; boys also play soccer. No hockey, as winter usually[is] too mild to freeze ice. Considerable damp weather necessitates children
staying indoors. The school auditorium is used for group games, Scout andGuide meetings, movies, etc. There is a good unused barn on the property as
well as a soon-to-be-used classroom block, either of which might be made intoa gymnasium.

He also reported that when asked what could be done to help develop more
Aboriginal athletes, the Indian Affairs superintendent from Sioux Lookout, Ontario,
wrote, “Equipment needed. At present nothing to hold the pupils’ interest after school
hours. Would like competition with other schools. When we offer games from time totime, we have less truancy and better students.”42
For publishing the article without prior approval, Eisenhardt was reprimanded
by Indian Affairs official B. F. Neary, who feared that the article might have offended
the churches.43
In 1951, the Indian Affairs branch was focused on amending the Indian Act. As aresult, Eisenhardt was unable to obtain support for funding for his proposals, and heresigned at the end of the year to take a job with Canadair as director of recreation.44
He was dismissed from that position within a few months, apparently a victim of thenational security concerns prevalent in the Cold War era.45
Eisenhardt’s most enduring legacy was the Tom Longboat Award. In 1950, he proposed that the Amateur Athletic Union of Canada (aauc) establish an award to begiven to a First Nations athlete. The award would be named after the famed Mohawk
athlete Tom Longboat. The aauc agreed, as long as it could take full credit for theaward.46 The award was initially funded by the Dominion Bridge Company. “Canada’s
best all-round Indian athlete” was to be selected each year from a number of regional
winners.47 The athletes were initially nominated by Indian agents; most of the nominees came from residential schools or integrated schools.48 The National Indian
Brotherhood (which later became the Assembly of First Nations) took over responsibility for the Tom Longboat Award in 1973.49

1951 onward: Underfunding continues
Eisenhardt’s position remained vacant after his resignation. Sports and recreation, lacking an advocate in Indian Affairs, continued to be underfunded. In his 1951
report, G. R. Turner, of the Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada,
wrote that “nothing whatsoever for summer sports equipment has been provided byIndian Affairs so far this year. Soccer and softball equipment should be furnished.”50

468 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In November 1953, Eric Barrington, the principal of the Presbyterian school in
Kenora, reported that there was a “crying need for children’s skates and any type ofhockey equipment.”51 The following year, A. Lacelle reported that the Roman Catholicschool in Kenora was not able to offer its students organized sports because it lacked
a playground.52
A national survey of Indian Affairs schools (both day and residential) in
1956 concluded:
In most of the schools there appeared to be little or no physical education
program. A number of schools had no facilities for such activities. Basement
areas were obviously designed for playing areas, but they were very inadequate
and were utilized for storage or for assembly purposes. A large number of schoolsites were not properly cleared, graded, and prepared for playing purposes.
Many were still in the wild state; others were overgrown with shrubs, thistles,
grasses and other weeds presenting a very unkempt and neglected appearance.53

Oblate Provincial L. Poupore wrote to Indian Affairs about conditions at theWilliams Lake, British Columbia, school in 1957. He pointed out that a year and halfearlier, he had informed Indian Affairs about the need for a school gymnasium. At
that time, he said, “The boys’ play room, a room about 35 by 60, was a scene of bedlam
during recreation periods. There were about 150 boys trying to play; the mud they had
brought in on their feet had dried and there was so much dust in the room that you
could not recognize a boy at the opposite end.” Although the department had assured
him the construction of a gymnasium would be a priority, nothing had been done,and “the problem of playroom space is worse than ever.”54
In 1963, Blue Quills, Alberta, school principal P. H. Lyonnais described the school
gymnasium as being in a “terrible state.”55 Two years later, he lamented to the assistantdeputy minister for Indian Affairs:
For the past two years, I have been working through regular channels to getaction on a gymnasium and accomodation [sic] for our High School Boys, toreplace an old dilapidated building, which was condemned two years ago by
an engeneer [sic] of the Department, but which we have been obliged to use
for the past two years. And as far as I know, we shall have to use it again thiscoming September though I cannot see fourty [sic] boys living in such a place.
It is certainly a disgrace to the Department to force us to use such a building,and all those who see it agree that the only solution is to tear it down and build a
new gymnasium.56

A 1965 newspaper article on conditions at Blue Quills reported that the building
used for boys’ recreation and concerts was “literally falling apart. It has been temporarily shored by stanchions which are more or less doing the job and threatening tocollapse anytime.”57 In August 1967, the best that Indian Affairs Minister Arthur Laing

Sports and the arts: 1940–2000 • 469

could say about the long-promised gymnasium was that funds for construction had
been provided in that year’s budget estimates.58 The new gymnasium was officiallyopened on May 23, 1969.59 This was nineteen years after Eisenhardt had first pressed
the government to build a new gymnasium.
In 1963, the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, school had three teams playing in local
and provincial hockey leagues. To accommodate the need for ice time, the school
unsuccessfully approached Indian Affairs for funds to build a second rink.60
In 1967, the principal of the Roman Catholic school in Cardston, Alberta, complained that recreational facilities were largely makeshift, with the bigger girls consigned to “a small room in the condemned primary block” and the bigger boys using
a “dilapidated Quonset hut.”61
As a result of a $3.4 million budget cut, the following projects were dropped fromthe 1968–69 Indian Affairs budget:• a gymnasium at the Pointe Bleue, Québec, school• a gymnasium at Seven Islands, Québec• a gymnasium, two study rooms, two activity rooms, and storage facilities at
Pointe Bleue• a gymnasium, a library, staff accommodation, and additional classrooms at Fort
George, Québec• a gymnasium, six classrooms, a Kindergarten classroom, and a library at Lestock,
Saskatchewan, deferred due to the cut in the capital budget• a gymnasium and staff units at Beauval, Saskatchewan, deferred62
In assessing the situation, an internal federal briefing note acknowledged, “Thereis no doubt that we have been consistently optimistic about the funds that would beavailable in our capital program and have on a number of occasions given principals
reason to be hopeful that work would be done within a particular time limit and wehave not been able to fulfill these expectations.”63
In the fall of 1970, Hobbema, Alberta, physical education teacher W. I. Turnbull presented his case for a second gymnasium directly to the minister of Indian Affairs, Jean
Chrétien. He pointed out that there were 800 students attending the school. Students
in grades Four to Nine got two periods a week in the gym. Students in grades One
to Three had no time in the gymnasium, “thus missing a vital part in their development.” After school hours, the gym was used by the students in the residence and theirdrum-and-bugle band, and, two nights a week, by the community. As a result, there
was no time for school teams to practise, making it impossible for them to compete
successfully against the non-Aboriginal school teams in the region.64 At the promptingof Chrétien’s office, Indian Affairs made inquiries to see if there was any possibility ofchanging the schedule to allow more children to use the existing gymnasium.65

470 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Not all proposals were declined, and some improvements, if delayed, were carried out at many schools. In its 1962–63 newsletter, the Anglican Indian School
Administration was able to report that the new gymnasium at Sioux Lookout, Ontario,
had just opened, and that construction of the Cardston, Alberta, school gymnasium,
while delayed, was under way. However, even that newsletter had to report that theconstruction of a “badly needed addition” to the school gymnasium at the Gordon’s,
Saskatchewan, school had been postponed, due to a federal government “austerity
program.”66 In 1968, Indian Affairs did approve a request to install outdoor lighting at
the skating rink at Coudert Hall, the Roman Catholic residence in Whitehorse, Yukon.67
School officials also complained about the quality of the equipment supplied byIndian Affairs. In 1964, Fraser Lake, British Columbia, principal J. F. Ryan requested
that Indian Affairs turn responsibility for purchasing sports equipment over to individual schools. He complained,
This Winter received hockey sticks bought by the Dept. for 37¢ each. They wereso dry and fragile that a person felt guilty offering them even to a six year old. He
could not help but break them first time out. We feel this is a waste of money.
It would appear that some companies use the Department of Indian Affairs as
an excuse to rid their warehouses of goods that would not be tolerated on theretail counter.68

In 1970, the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, residence received sticks that were “tinder dry,” and breakage was, according to the administrator, “unbelievable.”69 At the
Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, residence, complaints over the quality of the sticks supplied to the school continued into the early 1970s.70

Hockey successes in the 1940s and 1950s
Despite the lack of financial support, hockey teams from a number of schools
achieved considerable success in the 1940s and 1950s. In Saskatchewan, teams fromDuck Lake and Qu’Appelle, in particular, established enviable records. The Duck Lake
school team, called the “St. Michael’s Indians,” won the championship of an eightteam league in the Rosthern area in 1946.71 In 1948, the same team, coached by Father
G. M. Latour, won the northern Saskatchewan midget hockey championship. The following year, it won the provincial championship.72 According to the Prince Albert Daily
Herald, “While the Duck Lake boys were outweighed in their midget series they madeit up in hockey know-how, skating ability and shooting accuracy. Their drives, fromany angle, had the Regina players scared and baffled at the same time.”73 Among theplayers on the 1949 Duck Lake provincial championship team was Fred Sasakamoose,
who went on to become the first status Indian to play in the National Hockey League.74

Sports and the arts: 1940–2000 • 471

Duck Lake Director of Sports George Roussel pushed the students to succeed. AlecGreyeyes, who served as the president of the Indian Cultural College in Saskatoon,recalled, “Father Roussel had us roller skating in the summers back at Duck Lake! The
thing I remember about him was that not one of us was outstanding. He had us convinced that all 15 of us was outstanding.” The team was known as the “Ducks.” Theboys sported jerseys with a mallard crest that were sewn by the female students andstaff of the school.75
Qu’Appelle principal Paul Piché believed that a high-quality sports program would
help him recruit and keep students in the program he had planned for the high school.
The quality of coaching was enhanced by the fact that a number of missionaries in theregion were excellent athletes who had in fact turned down offers to play professional
hockey. All the boys in the 1948 high school class played on the school hockey team,which was called the “Lebret Indians.”76 The Qu’Appelle team sweater was patterned
after those of the Montreal Canadiens, with the exception that an “Indian head”
replaced the traditional ch logo that the Canadiens wore on the front of their jerseys.77
The Qu’Appelle hockey and baseball teams won awards in 1948. One of the school’s
star hockey players was Arthur Obey.78 He would go on to play an important role in
Aboriginal sport in Saskatchewan, winning, along the way, the Tom Longboat medal
for the best Indian athlete in Saskatchewan in 1951, and the Tom Longboat Award forthe best Indian athlete in Canada in 1960.79
Under Obey’s leadership, Qu’Appelle teams won numerous championships. In
1952, its hockey team took first place in the Qu’Appelle Valley Intermediate Hockey
League.80 In 1955–56, Obey coached the Qu’Appelle Junior b team to the Saskatchewan
Amateur Hockey Association provincial championship, beating a team from St.
Thomas College in North Battleford. Star players for Qu’Appelle included Alvin Cyr,
Romeo Courchene, Leonard Kitchemonia, Henry Bellegarde, and Guy Yuzicapi.81
The team repeated this success annually for the following three years. In 1957–58, theschool’s Juvenile c and Midget c teams also won provincial championships. The following year, the Qu’Appelle team won a provincial basketball championship. Under
Obey’s training, the school’s track-and-field team dominated many local meets from1955 to 1960.82 The hockey program, which had drawn boys from all across Canada to
Qu’Appelle, was ended by the federal government’s integration policy. The decision to
integrate older residential school students into public schools spelled the end of the
Junior b Lebret Indians.83
Obey remained involved with sports at Qu’Appelle into the 1970s, when he served
as the Qu’Appelle residence’s recreation director.84
In 1947, the Shingwauk team won the Public School Hockey Championship for
Sault Ste. Marie.85 Birtle, Manitoba, principal N. M. Rusaw wrote in 1949 that his
school’s hockey team was so good, it had run out of opponents. The local town team“is through with us as they have been beaten so much they have given up any hope

472 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissionof beating our lads and now they do not want to play. Russell may want a game later.
Binscarth happended [sic] to see our lads playing the Russell team so they do not wish
to tackle them. So our only hope is Shoal Lake.”86
In 1950, the Sioux Lookout Black Hawks, a residential school team, won the
Canadian Amateur Hockey Association Bantam championship. The bantam championship for the Fort Frances–Kenora region of Ontario was won by the Fort Frances
residential school team, coached by former student Louis Perrault. The members of
the Sturgeon Landing, Saskatchewan, school team played with hockey sticks they had
made themselves.
The Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school team played an entire season without aloss. The team won a trophy for sportsmanship, and one boy received the award forbest player and most sportsman-like player.87
School-organized tournaments provided students with travel and educational
opportunities. In 1950, the McIntosh, Ontario, school team travelled to Sioux Lookout,
where team members attended the ice festival, took a train trip, and visited the airport—but were beaten by the Sioux Lookout team.88
In 1950, Paul Martin Sr., then the federal minister of health, was in Sioux Lookout
for the official opening of an Indian Affairs hospital. He took in a local hockey gameand was sufficiently impressed by the winning play of the Sioux Lookout Black Hawks
that he arranged for them to come to Ottawa the following year.89 Twelve students
from the Sioux Lookout school, all members of the championship Black Hawks
hockey team, travelled to Ottawa to play in a bantam-age tournament against two
Ottawa teams. While there, they were given the keys to the city by the mayor, taken
on a sightseeing tour that included a trip to a museum, and taken out for a meal by
their local member of parliament. Two members of parliament, Wilfred McDonald
and Lionel Conacher, both former hockey players, refereed their games.90 The Black
Hawks beat Ottawa’s best bantam team, the Ottawa East Browns, by a score of 5 to 3.91
They lost the second game, 8 to 7, to a pickup team dubbed the “Ottawa Combines.”
Both games were played in the Ottawa Auditorium. After playing in Ottawa, the teamtravelled to Toronto and played in Maple Leaf Gardens.92 There, the Toronto Shopsys
defeated them by a score of 5 to 1.93
Strangely, the Anglican Church leaders were not able to take pleasure from the success of the Sioux Lookout school hockey team, even though the school was operated
under Anglican auspices. A 1950 report by G. R. Turner, of the Missionary Society of
the Church of England in Canada, concluded that at the Sioux Lookout school, “themethod of organizing and operating the school hockey team last winter was most
unsatisfactory from the standpoint of the Principal.” Turner was particularly angeredby the actions of the local Indian agent, G. A. Swartman. He had apparently organized
the team and took all the credit for its success, despite the “co-operation and assistance given by the Principal and staff in getting the boys and spectators to games,

Sports and the arts: 1940–2000 • 473

making special arrangements for meals, etc, etc.” When the principal tried to see theboys between periods at one game, the dressing-room door was shut in his face by
the league president. On another occasion, Swartman refused to allow the principal
to accompany the team on a road trip. The taking of a team photograph was put off
until the principal was out of town. Turner instructed the principal that the school
should refuse to enter a team in the local league unless it was made clear that the teamrepresented the school, and the principal or his appointee was accepted as a memberof the league executive. Turner also complained that the principals of the Anglican
schools with successful hockey teams had not been named in an article on hockey
in the Indian Affairs Indian School Bulletin, but the names of the principals of theCatholic schools were mentioned in discussion of their hockey teams. This, he said,
was a matter of “clear discrimination.”94 To Turner and others, hockey was about much
more than sport; it was about promoting the success of the church.
The Alberta school newspapers were often full of student-written reports on games
and tournaments. A Hobbema school newspaper from the early 1940s reported on theschool’s first hockey game against “an outside team,” the Hobbema Juniors. The gameended in a tie. According to the paper, “the Ermines seem quite proud of themselves
after skating off the ice with a 4–4 tie.” The school also had a three-team intramural
league.95 In 1942, the Hobbema Ermines won nine of their ten games. According to theschool paper, the team was hurt when its captain fractured his ankle. Six team players
went on that year to play with the Wetaskiwin Eskimos in the Alberta midget hockey
championship.96 In 1952, Alex Janvier hit a few poetic notes when he wrote that for theBlue Quills team, “one victory does not seem to satisfy our hungry team’s appetite.”
After victory over St. Paul, he wrote that “all warmed up by our victory, we came backto the School where an appetizing lunch and warm blankets were awaiting us. During
the rest of the night, while we rested, the surprised moon and stars were gazing at us.”97
Sometimes at Alberta schools, there was no skating rink until January. At the
Anglican school at Cardston, the students would skate on the frozen surface of waterthat was backed up by the school dam. According to an article written by Oliver Soopfor the school paper in 1955, “After a while we got our rink flooded. We worked hard at
it. Some of the boys stayed up until one o’clock in the morning flooding the rink. But
we finally managed to get a good sheet of ice to skate on.”98
The Blue Quills hockey team won five of its eight games in 1959. According to anarticle in the school paper, “Though short, our hockey season was a very pleasant one
and we used it to the full. Every day we practiced or played for good. We have seen a lotof teamwork and good sportsmanship. Thanks to our coach Mr. T. Cardinal for his fineadvice and encouragement.”99 Under the coaching of Nick Kohlman, the Hobbema
school had what was viewed as one of the best hockey teams in the province in thelate 1950s.100

474 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

In 1958, Indian Affairs organized a two-day tournament for teams from five residential schools in northwestern Ontario. Teams from Fort Frances and the Roman
Catholic school in Kenora faced each other in the final game, with the Kenora team’s
emerging victorious. Fred Nesacapo of the Presbyterian school in Kenora was named
the most outstanding player in the tournament.101
In 1958, the principal of the Sir John Franklin School in Yellowknife, Northwest
Territories, J. M. Black, reported that students from Akaitcho Hall were playing in thelocal Senior Men’s League. There were also a curling league and two school volleyball
house leagues.102 Students from both the Pointe Bleue and Amos schools in Québec
were on teams that played in a hockey tournament in Québec City to record crowds
in 1961.103
Although only a few students went on to play hockey professionally, for many others, the game remained an ongoing and positive part of their lives. Former residential
school students played a role in organizing the Indian Sports Olympics Association(inspol) in the early 1970s. The inspol Thunderbirds were Canada’s first all-star
Aboriginal junior hockey team. In following years, Aboriginal hockey teams andleagues, such as the Alberta Native Hockey League, were established across the country. Through participation in old-timers’ hockey teams, a number of students continued to play. Former students, for example, were prominent in the Hobbema Old
Chiefs team that won a gold medal in international competition.104

Boxing on the west coast
While hockey dominated boys’ sports in most residential schools, British Columbia
residential schools gained renown for their boxers. In 1947, the Roman Catholicschool at Sechelt in North Vancouver advertised for a volunteer to run a school athletics program. Navy veteran Alex Strain took on the job. At the time, the school had norecreation program and no facilities. Under Strain’s direction, the students cleared out
a storage building and turned it into a gymnasium. Putting in four days of volunteer
work a week, Strain created what Vancouver Sun reporter Gerry Pratt described as“the smoothest tumbling team in the province.” He then established a boxing programat the school. The limits of the first ring were marked out by four rows of chairs. The
first punching bag was a navy duffle bag filled with tumbling mats. After two years,
Strain purchased a used truck and took the students on a boxing tour of Vancouver
Island. After four years in existence, the team had won over 100 trophies. Sister John
Lawrence made robes and shorts for each member of the team and also served astrainer.105 Frederick Baker, the winner of the first national Tom Longboat Award, was amember of the Sechelt boxing team. Baker had won three championships in 1948, two
in 1949, one in 1950, and one in 1951.106

The recreation room at the Carcross school in the Yukon. A 1946 Anglican Church report commented on the “almost
underground” nature of school playrooms.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P7561-110.

Boys playing hockey at the Sturgeon Landing, Saskatchewan, school. Note the homemade hockey sticks.
St. Boniface Historical Society Archives, Fonds, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Keewatin – Le Pas, N3631.

The playground at the Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario.
Presbyterian Church of Canada Archives, G-5476-FC-59.

A prize-winning hockey team from the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P2004-09-293.

The Amos, Québec, school hockey team.
Deschâtelets Archives.

The hockey rink at the McIntosh, Ontario, school.
St. Boniface Historical Society Archives, Oblates of Mary Immaculate of Manitoba fonds, delegation, SHSB29362.

The Squamish, British Columbia, school boxing team.
North Vancouver Archives, 4791.

The Alberni, British Columbia, girls’ soccer team.
United Church of Canada Archives, 86.158P16.

The Old Sun’s, Alberta, girls’ baseball team.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P75-103-S7-202.

The Pointe Bleue, Québec, girls’ broomball team.
History and Archeology Society of Mashteuiatsh.

A three-legged race at the Anglican school at Fort George, Québec.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P7518-212.

The Firth sisters skiing near Inuvik, Northwest Territories. They represented Canada at four different Olympic Games. Between
them, they won forty-eight Canadian championships.
Tessa Macintosh, NWT Archives, Northwest Territories, Dept. of Public Works and Services fonds, accession number G-1995-001, item number 5959.

A Christmas concert at the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, school.
United Church of Canada Archives, 86.158P/32.

A school concert, Sechelt, British Columbia.
Deschâtelets Archives.

The dance troupe from the Hobbema, Alberta, school.
Provincial Archives of Alberta, A21066.

A dance class at the Norway House, Manitoba, school.
United Church of Canada Archives, 1993.049P1238.

The Grandin College Glee Club, Fort Smith, Northwest Territories.
Deschâtelets Archives.

Students practising guitar, Turquetil Hall: Louis Tapardjuk, Lazrei, Richard Kotierk Immaroitok, and Louis Couvillan; around 1964.
Diocese of Churchill-Hudson Bay, CHB 07 03085.

A student drawing by Alex Janvier, for the Blue Quills, Alberta,
school newsletter.

Painter Judith Morgan attended the Alberni, British Columbia, school in the 1940s.
Royal British Columbia Museum, G-02437.

The girls’ recreation room at the Mission, British Columbia, school.
Mission Community Archives, MCA-248-12.

A pottery class at the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school.
Sisters of Charity, Halifax, Congregational Archives, 1708.

The cadets of the Anglican school in Cardston, Alberta.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P75-103-S7-44.

Air cadets from the Williams Lake, British Columbia, school.
Canada, Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Library and Archives Canada, PA-210715.

Chesterfield Inlet Girl Guide Bernadette Nattierk and Boy Scout Richard Kotierk Immaroitok.
Diocese of Churchill-Hudson Bay, CHB 07 03290.

Girl Guides at the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, P75-103-S7-289.

Boy Scouts at the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, M2008-10-P93.

The prize-winning cadet corps at the Anglican school in Cardston, Alberta.
General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada. P2004-09-147.

Sports and the arts: 1940–2000 • 475

Ian Eisenhardt, while still with Indian Affairs, was impressed by the work that
Strain was doing at the Sechelt school and arranged to have him paid a part-time salary, starting in 1951.107 In later years, Strain went on to work as an athletic instructor atboth the Sechelt and Mission, British Columbia, schools.108
In 1952, Strain and Andrew Paull, the president of the North American Indian
Brotherhood, organized a Buckskin Gloves amateur boxing match for Vancouver. It
was a two-day event for Aboriginal fighters from the Pacific Northwest. When Strain
and Paull had trouble coming up with the $50 needed for the deposit on the arena, theSisters of the Child Jesus agreed to sponsor the event. The fact that nuns were sponsoring a boxing match made headlines internationally. The guest of honour at the event
was the famed Native American athlete Jim Thorpe.109
Among the fighters who went through Strain’s program in North Vancouver was
future Musqueam First Nation Chief Ernie Campbell. He and his brother Eddie won
numerous boxing tournaments for the school in the 1950s. As a chief, Ernie not only
oversaw a number of important and successful legal challenges on behalf of his First
Nation, but he also revived its athletics and recreation program.110 In 1956, the Mission
school sent fourteen students to a Golden Gloves boxing tournament in Trail, British
Columbia. It was the largest entry at the tournament, which attracted boxing teams
from fourteen communities.111 Roger Adolph took up boxing at the Williams Lake residential school after getting in a fight with a fellow student on the basketball court. He
later fought professionally in England and then returned to British Columbia, where,
as chief of the Fountain Band, he played an important role in the fight for Aboriginal
fishing rights.112
Hockey and boxing were not, of course, the only sports being played in the schools.
In the 1970s, the Roman Catholic school at Cardston, Alberta, offered students a rodeo
course.113 The school also had a strong basketball program that produced two provincial championship teams.114 Many schools had baseball teams.115 Basil Johnston’smemoir of his time at the Spanish, Ontario, boys’ school devoted most of a chapter tosports, particularly to a championship-winning football season in the 1940s. A private
donor had come up with the team’s supplies: “battered old helmets, assorted shoulder pads, but no pants.” The school’s seamstress made thirteen pairs of football pantsout of stiff denim, which were then hand-painted green. They were stiff, scratchy, andprone to splitting open.116 Johnston wrote, “We had scarcely put away the football uniforms or recovered from our pains than we began the basketball season. But that was
the system in Spanish, the Jesuit system, always playing, always occupied in something or other, seldom permitted to lounge or relax.”117
In his memoir of going to residential school in the Northwest Territories in the
1950s and 1960s, Albert Canadien wrote of how, in his second year at Akaitcho Hallin Yellowknife, he took up some sports he had never played before: “I started playing badminton, basketball and volleyball at the school gym in the evenings. We even

476 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

had an evening of free skating at the Gerry Murphy Arena for the Akaitcho Hall students. I joined up for a hockey team—The Seals. Our coach was a member of the local
rcmp detachment.”118

Female participation in sports
As was the case in the broader society, girls in residential schools had fewer opportunities to play organized sports. Nineteen of the first twenty winners of the national
Tom Longboat Award, for example, were males. During that same period (1951 to1971), there were only thirteen female winners of the regional version of the award.
More than 99% of the winners were male.119 One of the girls’ races at the 1950 trackand-field competition at the Kenora Presbyterian school provides a glaring exampleof the trivialization of female participation in sports: the girls ran to a makeup station,
where they applied cosmetics and bobby pins without a mirror, and then raced backto the starting line.120
Some girls in residential schools did play organized sports, however. There are
numerous photographs of girls’ sports teams. When they were allowed to play, thegirls often played very well. The Birtle, Manitoba, school principal, N. M. Rusaw, prepared this report on the school’s February 1959 winter sports day and carnival.
We obtained the town rink for the afternoon and so had two games of hockey.
Our girls played the town girls again and won their game. I have gotten them
new red and white sweaters, in which they look very lovely. The colors werechosen by them. Their games are very nice to watch, the people go for that much
more than the boys hockey. It has amazed me how our girls are taking a hold.
There is no hesitancy whatever and it has given them a feeling of importance, atleast on the same basis as the boys.121

In March 1959, the boys’ and girls’ hockey teams travelled from Birtle to the Portagela Prairie school to participate in that school’s winter carnival, where the Birtle teams
won both their games.122 The Lower Post, British Columbia, girls’ volleyball team went
to Whitehorse, Yukon, over the 1969 Easter break. Although they won only one game,it was their first time playing in an outside competition.123

The Territorial Experimental Ski Training program
One of the most successful residential school sports initiatives, one that was open
to male and female competitors, was the Territorial Experimental Ski Training (test)
program in the Northwest Territories. After a series of ski clinics in 1965 and 1966,
the test program was established with funding from the federal government. It was

Sports and the arts: 1940–2000 • 477

an outgrowth of the work of Father J. M. Mouchet, an Oblate who came to Canada
from France in the 1940s and undertook missionary work in the Yukon Territories.
Although he had little success in winning converts to the Catholic Church, he played
an important role in introducing cross-country skiing to northern Canada.124 Initially,
the program was run out of Grollier Hall, the Roman Catholic hostel in Inuvik. In
the program’s first winter of operation, members skied over 32,190 kilometres andtook part in forty-five races.125 The United States Air Force provided Mouchet witha supply of used skis. In addition to their pleasure in skiing, students who participated in his program were often able to miss church services, spending much of each
Sunday skiing.126
Sharon and Shirley Firth were among the first to be recruited to Mouchet’s ski program in 1965.127 The twin sisters were born into a Gwich’in family in Aklavik in 1953,
but the family relocated to Inuvik.128 After the move, their mother was hospitalizedwith tuberculosis. As a result, the girls lived briefly in Stringer Hall, the Anglican residence in Inuvik. They were happy to return home: they had complaints about the foodand the fact that they were not allowed to speak to their brothers.129 They, and otherInuvik youngsters, particularly those from Grollier Hall, were soon competing in local
and international ski competitions. The 1968 skiing victories of Shirley and Sharon
Firth and Harold Cook in a variety of competitions were recorded and celebrated in
the Grollier school journal.130 Sharon Firth recalled that their coach Bjorger Petterson
had told them that if they did well, they would travel the world. She said, “As a childthat was one of my dreams.”131
The Firth sisters went on to represent Canada at four different Olympic games.
Between them, they won forty-eight Canadian championships. Inuvik became a centre for cross-country skiing in Canada: during the 1972 Winter Olympics, seven of thenine members of the Canadian Nordic team were from the Mackenzie River valley
and delta regions of the Northwest Territories.132
Other high-performing skiers from Grollier Hall were Angus and Rex Cockney;
Roseanne, Roger, and Anita Allen; Ernie Lennie (1970 Junior Champion of Canada);
and Fred Kelly (1968 Canadian Junior Champion).133
Sharon Firth said that focusing on her skiing goals helped her to escape the destructive patterns that engulfed many of the young people she grew up with.134 Harold
Cook, from Fort Good Hope, was also a member of the test team in the 1960s. At thetime, he was living in Grollier Hall, where he was sexually abused by a staff member. In
1997, he told the Northern News Service, “I skied to get away from the residence.” By
then, he was helping to organize a support group for other former students who had
been abused at Grollier Hall. He told the author of a book about the ski team, “I thinkskiing gave me the strength to bounce back after abuse.… It taught me that I could
achieve a goal if it was a realistic one and I worked really hard toward it.”135

478 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The arts: “Very little is done in most classrooms”
When speaking about the positive elements of his life at the Fort Alexander,
Manitoba, school, Phil Fontaine said, “I fondly remember the concerts which may
have been held to honor a feast day, the principal, Father, Sister Superior or Christmas.
If one were lucky you could be asked to act in a play, and I was on a few occasions. We
spent evenings preparing for the play and that was really nice because it took us awayfrom regimented activities.”136
As with sports, the arts—drama, music, writing, dancing, and painting—could provide students with a respite from the confining nature of institutional life. Former students often pointed to these as bright points in their school life.137

Drama
Virtually every school had a Christmas concert, and many schools mounted ambitious dramatic productions. In some cases, school productions included locally written comedies. At Spanish, Ontario, the boys’ Senior Dramatic Club put on the play
Birdslaughter, written and directed by J. Sammon in 1947. In this comic courtroom
drama, Adam Commanda played the judge, Henry Deere and Maxie Simon were
Mounted Police officers, and Basil Johnston portrayed the prosecuting attorney.138
The Christie, British Columbia, school was awarded the Oskenonton Challenge
Cup for the best dramatic work put on by an “Indian” group by the British Columbia
Department of Education for its production of The Hidden Gem, a complex verse playfrom the nineteenth century.139
In 1967, the students attending the Shingwauk, Ontario, school put on a four-act
play called Arrow to the Moon. One act used a dialogue between an Elder and a young
man to contrast what were seen as the old and new ways open to Aboriginal people.
Billy Diamond played the role of the young man, who, at the scene’s end, concludes,“The new ways show a way to work and live but the old ways have shown us how to die.”
The performance was filmed and shown to the James Bay Cree, who refrained frommaking any public comment, but were shocked to discover the degree to which theirchildren were being manipulated.140 (Not many years later, while still a young man,
Billy Diamond successfully negotiated the first major, comprehensive, Aboriginalrights agreement in Canada for his James Bay Cree people.)Sports and the arts: 1940–2000 • 479

Music and dance
In the 1960s, the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, school had an accomplished choir,
known as the “Singing Indians.” In 1967, the choir travelled to Expo ’67 in Montreal.
The choir also travelled, with Indian Affairs support, to Disneyland in 1969. The thirty-six-member choir sang in English and Cree, and recorded an album, A Hundred
Years of Progress.141 In the late 1950s, the Beauval school also had a boys’ choir, the“Beauval Indian Boys,” which recorded an album of Christian spirituals.142
The Kamloops, British Columbia, school won considerable attention for its female
folk dance company: the Kamloops Indian Residential School Dancers. In the 1940s,
Sister Ann Mary, a nun from Ireland, initiated dance classes at the school. The dancecompany became more successful when she was joined at the school by her sister,
known as “Sister Mary Leonita.” Under their direction, the company concentrated at
first on Irish dancing, but eventually branched out into other types of folk dancing.143
In May 1960, their performance of a Ukrainian kerchief dance, a Swiss dance, andtwo Irish dances won the Melva Dwyer Cup in the folk dancing competition at the
Yale–Cariboo Musical Festival.144 The dance troupe performed locally and even toured
internationally, travelling to Mexico in 1964.145
In 1963, students from the Carcross school went to see “a display of Indian
Dancing by the children of the Yukon Hostel and Lower Post r.c. Residential School.”
According to Principal David Lawson, this was judged to be “especially interesting tosixteen of our Brownie Pack who are being taught Indian dancing by a Mrs. Sydneyof Carcross.”146 (This was possibly Angela Sidney, who was one of the first students toattend the Carcross school when it opened in the early twentieth century.)147
The Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school established a Boy Scouts troop and powwow
dance group in the late 1950s.148 It was originally “a small group of Indian boys learning and performing their traditional native dances as an added activity program.” By
the 1980s, the company had over fifty members, ranging in age from six to eighteen.
Most of the dancers were male, but some female students had joined the company bythen. The company also had its own singers, who took “as many opportunities as possible to practice and learn from adult, experienced singers.” The clothes the dancers
wore were handmade by women from the Gordon’s Band. They travelled extensively,
often accompanying school sports teams. They went to Kamloops in 1972; Finland,
England, and Holland in 1974; Frazer, Montana, in 1978; Nova Scotia in 1979; andSwitzerland and Italy in 1982.149
Other students were appreciative of the opportunity to play a musical instrument.
Albert Canadien recalled in his memoir of his years at Akaitcho Hall:
A few of the boys had guitars and there were other instruments in the commonroom. Sometimes, a few of the boys would get together and play to pass the480 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

time. John, the boys’ supervisor, noticed this was going on and took an interest,
encouraging us to play and sing.
At first we got together just for fun. But eventually … we formed a band. There
were five or six of us, and we call ourselves the Arctic Ramblers. We had guitars,
fiddle, bass guitar, drums, and there was even a piano for a while.

They played at dances at the residence and in Hay River.150 Canadien went on to playin the Chieftones, a rock-and-roll band that toured extensively across North America.151

Art
In 1962, Esther Tervo, the corresponding secretary for the British Columbia Indian
Arts and Welfare Society, asked the United Church to hire George Clutesi to teach“Indian art and folklore” at the Alberni, British Columbia, school. Tervo described
Clutesi as a “protégé of the late Emily Carr” (a prominent British Columbia painter).
She said that he had been teaching Aboriginal art and folklore for several years andwas viewed as an “inspiring lecturer.”152 Clutesi was born in 1905 into the Tseshaht
First Nation and had attended the Alberni school as a youth. He worked as a fisher
and labourer until a construction accident left him with a broken back. While he
was recovering, he wrote a musical about Aboriginal life, entitled They Were a Happy
Singing People, which brought him to public attention. He also began to paint and, as
Tervo had noted, became a friend of Emily Carr’s.153
The head of the United Church Board of Home Missions, E. E. M. Joblin, supported
in principle the idea of hiring Clutesi, but was cautious, since Clutesi had been critical of the way the school had been operated during his years as a student there. In
media interviews, for example, he had referred to the suppression of Aboriginal languages at the school. Joblin advised the Alberni principal, John Andrews, to explore
the idea, noting that “you would need to be satisfied that he would take a positive
attitude toward the school and the pupils, and not become a subversive influence.”154
Andrews said that he was well aware of Clutesi and had “tried to enrol him as an allyof the school by giving him minor commissions in art, and employing him on ourmaintenance staff as a painter in a temporary position.” It was his plan to offer him apermanent position on the school maintenance staff at the beginning of 1965. As partof his job, he would be allowed to “use his talent in the training of our Indian young
people. In this way,” Andrews wrote, “I feel that I can control the situation without
giving him carte-blanche.”155 By February 1965, it was reported that Clutesi was “contributing to the continuation of his culture by teaching a group of residential school
students the songs and dances of bygone days.”156 By June, dancers under his direction
were performing at school functions.157 Clutesi’s appointment was made permanent
in June 1966.158

Sports and the arts: 1940–2000 • 481

In 1967, Clutesi published Son of Raven, Son of Deer, the first of three successful
books on West Coast Aboriginal culture that he was to write and illustrate. In his introduction, Clutesi wrote: “The Indian parent refrained from the non-Indian adage of‘Don’t do this. Don’t do that.’ Instead he taught his children in parables and tales inwhich all animals in his own world played important roles. It was not long before thechild realized that all animal life was an integral part of all creation.”159
Clutesi was hired to paint a mural for the Indian Pavilion at Expo ’67 in Montreal.
He used paintbrushes that had been left to him by Emily Carr upon her death.160
The cultural work that Clutesi carried out at the Alberni school was the exception,
not the rule, for most residential schools. In 1967, the parent school committees established by Indian Affairs were “encouraged to introduce aspects of their culture into
the school program. A thirty-minute period of instruction each week was authorized
during which the school committee could conduct a cultural program.”161
Clutesi was not the only prominent Aboriginal artist to emerge from residential
schools. A newspaper report on the Blue Quills school in 1951 drew attention to thepaintings “adorning the chapel,” which were the work of fifteen-year-old Alex Janvier.162
When he was conducting his cross-Canada inspection of recreation programs at residential schools, Ian Eisenhardt was particularly impressed by Janvier’s work. He photographed the altar decorations and asked to have some of his drawings or paintings
sent to Ottawa so he could show them to other Indian Affairs officials.163 The school
principal recognized Janvier’s artistic skills and arranged to have Karl Altenberg, an
art teacher at the University of Alberta, visit the Blue Quills school and give Janvier
lessons. Janvier went on to study at the Alberta College of Art, graduating in 1960.
Upon his graduation, he moved into an important career as a painter and educator,
receiving national and international recognition for his work.
As an adult, Janvier was highly critical of life at Blue Quills, saying that all it did
was prepare most students for jail or a life on welfare. “You were successfully ready to
go to heaven and not worth a damn in this world when you left. You couldn’t earn aliving. All the life skills had been drawn right out of you and replaced with a bunch ofvalues that meant nothing.… The Indian-ness was just drawn right out of you.” Mostof his brothers and sisters died at a young age; he felt “the school just killed them on
the inside.”164
Jackson Beardy was born in 1944 in northern Manitoba. From his paternal grandmother, he gained his knowledge of Cree traditions and spiritual teachings.165 At theage of seven, he was sent to the United Church residential school in Portage la Prairie,
Manitoba. On his arrival, he was immediately separated from his sister. The processof separating him from Cree—the only language he spoke—commenced at the sametime. In the classroom, as he learned to speak English, he was taught that Aboriginal
people were savages. But the school did put him in touch with a sympathetic art
teacher, Mary Morris, who not only nurtured his early talent, but also kept in contact

482 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

with him throughout his life. Unlike many students, Beardy chose not to leave school
when he turned sixteen, but stayed on to complete high school.166
Beardy felt that the school principal had promised to provide him with support tocontinue his studies as an artist once he graduated. However, the principal told him
he had been educated to be a productive citizen, not an artist. He did offer support if
Beardy attended a commercial art course. Fiercely independent and disappointed,
Beardy turned the offer down.167 Beardy’s father worked hard to ensure that his son
could return to the North every summer. Despite these efforts to keep the boy in touchwith his home community, by the time he finished school, Beardy felt that he not
only spoke in English, but he also thought in English.168 To regain a connection withhis culture, he made a unique proposal to a northern bush pilot. In exchange for freetransportation throughout the North, Beardy offered to load and unload the plane forfree. Beardy used his travels to speak to as many Elders as he could—in effect, re-educating himself.169
Judith Morgan, a member of the Tshimshian First Nation, attended the Alberni
school in the 1940s. In December 1946, Victoria painter George Sinclair began teachingart classes at the school. He was quickly impressed by Morgan’s skill. In July 1947, she
received a $150 scholarship from the British Columbia Indian Arts and Crafts Society
after her work appeared in an exhibit of art by provincial First Nations students.170 The
money allowed her to study Aboriginal artworks at the British Columbia provincial
museum and the provincial archives in Victoria. In 1949, twenty of her paintings were
exhibited in Ottawa. She studied art in Missouri and Kansas, and continued to paint,often incorporating aspects of First Nations culture in her work.171
Another prominent Aboriginal artist, Norval Morrisseau, attended residential
school in Fort William, Ontario. He said his artistic efforts received little encouragement there. “Instead of attending school I used to do a little bit of sketches and thesisters used to strap me for that. They said, ‘You didn’t come here to do art. There’s
a certain period for time for art. You got to learn spelling, arithmetic and so no.’”Whenever he failed to learn his lessons, he was strapped. “Sister Lorenza used tosay, ‘Do your schooling. We want you to be a developed man, to understand.’ But art
was always there. I drew anyway.”172 His memories of the school were of being punished for speaking his language and harsh religious training. He left when he was ten
years old.173

Handicrafts
The assistant regional superintendent of education for Indian Affairs in British
Columbia and the Yukon, A. H. Friesen, concluded in 1968 that in regard to instruction

Sports and the arts: 1940–2000 • 483

in First Nations culture, “very little is done in most classrooms” in his region. He gave
the following examples from residential schools in his region.
St. Mary’s Student Residence, Mission City – Brother McDonald teaches various
types of handicrafts, particularly carving, to interested students in the hostel
outside classroom hours.
Alberni Student Residence – Mr. George Clutesi teaches Indian dances, legends,
etc. to hostel students in evenings.
Carcross Student Residence – Indian dancing is taught and Indian stories andlegends are told by Indian staff for approximately one-half hour per week.174

As the examples suggest, in addition to the dancing, some schools made room for
Aboriginal handicrafts. For example, the Knights of Columbus, a Roman Catholic
service club, organized a display of craftwork from residential schools across British
Columbia at the Vancouver Hudson’s Bay department store. According to a newspaper report on the contributions from the Kamloops school:
One could spend much time examining them minutely. There are knitted
articles, dresses, sweaters, etc., made by the girls, aged up to 16 years. There arewool cushions and an afghan into which much time, skill and wool must havegone. There are some outstanding examples of beaded work, particularly a pairof buckskin gloves inscribed “Kamloops” and several realistic butterflies madeof beads.
In the work of the boys there are some cleverly carved articles, including a pairof Indian figures, more than two feet high, cleanly and systematically carved, thedesign brought out by burning. Another outstanding article is a “treasure chest”
handsomely carved.175

In 1958, the principal of the Sir John Franklin school in Yellowknife, J. M. Black,reported that Miss Fairful, the girls’ supervisor at Akaitcho Hall, had been “actively
encouraging and helping Eskimo and Indian girls with their native handicraft. The
results are very beautiful and of a high standard of craftsmanship and authenticity.”
Some of the students were doing commissioned work in their own time.176
Although cultural activities were a lifesaver for some residential school students,
for others, participation in these activities was not always voluntary, or pleasurable.
For example, the fact that the Portage la Prairie school choir was directed by the residence’s administrator could become a source of tension. One student stated that
she was told she would have to leave the residence if she quit the choir. According
to an Indian Affairs report, a second conflict with the administrator developed whenanother girl announced she was leaving the choir. The student said others were reluctant to quit for fear of the administrator’s temper, which the Indian Affairs investigatorsaid he had witnessed “first hand.” The Indian Affairs official wrote that the choir “has

484 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

a good reputation and travels here and there putting on shows. However, it is not somuch a relaxing extracurricular activity for the students as a means for bringing glory
to the Residence and its Administrator.”177
The benefits of being a dancer at the Kamloops school also came at a price: therehearsals were rigorous and discipline was harsh. Students recalled being hit
with a “shillelagh” (an Irish walking stick or club) for making errors and being verbally humiliated.178

Military and service organizations
In August 1942, thirty-three First Nations men arrived in Winnipeg from northern Manitoba. They had come to enlist in the Canadian army as part of what was
described by the Winnipeg Evening Tribune as the “first mass enlistment of its kindin this war.” The group was led by David Nanawin, the acting principal of the Norway
House residential school. Among the young men were Rose Beardy (his last name wasgiven as Bardy), Rose’s brother Sandy, Andrew Crate, Murdo Scribe (his first namewas given as Murdock), and John Muswaggon (his last name was given in the article
as Musswagon). All were former students at the Norway House, Manitoba, school.179
A number of Aboriginal women who had gone to residential school also enlisted in
the Canadian forces. Among them were Edith Gordon, of the Pasqua, Saskatchewan,First Nation; Margaret Bruyere from Fort Frances, Ontario; Mary Greyeyes from theMuskeg Lake First Nation; and Margaret Stonechild from the Peepeekesis Cree First
Nation.180 During World War Two, there were thirty-seven former students on the“Honor Roll” of the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school. Staff member Elizabeth Atwater
said that “some of the ones overseas write such good letters that I cannot think ourwork has all been in vain. They know what they are fighting for, all right.”181
The voluntary enlistment of thousands of Aboriginal people in the Canadian army
during the Second World War is a reflection of a number of factors, including thepresence of cadet corps in residential schools.182 The best-known Aboriginal soldierof the Second World War was a former residential school student. Thomas Prince
was born in 1915. He was a great-great-grandson of Chief Peguis. He grew up on the
Brokenhead Reserve in Manitoba and attended the Elkhorn residential school, completing Grade Eight. There, he had been a proud member of the cadet corps, once
even trying to get away with wearing his cadet uniform in class. He enlisted in 1940
and was accepted as a paratrooper in 1942. He served in both the Second World War
and the Korean War. For his courage under fire in the Second World War, he was given
both the Military Medal for bravery in the field and the American Silver Star. He washonourably discharged after service in the Korean War. For that service, he received

Sports and the arts: 1940–2000 • 485

the Korean, Canadian Volunteer Service, and United Nations Service medals. He isoften referred to as “Canada’s most decorated Indian soldier.”183
By the end of the 1930s, the cadet movement was almost non-existent in Canada.
It was the victim of Depression-era cost cutting on the part of the federal government, and pacifist sentiment among a number of churches. The outbreak of war in1939 led to a rebirth of the movement in general, and the specific re-establishment ofcadet units at residential schools. For residential schools, a cadet corps was one wayof getting access to additional resources, and to additional money for staff preparedto take on the role of leading the cadet units. For example, Indian Affairs attempted
to have the federal War Assets Corporation provide the Fort Frances, Ontario, school
cadet corps with a full set of band instruments. At the Sioux Lookout, Ontario, school,
the boys were trained by a former member of the Women’s Division of the Royal
Canadian Air Force. According to the local Indian agent, they all looked “very smart
in their uniforms.”184
Not all schools were as well supplied. In 1944, S. H. Middleton, the principal of the
Anglican school in Cardston, Alberta, wrote Indian Affairs to complain that the cadet
corps at that school had received no new uniforms since 1920. “In consequence, theUniform we now have is beyond repair.” He asked if the government could supply him
with “used Battle-dress in the smaller sizes.”185
In 1942, the army cadet movement was renamed the “Royal Canadian Army
Cadets.” During the war, it recruited 115,000 Canadian boys.186 In at least one case,
the Aboriginal leadership opposed the increase in military training. Chief Poorman of
the Poorman Band visited the Indian Affairs office in Ottawa in 1945 to complain thatat the Lestock, Saskatchewan, school, “the pupils were given too much drilling, witha consequent absence from the classroom.”187 The principal said that other than thethree days of class time that had been given over to inspection during the course of
the year, the cadet training had taken place in the evening, usually for about an hour
and an half, once a week.188
The federal government drastically reduced its commitment to cadet units in 1947.
Any cadet unit that lacked a qualified instructor and a minimum of twenty cadets
aged fourteen years or older was to be disbanded.189 Indian Affairs unsuccessfullysought an exemption for units at the schools it operated.190 Instructions were given to
all sponsoring organizations to return all equipment to the federal government. The
principal of the Presbyterian school in Kenora, D. S. Pitts, asked if the school could buy
the equipment.191 Even though the federal Department of National Defence agreed todeclare the material as surplus and sell it to the Kenora school, Indian Affairs was notprepared to fund the purchase.192
In the coming years, several school cadet units would be established for a few
years and then be disbanded. The Alert Bay, British Columbia, school cadet corps was
disbanded in 1958.193 The Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school cadet corps was revived

486 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

in 1959 and disbanded three years later.194 In 1967, there were only two residential
schools with army cadet corps in Saskatchewan: Duck Lake and Qu’Appelle.195 In 1968,
the Navy League was active in Fort George.196 The Prince Albert Air Cadets League
was disbanded in 1970 and revived in 1975.197 Two years later, it was disbanded for asecond time.198 Consideration was given in 1962 to establishing a Sea Cadets Corps inInuit communities. Northern Affairs official Ben Sivertz urged caution, since successdepended on finding a “reliable man to lead it and a reasonable assurance of continuity.”199 There was also concern that the league would operate in competition with the
Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts.200
School officials were usually supportive of the establishment of cadet units,
although this was not always the case. Everett Anderson, the man in charge of the Fort
Simpson, Northwest Territories, cadets, felt that he was not getting enough support
from the local hostel supervisors in 1973.201
Cadet activities could lead to positive press. A banquet celebrating the first anniversary of the Kootenay, British Columbia, school corps in 1955 was described in a frontpage article in the local paper.202 In 1958, Lytton, British Columbia, principal C. F. Hives
said that in the past, boys from the school had “been naturally slouchy and devoid ofdecent deportment and response.” The cadet corps was responsible for turning thisimage around, providing a “wonderful boost for the school in that it has gained therespect of other people.”203 A Blue Quills cadet band had been formed in 1954, which
played both at the school and in the nearby community of St. Paul. The local newspaper reported that the band was “in great demand at parades and celebrations.”204
In some cases, band councils were prepared to provide financial support for cadet
units. In 1958, a twenty-cadet drum-and-bugle band was formed at the Anglican
school in Cardston, Alberta. The Blood Band Council agreed to fund a music teacher
for the band.205 Residential school cadet units also travelled to regional and national
competitions, where they often performed very well. In 1958, the Prince Albert,
Saskatchewan, All-Indian Air Cadet Squadron competed against thirty-six other air
cadet squadrons from Saskatchewan, and won two awards for drill and discipline andone for military efficiency.206 In 1955, the Alberni, British Columbia, school Sea Cadets
Corps was judged to be the premier corps in proficiency among corps up to 100 members. (Approximately 90% of the units fit within that category.)207 There was also a sea
cadets unit at the Blue Quills, Alberta, school in 1957.208 In 1975, the Gordon’s Cadet
Corps was awarded the General Proficiency Challenge Cup, beating twenty-sevenother Saskatchewan cadet corps. It was the first time an Aboriginal corps had won
the cup.209
In 1960, cadets from the Gordon’s school had the opportunity to travel to Vernon,
British Columbia, for seven weeks of cadet camp in July and August. Such participation significantly extended the period of time that students would be separated fromtheir parents. Parents of students participating in this program were informed that

Sports and the arts: 1940–2000 • 487

this meant their children would “only be able to come home near the end of August, if
there is time, before the beginning of the new school year.”210 The schools also turnedto the military for summer employment. In 1961, the Hobbema, Alberta, school placedseven students with the Canadian army and eight students with the Cadets.211
Participation in cadet corps was also seen as the first step towards a career in the
military. In the mid-1960s, Indian Affairs and Northern Development had reached
an agreement with the Department of National Defence that the military would
seek recruits from the cadet corps at residential schools. In light of this new policy,
Northern Affairs successfully sought to re-establish a recently disbanded cadet corps
at the Churchill, Manitoba, residence.212
The federal government regularly claimed guardianship over residential school
students. However, a 1956 vehicle accident involving a truckload of Aboriginal cadets
underscores how quickly the federal government was prepared to step away from theresponsibilities of such claims to guardianship if they conflicted with financial interests. In November of that year, an army truck carrying forty cadets from the Cranbrook,
British Columbia, school overturned. The driver of the truck was killed. He had been,in the opinion of Indian Affairs official J. S. Dunn, “undoubtedly under the influenceof alcohol and driving at an excessive speed when he lost control of the truck.” All
the students suffered shock, and contusions and abrasions to the face and head. They
were taken to a local hospital, where twenty-eight were released after examinationand twelve were hospitalized. One additional boy was hospitalized the next day. Threemonths later, one of the students, John Terbasket, was still in hospital, and a second
student, Judy George, was complaining of ongoing headaches. The Canadian army
had agreed to pay all hospital bills and replace broken eyeglasses.213 Terbasket, who
suffered from cracked ribs, eventually required surgery and was released from hospital in February 1957.214
Andrew Paull, the leader of the North American Indian Brotherhood, raised thequestion as to whether Indian Affairs should pursue a lawsuit on behalf of the injured
students.215 Dunn believed the army would be found to have been negligent in its careof the students. He was, in fact, amazed that none of them had been killed.216 IndianAffairs’ legal counsel advised against suing the Department of National Defence, since
it would involve one branch of the government suing another. However, he said there
was no reason why the Indian agent could not advise the parents to consult a local
lawyer if they wished to “seek recovery from the Crown.” He added that Indian Affairs
might “as a matter of policy, believe some contribution” to the parents’ legal costs
was appropriate.217 However, contrary to the financial aspects of that legal advice,
Indian Affairs Director H. M. Jones gave instructions that Indian Affairs “will not give
any advice or assistance in pressing any such claims. Any parent or guardian may be
informed, however, that if he wishes to venture a claim, he should consult a solicitor

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in private practice. The department will not contribute to the payment of the solicitor’s fees.”218
Cadets were expected to adhere to military discipline—and to have military haircuts. By the 1970s, when long hair on boys was common, the residences were allowing
boys to wear their hair long in keeping with the general policy of cultural integration.
One residence official who was also active in the Cadets urged the Department of
National Defence to relax its policies regarding hair length. He wrote, “The Indian culture has always worn longer hair, and as we are trying to promote integration, we findit impossible to integrate when we mark the boys with institutional or military-type
haircuts. We are marking each one of our Cadets as outcasts within his group either
in high school or on the Reserve.”219 He made the same point the following year.220
A report from 1976 indicates that concessions about hair length had indeed been
made to accommodate members of the Gordon’s cadet corps. However, an inspector
warned that “these concessions must not be abused.”221
The Cadets was only one of a number of youth training and service organizations
that operated within the residential schools. Three other prominent institutions—the
Junior Red Cross, the Girl Guides, and the Boy Scouts—also had significant residential
school presences. Each of these organizations stressed health, service, and citizenship.
The Junior Red Cross’s focus, for example, was on “service for others, our country, ourcommunity and our schools,” and on “health of mind and body to fit us for greater service.”222 The aim of the Scouts and Guides was to build character and develop a strong
sense of citizenship and service, while providing youngsters with handicraft skills andbuilding their health and strength. The organizations were hierarchical in structure,with a series of steps through which members could advance, and, given their uniforms and codes of honour and duty, almost military in nature. From the outset of the
movement, it had been thought that the Boy Scouts might serve as future soldiers, and
the Girl Guides were to be future mothers of the nation.223
These values were reflected in some of the reports the students prepared for school
newsletters on club activities. At the Hobbema, Alberta, school, the Girl Guides met
every week in 1956. Troop president Amy Dion wrote that her favourite aspect ofGuides was “The Court of Honour,” since it helped the Guides “to understand the mostimportant element in Girl Guide Training. We like the sense and practice of self-discipline and responsibility.”224 In 1953 at the Gleichen, Alberta, school, the members of
the Junior Red Cross spent their time, ironically, “knitting garments for the children inother lands.” They also raised money by selling apples and candy. The money raised
was used to purchase “Health Kits,” which were also sent abroad.225 In the 1950s, theHealth Committee of the Junior Red Cross at the Blue Quills school took on responsibility for “promoting good posture in the school.”226
In 1947, the Girl Guides reported that there were at least twenty-one Guide companies at Indian Affairs residential and day schools across Canada.227 One of them wasSports and the arts: 1940–2000 • 489

organized at the Anglican school in Aklavik, Northwest Territories. In 1948, thirty-one
girls were in two separate Brownie (the Girl Guides organization for younger girls)
packs at the school.228 In 1963, the Blackfoot Band Council voted to pay for the uniforms and camping equipment for the Cluny Girl Guides and Gleichen Sea Scouts.229
At Broughton Island, Northwest Territories, in 1965, there was a branch of the Junior
Red Cross that, according to the principal, called itself the “Ikamukti Innuit,” which hetranslated as “the Eskimo Helpers.” (“Eskimo” was the name commonly applied to theInuit at the time.) There was also a Girl Guides unit that met weekly.230
Although school officials were generally supportive of these movements, the relationships were not always smooth. In 1967, Mrs. D. Ouchterlony, the Girl Guides
commissioner for the Yukon and Northwest Territories, complained that a numberof girls living at the Churchill hostel had been denied permission to attend local
Guides-sponsored Ranger meetings, since they interfered with their studies.231 Afterher complaint, the school principal agreed to ensure that during the next school year,
provision would be made so girls from the residence would be able to attend Guidessponsored meetings.232
In 1950, the Boy Scouts of Canada reported on the status of their organization among
Aboriginal children. They had “eight Indian Boy Scout Troops and two Indian Wolf
Cub Packs.” Six of the eight Scout troops were associated with residential schools, aswere both Cub packs. Most of the schools were in northern Canada.233 Those involvedin the Boy Scouts movement believed that they were helping to transform Aboriginal
youngsters. The British Columbia commissioner for the Boy Scouts, T. W. S. Parsons,in thanking Roman Catholic Bishop J. L. Coudert for the support he had given the
Scouts, wrote, “It should not be long now before every young Indian becomes a boy
scout and in this connection I must mention the priests at Lejac. They are doing areally splendid job and when these boys of theirs return home—to stay, we are going
to see better villages and, ultimately, happier men.”234
These organizations depended on the volunteer efforts of missionaries and teachers, or wives of teachers or missionaries. And, since staff turnover was high in schools,
the units often had short lifespans. By 1956, there were only two residential schoolsthat had Boy Scout troops in the British Columbia and Yukon Region: Fraser Lakein British Columbia and Carcross in the Yukon.235 The Girl Guides had limited success in recruiting Aboriginal women as leaders until the 1960s, when local leadership
emerged in a number of locations, often in the Northwest Territories.236
Indian Affairs provided limited funding to support Boy Scouts activities. In 1967,
for example, it paid to send Boy Scouts from a number of residential schools to the
Scouts’ World Jamboree in Idaho that year.237 Such support could be given grudgingly: one official felt that Indian Affairs had been forced into providing funding to the
Scouts, noting regretfully, “I cannot see, in the interest of public relations, any way of
avoiding making some contribution.”238

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For students, one of the potential benefits of being in these organizations was travelto places such as Toronto or Banff to participate in national events.239 Two former students recalled that these Scouts and Guides units provided a welcome measure oforganized recreation at the school they attended. Vera Styres attended the Mohawk
Institute in Ontario in the 1940s. She recalled, “I got to belong to Brownies and Girl
Guides. That was something I wouldn’t have had if I had stayed home.”240 Lee Snake,
who went to the same school in the 1960s, said he recalled Cubs and Scouts as one of
the few organized recreational activities at the school: “Mostly you were just let out
into the playground.”241
While many of the extracurricular activities offered to residential school students
were intended to reinforce the assimilation process, it is also clear that these were,from the perspective of many students, among the most enjoyable elements of theirschooling. As many students have said, sports and the arts helped them survive. On
the rinks, athletic fields, and parade grounds, or in the arts and handicraft rooms, andon performance stages, many students found an escape and a way to express themselves, and, through that, gained the opportunity to explore their own talents and,sometimes, other parts of the country or the world. Most importantly, they gainedsome confidence in their ability to achieve.
These benefits do not cancel out the larger, oppressive, exploitive, and often abusive side of residential schooling. It is also clear that some abusers used sports andrecreational programs to recruit students for future and ongoing victimization. The
most obvious of these is William Starr, whose career is discussed at greater length
in the chapter on abuse post-1940. Starr worked at a series of Anglican schools andwas involved in recreational programs at almost all of them.242 At the Gordon’s,
Saskatchewan, school, he played a central role in the supervision of the dance company, the boxing team, and the cadet corps. He often accompanied members of theseorganizations on trips, providing him with largely unsupervised control over the students.243 In recommending approval for one of those trips, Indian Affairs official J. B.
Freeman wrote in April 1978, “Mr. Starr is very reliable, and is providing adequate
chaperoning.”244 In 1993, Starr was convicted of ten counts of sexually assaulting
Gordon’s students.245 Melvin McNab, who was heavily involved in the supervision ofboth the dance company and the cadet corps at Gordon’s, was successfully sued fordamages by former students who said they had been sexually assaulted by McNabwhen they lived in the residence.246
Similarly, Paul Leroux, who directed the choir at Beauval, Saskatchewan, andcoached numerous sports teams both there and in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, wasconvicted of multiple sexual assaults at both schools.247
Such betrayals should not overshadow the contributions that many others madeas positively remembered coaches, leaders, and instructors in the numerous extracurricular activities that took place, or the related accomplishments of the students.

Sports and the arts: 1940–2000 • 491

They serve, however, as a very clear reminder of the extreme vulnerability of children
in residential schools, and of the failure of the federal government and the churches
to adequately protect them.
Further, it would not be accurate to give residential schools complete credit for the
successes enjoyed by students who went on to careers as athletes and artists. Hockey
pioneer Fred Sasakamoose gave his grandfather much of the credit for his success asa player. When Sasakamoose was six years old, his grandfather carved him a hockey
stick out of a willow tree. He would then clear the snow off a local marsh so that the
young boy could practise skating. Looking back on his time at residential school, he
told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, “I want my childhood backthat I never received when I was in residential school.”248 Alex Janvier has spoken of
the childhood drawings he did before going to residential school, and cited the beadwork and birchbark basketry of his mother and other relatives as an important artistic influence.249
As a former student from the Hobbema school recalled, the students depended
on their creativity to overcome the lack of recreational equipment and programs: “Ifyou had only a single teeter-totter, you could create a sports program. We used to playwhat we called ‘Indian football,’ which was football with no equipment whatsoever.”The schools in southwestern Alberta were in rodeo country. As long as a school had
horses and cows, and most did until well into the 1950s, students had all they required
to improvise their own rodeo games. Younger students were even more inventive.
They could conjure a steer-wrestling competition out of a strong imagination and asimple swing set. Boys were timed as they leapt off their horse (one of the swings),
grabbed the steer (an empty swing coming at them in the other direction), and tied arope (a piece of ribbon) around the steer (the swing). If an older boy would agree toget down on his hands and knees with a belt around his waist, the students were readyfor a round of bronco busting. The smaller boys would hold on for dear life as the older
boys attempted to buck them off. In later years, a number of former residential school
students, including Fred Gladstone and Rufus Goodstriker, went on to successful
rodeo careers and helped found the first Aboriginal professional rodeo association.250
Cultural and athletic ability and achievement existed in Aboriginal communities
long before residential schools came into being. Residential schools did, in somecases, provide students with training and direction to foster those talents. Such talents could well have been fostered without separating children from their parents,
or without the mistreatment the children received. And, neither the federal government nor the churches ever made a concerted and extensive investment in fostering
those talents.

CHAPTER 44

The staff experience: 1940–2000

T

he residential school system underwent a number of dramatic changes fromthe 1940s onward. From the perspective of staffing, the most significant ofthese was the gradual displacement of the churches from their central role in
the operation of the schools. A key step was the Indian Affairs decision to take over“responsibility for the employment of teaching staff at all government-owned residential schools” in 1954.1 This began a process that was completed by the CanadianLabour Relations Board’s ruling in 1966 that most of the non-teaching staff members
at the schools were, in fact, government employees.2 This transfer of 1,400 employees
from the responsibility of the churches to the government triggered the government
takeover of the schools in 1969. The government intended to use its new authority
to close down the residential school system. This intent was stymied by a number ofAboriginal authorities that asserted their own right to operate the schools. The riseof schools that were being operated under Aboriginal control extended the life of thesystem and significantly changed the nature of the workforce.3
When the schools were under church administration, religious affiliation was
the key criterion in hiring.4 From 1970 onwards, particularly in institutions thatwere under First Nations administration, hiring was far less likely to happen on thebasis of religious affiliation. Instead, the schools focused on hiring and promoting
Aboriginal employees.5
Given that, until 1969, most of the schools were run under the auspices of the
Roman Catholic Church, a very significant portion of the staff was made up of members of male and female Catholic religious orders, who had taken vows of poverty,
chastity, and obedience. The Protestants did not have access to a similar source of
low-cost labour, but they did generally appoint members of clergy to serve as school
principals—wives of principals often served as school matrons—and attempted torecruit additional staff from their own congregations.
Based on their lower labour costs, the Catholic schools had lower student-to-staff
ratios than the Protestant schools.6 The stability of membership of their religious
orders reduced their staff turnover.

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In the post-war period, staff members were poorly paid, poorly housed, overworked, and poorly prepared for their work. Wages and conditions did improve—butthey still lagged behind national trends.7 Staff turnover was high, conflicts among staff
members were common, and the pressures, particularly on the principals, were onerous. Many were working in residential schools because they were under instruction to
do so as members of a religious order. Others had been recruited by their local church.
In either case, many of the staff members were drawn to this work out of a sense of religious duty and commitment. Others may have come for the personal and professional
experience, or out of a sense of adventure. Still others came to make a fresh start.
In keeping with the dominant social values of the day, school staff would havebelieved that they were helping Aboriginal people. Although some came to question
the overall impact of their work, most believed that, on a daily basis, they were providing children with an opportunity to acquire needed skills. They were aware thatthe schools were underfunded and that they, as staff, were overworked. Some protested the limited resources, harsh discipline, irrelevant curriculum, and, when theycame upon it, abusive treatment of the children. Most of them were young and inexperienced, and, when confronted with the failings and frustrations of the system, they
simply left, or, in some cases, were fired for speaking up about what they saw.

Jobs: What they did
Residential schools varied considerably in both the number of students theyenrolled and the size of their workforces. From the early 1950s onwards, teachers constituted a shrinking proportion of the number of people being directly employed by
the schools. This was the result of the decision to convert most teachers at the schools
into government employees, and of the policy of integrating students into the provincial public education systems (thereby transforming many schools into residences).
Schools retained a teaching staff into the 1960s, but, increasingly, most employees
were engaged in non-classroom activities.
As the following examples demonstrate, the schools employed a wide range of
employees, and the size of the workforce could vary significantly from school to school.
The Sioux Lookout, Ontario, school had a staff of fifteen in 1955. This included aprincipal, a matron, a kitchen matron, an assistant kitchen matron, a junior boys’supervisor and nurse, a junior girls’ supervisor, a sewing matron, a laundry matron, anengineer, a general assistant, a senior boys’ supervisor, and four teachers. In addition,
three non-teaching positions were unfilled.8
According to a United Church study conducted in 1956, 130 people were
employed at the church’s six residential schools (which had a combined enrolmentof 1,060). The Morley, Alberta, school got by with the smallest workforce: fifteen

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 495

employees (responsible for 155 students), while the Alberni, British Columbia, school
had thirty-three employees (and 300 students).9
The Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, residence had at least fifty employees during the
1966–67 school year. This included four administrative staff, seven academic staff,
sixteen child-care supervisors, three nurses, six kitchen staff, three laundry staff, six
maintenance workers (including bus drivers), an engineer, two general assistants, one
janitor, and one relief night watchman.10 At the time, the residence was housing 335
children who were attending local schools.11 The residence handbook summarized
staff duties. The principal was the “representative of the Anglican Church of Canada,”
acting as the “Church’s agent in its dealings with the Federal government.” He wasalso described as having a responsibility to the federal government. The vice-principal
was the senior male staff member, in charge of the school in the principal’s absence.
He also had responsibility for financial administration and student discipline. The
matron was “the senior lady member of the staff,” with responsibility for the female
members of the staff, the distribution of “food, clothing and other supplies,” the childcare program, the dormitories, and the dormitory supervisors. The senior teacher was
expected to conduct and develop the academic program. Teachers were to follow theprovincial curriculum, prepare report cards, maintain records, keep current with educational practices, and update their educational standing. They were also to put in
half an hour a day of supervision “after normal school hours.” The guidance counsellor was to ensure that “Indian children are given equal opportunity to develop culturally in a new and very strange society.” The child-care supervisors were to act “inplace of the parents in the residence,” remembering that “each child is an individualwith his own needs and desires.” They were responsible for the out-of-class lives of thestudents. This included “personal health and clothing, etc.” Each supervisor was toadminister “a programme of activities geared to the needs of the age group with which
he is working.” The engineer was responsible for “plumbing, heating, water supply
and electrical fixtures.” He was also the school’s fire warden and responsible for fire
drills. The maintenance supervisor was responsible for the school building, fixtures,and vehicles. The shift fireman (in this case, someone employed to tend the fire in
the furnace) was to maintain the furnaces on a daily basis while carrying out othermaintenance tasks. The cooks prepared meals according to a menu that was set by
the matron and supervised the work of the kitchen and dining room assistants. The
kitchen assistants were responsible for dishwashing and maintenance of the kitchen.
The seamstress was to do all the mending of clothing that could not “be performedin the dormitory or by the children themselves.” The nurses provided “medical services under the direction of the Matron and in close consultation with the school doctor.” The laundry staff washed and cleaned all school clothing and linens. The matron
could assign the general assistants “various duties.”12

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In the 1966–67 school year, the Kamloops, British Columbia, school had one principal, one vice-principal, two maintenance workers, five cooks, one nurse, one seamstress, one secretary, one painter, two night watchmen, eight boys’ supervisors, eight
girls’ supervisors, four part-time girls’ supervisors, two dishwashers, thirteen full-timeand eight part-time kitchen helpers, a laundress (one day a week), an engineer, a fireman, and an additional maintenance worker. There were at least sixty full- and parttime workers for a school with an enrolment of 379.13
The Prince Albert and Kamloops schools were two of the largest schools in the system. Other schools had much smaller staff complements. In 1966, the Sechelt, British
Columbia, school, with an enrolment of 168, employed a principal and sixteen others
on a full-time basis, while the Anglican school in Cardston, Alberta, with an enrolment of eighty-four, had thirty full- and part-time staff.14

The recruiting crisis
Finding people to fill all these positions was never easy. The Second World War
brought the Great Depression of the 1930s to a rapid end. Unemployment disappeared, to be replaced by a labour shortage in almost every field of endeavour in
Canada. The residential schools, which had always had difficulty recruiting staff, wereparticularly hard hit by the wartime labour crisis. The problem was so severe that, in
1942, the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school began employing Japanese Canadians.
A branch of the Canadian Legion objected to the practice, while the local Indian agent
worried that parents might use the presence of the Japanese Canadians as a reason for
not returning their children when the 1942–43 school year commenced.15
The labour shortage was not unique to wartime Fraser Lake. A 1946 study carriedout by the Anglican Indian and Eskimo Residential School Commission concluded
that the schools were “seriously handicapped by the loss of experienced workers.”16
The shortage continued into peacetime. There was a general teacher shortage for all
school systems in Canada in the 1950s; one estimate put the number of additional
teachers that Canada needed in 1952 at 10,000.17
The residential schools were not only competing with the public school system, butthey were also competing with the day schools operated by Indian Affairs. In the 1940s,
these schools paid better wages than the residential schools. After 1947, teachers at
Indian Affairs day schools qualified for civil service employee benefits. These benefits
were not offered to teachers at residential schools, who worked for the churches rather
than for Indian Affairs.18 The improvement in benefits for teachers at day schools only
increased the problems faced by residential schools. In 1948, C. H. Birdsall, the chairof the United Church committee responsible for the Edmonton school, complained,“It is impossible for the Residential School to offer salaries in competition with” Indian

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 497

Affairs rates. Given the poor quality of accommodation, equipment, and staff at theschool, he felt it was “doubtful the present work with Indian Children could properly
be called education.”19 Thirteen years later, the same committee concluded that “theturnover in staff and the inability of the school to obtain and hold suitable staff is dueto the inadequate salaries available. Moreover there will never be anyone available totake over a principalship until a vice principal can be paid sufficient to hold him.”20
As Indian Affairs began requiring that teachers at residential schools have academic qualifications, the problem only intensified. In 1954, three of the teachers
whom the principal of the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school wished to hire were
not acceptable to Indian Affairs.21 According to a survey from the late 1950s, the mostpressing problem at five of the six schools the United Church operated was the lack ofstaff due to insufficiency in the federal grant.22
The salaries of non-teaching staff were so low that when the British Columbia minimum wage was raised in 1949, the Alert Bay school had to budget for a significant
increase in salaries. At the same time, the higher pay meant the school could fill anumber of staff vacancies.23
The issue of poor pay never went away. When seeking permission to increaseteachers’ salaries in 1965, Indian Affairs acknowledged that, when compared with thesalaries paid by provincial schools, Indian Affairs rates were not competitive, except
in the Maritime provinces. The discrepancy applied to both the minimum and maximum rates and for all classifications. Due to difficulties in recruiting, fifty-two positions had gone vacant for periods lasting from one-half month to eight months in the
1964–65 school year.24
The historical record is full of examples of schools struggling to recruit enoughstaff to stay open. According to an internal Anglican report, in 1956, Principal Eric
Barrington enumerated his problems at the Sioux Lookout, Ontario, school. One staff
member was described as a “sick woman,” who was about to go on medical leave. It
was recommended that she be transferred to Alert Bay upon her recovery. Anotherstaff member had been called to Winnipeg, Manitoba, to attend to a sick daughter.
It was doubted that she would return. A third was judged to be a “good worker but
not capable of looking after girls as a supervisor,” and a fourth, the fireman, was “notcapable but willing enough.” The cook had left the school, and yet another worker was“proving of help but quite a talker.”25 When A. E. W. Godwin resigned as principal of
the Anglican school at Wabasca, Alberta, in 1956, he left behind an institution with“no farmer, engineer, boy’s [sic] supervisor or cook.”26
In December 1959, Edmonton, Alberta, school principal Oliver Strapp reported
that the school’s three teachers were “well paid, but not too well qualified.” An advertisement for a new boys’ supervisor had yielded no applicants, and the new matron
had turned out to be “not up to expectations.”27 By March 1960, the school had hired
and fired a boys’ supervisor, since he had “proved unsatisfactory.” The school was also

498 • Truth & Reconciliation Commissionin need of an assistant girls’ supervisor to “direct the sewing room.”28 Two months
later, a United Church document provided the following unflattering assessment of
the school’s two boys’ supervisors: “one elderly—neither very satisfactory.”29

Motivation
Many of the staff members were recruited through their churches and came to theresidential schools to carry out missionary work.30 Others simply wished to ‘improve
the world.’ Lorraine Arbez, who worked at the Qu’Appelle school in Saskatchewan in
the 1950s, wanted to help: “I chose this career to work with the children and my aim
was to do something good with them and I hope I was of some use.”31 Another former staff member wanted to teach: “I was there to teach and I felt I have to do thebest job I can with the language situation and the crowded conditions in my classrooms. I was there to help them learn. That was my mission.”32 For Noreen Fischbuch,
who worked at schools in Ontario and Alberta in the 1950s and 1960s, the residential
schools offered much-needed experience: “As far as I was concerned, it was a teachingjob, it was with the kids and I liked the kids.… The kids were getting an education; I
had a job.”33 Some were looking for a change in direction: “I had a sense that I was ona bit of a mission,” explained a former supervisor, “but I wasn’t sure what the mission
was….”34 Others wanted to explore new horizons: “I was young and I wanted to see
the world,” said a teacher from British Columbia.35 Eleanor Jackson, who worked atAlberni in British Columbia and Norway House in Manitoba in the 1960s, said, “I wasyoung, and so it was kind of an adventure.”36 George Takashima, who taught at Sioux
Lookout, explained, “I was just sort of adventuresome, you might say.”37 And, according to at least one former teacher, some were simply “looking for a husband.”38
As one former student, who became a staff employee, observed: “People came thatwere out of college. People came for experience. People came for adventure. Peoplecame … not knowing what they wanted to do and they saw an ad or something andthey came. And then there were some people that stayed with the work and really feltthat they were doing good.”39
Not everyone chose to work at the residential schools out of some sense of personal or social mission. Some were looking to leave behind a troubled past, and others
wanted to reinvent themselves. A retired Anglican minister who worked in northern
Québec offered a similar observation. He said that “there were people who were trying
to run away from a lot of things and the north is a place where you have to have yourhead screwed on pretty solidly to make a go of it.”40
Many people came to work in the schools through a family connection. Berniceand Noreen Mason (later Noreen Fischbuch) grew up in a small village in Nova
Scotia and were recruited to residential school work by the Anglican Church. They

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 499

worked in a variety of positions in schools in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan; Sault Ste.
Marie, Ontario; and Edmonton and Brocket, Alberta. For a while, Noreen’s husband
taught at the Catholic school in Williams Lake, British Columbia. By the end of her
time working in residential schools, Noreen had converted to Catholicism.41 Siblings
Gladys and George McMillan worked at the Presbyterian school in Kenora, Ontario.42
In 1966, the Prince Albert school was employing two Bramwells, two Bucsises, twoGambles, two Williamses, two Impeys, two Tutthills, two Weflens, three Robinsons,and four Rennies.43

Orientation and qualifications
Staff members often were asked to take on tasks for which they had no training or qualification. James Fiori worked at the Roman Catholic schools in northern
Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
They got people who were able to work, but they weren’t necessarily people
that had qualifications for this type of thing and you know, so if you are going tosupervise boys, or girls either for that matter, then you would—there is certainlysome skills that one ought to learn. From my perspective, that was totally lacking.
They may be very good at what they did and what have you, but I think this was
manifest across the board, even as far as teachers and what have you, always
you end up not necessarily getting your top-rate teacher and what have you,precisely because how do you get people to work up in these isolated areas?44

Some wondered whether religious orders were using the schools as “dumping
grounds.” Lawrence Brennan, a Jesuit priest, wondered if the Jesuits sent those members “they didn’t know what to do with” to work in the school in Spanish, Ontario.45
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the Jesuits at Spanish were a community in chaos,complete with conflicts among staff who would not teach and would not accept discipline. Some sought to have colleagues expelled from the school, but the shortage of
replacements rendered this impossible.46 Principal William Maurice lamented, “I havea teaching staff who either cannot or are not interested in teaching. One good teacher
who was interested in the work of the school would be all we need. By this I mean
one good Jesuit teacher in addition to one lay teacher in high school.”47 According toa 1946 letter from Principal Raymond Oliver, there were “three old fathers” staying
at the school who constituted a “very hard trial on us all at times. It is what must be
expected of men in the very advanced and in many ways helpless state of age.” Given
the burdens the school was carrying, he wrote, “we would appreciate very much if itwere possible to have on [sic] other real worker along.”48
Several former staff members spoke of how unprepared and unqualified they were
for the tasks they were asked to perform. Bernard Lee had a teaching certificate and500 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

four years’ experience working in a one-room school before being appointed principal at Norway House in northern Manitoba. Despite his teaching background, hiswife recalled that “we didn’t have a clue of what we were getting into. [We were] completely green to everything.”49 A nutritionist inspecting the Norway House school in1960 described Lee as being “young and interested and eager to do the best possible
for his pupils and staff.” She said that “it would have been easier for him, had he someprevious experience along this line.” She felt that he was facing a number of problems:
the maintenance man had died suddenly and the school tractor had gone throughthe ice. The matron had come from southern Manitoba after the death of her husband, with whom she had run a country store. The cook had previously worked at theGordon’s school in Punnichy, Saskatchewan, and was reported to be doing “her bestin the face of a difficult kitchen.”50
James DeWolf took over as principal of the Anglican school in Cardston, Alberta, in
1953. Born in England and educated at Trinity College in Toronto, DeWolf had worked
as an assistant priest and rector in various communities in Nova Scotia since 1939.
In describing DeWolf’s qualifications, Henry Cook of the Anglican Indian School
Administration wrote, “Mr. DeWolf has met with considerable success in working
among the Negros [sic] of Nova Scotia. It is quite true that the psychology of the Negro
is different from that of the North American Indian but it does prove that Mr. DeWolf
has the ability to work among people of a race foreign from his own.”51 DeWolf had
been one of a number of activist churchmen who attempted to address social inequalities. Because of their work, they came to be termed, somewhat disparagingly, by othermembers of the clergy as the “Briefcase Boys.” When DeWolf tried to help organize a
co-operative in the fishing village Musquodoboit Harbour, the local storekeeper, who
was also the church treasurer, withheld his salary for several months. It was partiallyin response to such opposition in Nova Scotia that DeWolf decided to take the job at
the Cardston school.52
Bernice Logan was seventeen when she started work as a teacher at the Prince
Albert school in 1949. Her qualifications included a Grade Eleven education, active
participation in her church youth group, and many years of helping to look after her
fifteen brothers and sisters.53 In another case, an eighteen-year-old woman was hired
to be a senior girls’ supervisor, even though she had not yet finished high school. She
was only slightly older than the children she supervised, but she had had considerable
experience looking after her younger siblings after her mother’s premature death.54
When a young man from Ontario was hired to be a supervisor at Norway House, herecalled thinking, “Supervisor! Me? I think my ego kicked in. I had no idea what thatmeant and was probably too proud to ask.”55 Also at Norway House, a nineteen-yearold from southern Ontario was hired sight unseen and without an interview to serveas assistant cook. A year later, he was put in charge of the entire kitchen.56 A Jesuit
priest from Ontario, who also worked as a boys’ supervisor in the mid-1950s, said, “InThe staff experience: 1940–2000 • 501

those days, if you were assigned to something as a Jesuit, you were supposed to be able
to do it even if you didn’t know what the hell they were talking about.”57
However, despite these examples of questionable qualifications, there were also
many trained teachers. For example, Theresa Reid had four years’ teaching experience and a teaching certificate before she applied to work at Norway House,58 George
Takashima had a teaching certificate,59 and Olive Saunders had a university degreeand several years’ teaching experience.60 Olive’s husband Danny, who was hired as
the carpentry instructor, had apprenticed in a carpentry shop, and had almost twenty
years’ experience as an instructor and company superintendent in the private sector
before joining the residential school staff.61
There were also positive assessments of the work that was being done. An Anglican
Indian School Administration assessment from 1954 found Moose Factory, Ontario,
principal Eric Barrington to be “settling in well,” observing that he had “a nice way
with Staff and children.” The assessment went on to say that the matron got along wellwith the principal, the pupils, and the staff. However, even in such a relatively positive assessment, Anglican Indian School Administration official H. G. Cook judged
one staff member as being “coarse” and “not reliable,” and another as “no good as a
Supervisor,” and noted that although another “does not do badly at her job,” she was“a queer staff member nevertheless.”62
From 1955 onwards, Indian Affairs-owned schools were expected to “employ only
qualified engineers as determined by Provincial regulations.”63 Many schools had difficulty recruiting individuals who met this standard: workers with practical skills werealready rare. For example, it was thought that James Ellcome at the Anglican school in
Cardston would make a good engineer, since he was the “only one on staff who knew
what to do” when a broken valve led to the flooding of the boiler room.64 The engineer
at the Anglican school in Fort George, Québec, had turned out to be a disappointment. He was described as being “untidy, a show-off and not so good about machinery. He is however willing and a hard worker.” School officials “let him know he is now
on probation. He is no longer considered ‘engineer’ but ‘maintenance man.’”65
The Anglican Indian School Administration was pleased to have the services of
Dawson Beaver at the Carcross school in the Yukon in 1954. Because Beaver had only
fourth-class papers, Indian Affairs questioned whether he had the necessary skills to
run the school’s engineering system. The Indian School Administration official feltthat Beaver “knows the school utilities systems, is very practical and knows from former experience what ought to be done. I feel we’re far better off with Beaver than we’vebeen with our other 3rd class engineers. He is studying towards 3rd class papers.”66
Beaver had previously worked at the Sioux Lookout, Ontario, school.67
A number of former staff members said they were given little orientation once they
had been hired to work in a residential school. In 1953, the principal of the Anglican
school at Fort George requested that new hires be advised “to get winter underwear,

502 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

rubber boots, a parka, raincoat and warm clothing.”68 “In any other thing you would’ve
had orientation, etc., but we didn’t,” explained a woman who worked at the Gordon’s
school in Saskatchewan. Instead of orientation, she received a booklet that offereda couple of sentences describing each of the employment positions at the school.69
Larry McMahon observed that before he taught in the Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan,
school in the early 1960s, “I had never met an Indian person.” Reflecting back, he said,“I’m going into a school, all the children are Indian, and that seems a bit odd, youknow, you should have a better preparation than that.”70 In 1974, John Tritschler, an
Oblate father, became the last live-in priest at the Mission, British Columbia, school.
He said, “I had never, outside of, I guess, reading comic books, and seeing, seeing the
odd Indian person around Vancouver, I had never, I didn’t have much experience withNative people, so it was a very, very memorable year for me.”71
Of his preparation as an Oblate for work in a residential school, another former
staff person said:
I was an amateur, I had no experience with Native people when I was assigned
to Williams Lake. I had just come six years from the military, a year and a half
in religious training, but I had no experience with Native people or residential
school. I never went to a residential school, never saw a residential school. And
in one year I’m head honcho, which I never asked for. And I suspect there wereothers that were even less trained. No, I don’t think that the Oblates understood
what they were asking of their own men. Yeah. We never—in our year and a halfin Ottawa were not trained for residential schools.72

When he was twenty years old, Merle Nisly volunteered to work at the Poplar Hill,
Ontario, school. As he recalled, he was given little in the way of preparation: “I guess
it was considered that my role as, as a woodcutter or a maintenance person didn’t
require very much orientation. And so, the, the Northern Light Gospel Mission’s staff
at Red Lake didn’t tell me much at all, as I recall.”73

Workload
The workload was arduous. Days were long, resources were limited, and administration was rigid. In addition, the work could be stressful and, at times, dangerous.
At the Presbyterian school in Kenora in the 1940s, staff members—including
teachers—were required to supervise and assist in student housekeeping chores from7:55 to 8:50 every school morning. At the same time, the intermediate teacher andeight boys would clean the intermediate classroom and the chapel, while, under the
direction of the sewing matron, two girls would clean the sitting room and office, andtwo other girls would clean the men’s bedrooms.74 “Lady members of the staff” were
expected to clean their own bedrooms.75

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 503

In 1953, Inspector J. T. Warden recommended that a teacher at the Gordon’s,
Saskatchewan, school be given a pay increase. The woman, who was threatening toquit, had thirty-eight students in her class, which covered grades Four, Five, Six, andSeven. Her three teacher colleagues taught just one grade each, and had classes half
the size of hers, with between nineteen and twenty-four students in their classes.76
In 1954, Anglican official Henry Cook reported to Indian Affairs that the situation at
the Sioux Lookout school was perilous. He wrote that the staff members were
all worn out from a heavy season of repeated illness outbreaks among the pupils.
Late in September there was the polio outbreak—in November and December
influenza—after January both staff and pupils have suffered repeated bouts ofstomach ’flu and dysentery. Staff becoming ill has thrown a heavier load of workon those able to carry on; times off duty have been sacrificed for the welfare of
the children with the result that now everyone is on edge—worn out physicallyand most of them are planning to retire from Residential School work at the endof this term.
The teaching situation is bad—as I reported to you some time ago. Miss Barryhas, for the last six weeks carried the burden of teaching all the pupils with theassistance of a young man—willing enough but without training. She feels shecannot carry on after the end of May and I must agree with her. If she stays much
longer she’ll be a nervous wreck. I was unable to get any teacher help in Toronto
and none is in sight at the moment.

Cook thought it would be necessary to make a complete change of staff at the endof the term.77
The non-teaching staff workload was also often very heavy. The sewing matron at
the Anglican school in Cardston, Alberta, declined to take on the job of school matronin 1954 because she did not wish to “work more than 9 hours daily.”78 The girls’ supervisor at the Norway House, Manitoba, school resigned in 1959 because of the “limited
time off on evenings and weekend.”79 The kitchen and dining-room staff at the sameschool worked a six-day week in 1960. Their day started at 5:45 in the morning andended at 6:30 in the evening. They had from 1:15 to 3:30 off, making for a working dayof ten and one-half hours.80
One former staff member recalled that at the Kamloops school in the 1950s, “thenumber of children in each age group with one child care worker would make it
impossible to give the individual care they needed.”81 Supervisors were on call almost
twenty-four hours a day. There was always a child who needed attention of some sort.
At the Alert Bay, British Columbia, school, one staff member said, she could take time
off only if she found someone to fill in for her. She also said, “There was nowhere for us
to go. On your half-day off you could go down to the village and go to a movie or go out
for dinner. It was dinner usually what we did at the Chinese restaurant.”82

504 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

One child-care worker at the Williams Lake, British Columbia, school started his
first year on the job looking after sixty junior boys. After a series of staff changes, heended up with responsibility for 150 children.83 The school nurse at the Alert Bay
school left in 1960 because she found the work too hard: during a measles epidemic,
her workload had been very strenuous.84
A heavy staff workload could place children at risk in a variety of ways. A nun who
worked at a Roman Catholic school said that she spent much of her time trying “toprotect the little kids because they were really rough on the little ones. Like in theschoolyard, they’d be playing outside, you’d often see a big boy give a little one a kick… but when you have some forty kids, you can’t always see everybody at once.”85
Child-care workers remained overworked into the 1970s. A child-care worker who
resigned from the Ukkivik Residence in the Northwest Territories in 1973 said, “Thedemands made upon a Supervisor or Child Care Worker at Ukkivik Residence are ofastronomical proportions.”
Living in the hostel made it difficult for workers to have time for themselves.
Whether or not he is “on duty”, the moment he steps out of the room he isconfronted by students and their demands and requests. Rarely has a supervisor
at Ukkivik been heard to say “But it is my day off.” Nor is one’s room a guarantee
of privacy. It is a common occurrence to have students knocking on the door at
any hour of the day or night to discuss a problem or fear.86

The isolation and workload were clearly stressful for many staff. When R. S. Davisinspected the Brandon, Manitoba, school in March 1949, he commented that one of
the teachers seemed to “have a defective mind, and I understand she is not quite normal at times. She certainly was not while I was there—all she had the children doing
was singing hymns and studying scripture.” Davis reported that the principal had“tried to reason with her, but it was useless.”87
In 1956, Birtle, Manitoba, principal N. Rusaw reported, with considerable relief,that the school’s dining room supervisor was leaving.
Last Monday morning she met me in the main hall after 9 a.m. in a terrificrage.… She has had several of these vicious attacks I learn [sic] but I had neverencountered any of them before and she had calmed off easily. This time she
made a show of herself for four days, travelling above speed limit around thehalls, and all the time humming to herself. I could not say humming a tune forthere did not seem to be any tune to it.

Rusaw could only conclude that she had “a touch of insanity and this is no place fora woman of her type.”88
There were also numerous reports of illness and injuries. The principal of the Birtle
school had to be hospitalized after a serious accident in 1943.89 A Miss Robertson fell
down the basement steps at the Coté school in Québec in September 1944, injuring

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 505

her head, leg, and hand so seriously that she was not able to work for several days.90 In
1946, Victor Henry Ireland was injured when he was repairing a pump at the Gordon’s
school. As a result of his injury, it was necessary to amputate the little finger of hisright hand.91 In 1954, the Sioux Lookout principal, Edgar Salmon, was suffering froma sprained back—possibly incurred while he was painting the school—and had been
hospitalized twice in the last year. He was scheduled for surgery, but, in the meantime,
could only hobble about the school. Although his wife had been able to improve theoperation of the school, she was seen as “a worrying type.” A boys’ supervisor had
weak lungs and could not control the older boys, another member had “developed
laziness,” and one of the cooks “won’t co-operate with anyone.”92
In 1950, T. C. Ross, the principal of the Presbyterian school in Kenora, wrote thatfor some time, he had been worried about his wife’s health. “For weeks she had been
losing weight from overwork and the constant strain of additional work and worry
necessitated by our lack of a full staff.” With the hiring of a school nurse, he felt, she
was beginning to recover.93 According to a report by a school superintendent in August
1956, the principal of the Anglican school in Wabasca, Alberta, A. E. W. Godwin, was“physically run down—has had 19 boils in a row. No wonder he is run down in that hehas been acting as farmer as well as engineer. He has done a tremendous job under
the adverse conditions and deserves plenty of credit for sticking.” Over the previous
six years, he had had only fourteen days of holiday, nine of which were spent in hospital. He had promised to put in one more year at the school.94 In 1954, the cook at the
Anglican school at Cardston was reported to be “once again in hospital.” Although she
was said to be a good cook, it was decided that she needed to be replaced “as soon as
possible.” It was noted that she had difficulty getting along with other staff.95
Disciplining and dismissing staff could turn out to be dangerous. Herman Hesse
was dismissed from his position as the manual training instructor at the Fraser Lake,
British Columbia, school in 1941, where he had been employed for six years. However,
he refused to leave the school, demanding to be paid until the end of the month. The
principal, Alex Simpson, refused to do this, claiming he had recently discovered“what a ‘dirty swine’ he was.” On hearing this, Hesse attacked the principal. When afarm worker intervened, Hesse stabbed the man with a knife. Two other school staff
then broke up the fight and Hesse was arrested. The stabbing victim was expected
to recover in a period of four to five weeks.96 Rather unhelpfully, Philip Phelan, who
was then the head of the training division of Indian Affairs, wrote to Simpson, saying that the event only underlined the importance of carefully screening staff and not
employing “enemy aliens.”97 Hesse had been born in Bohemia, came to Canada after
the First World War, and became a Canadian citizen in 1927. As R. A. Hoey had noted
in response to a letter of complaint from the Canadian Legion in 1942, Hesse was not
an enemy alien.98 His attack had nothing to do with international affairs and everything to do with the hostility that existed between the two men.

506 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Comments in the historical record suggest that a number of employees were struggling with physical disabilities under trying conditions and sometimes faced discrimination because of that. A woman at the Moose Factory, Ontario, school was a “fineteacher,” but was “physically deformed and it is doubtful if she will be able to carryon during winter especially if she has to go between the old and new buildings.”99 The
cook at the Moose Factory school was described as “a fine cook and an economical
one to boot. Would like to be considered for a matron’s position but unfortunately she
is crippled in that she had polio as a youngster. While she probably has the ability to
be a matron I doubt if she could get around quickly enough to do the work requiredof that position.”100
The continued operation of many of the schools and residences depended on theunderpaid labour of members of female Roman Catholic religious orders. As a male
Catholic official put it in a 1945 letter to Northern Affairs, “These sisters, who havetaken a vow of poverty, own no property, and cannot rightly have anything credited
to their names. They have voluntarily turned over to their society, the Grey Nuns ofMontreal, anything they once had or ever will have.”101
Despite these vows of poverty, leaders of female religious orders did come into
conflict with the Oblates over pay rates. In 1940, the Oblates were supposed to pay
the Sisters of St. Ann $25 a month, over and above expenses for general maintenance,
to teach elementary school and $30 a month to teach high school at their schools
in British Columbia. They had also accepted an unspecified pay cut at the Mission,
British Columbia, school. However, as their provincial sister superior pointed out,
under the current minimum wage laws, the Sisters of St. Ann were obliged to pay themaids who worked for them $14 a week—more than they themselves were receiving.
A letter from the Sisters of St. Ann to the Oblates in November 1940 suggests that the
Oblates had simply stopped paying the sisters, prompting their provincial sister superior, Sister Mary Mark, to “ask for salaries as specified.”102
The hierarchical relations between the Oblates and the female religious orders are
illuminated in a 1956 letter from G. Tetrault, the principal of the Assumption, Alberta,
school, to his bishop, Henri Routhier. Tetrault was writing after an incident in which
fifteen boys had run away.
I do not so much blame Sr. Eustache as the authorities that continue stationing
her with the children, when for the last 15 or 20 years she has never had any
authority even with girls … so much less with boys. Moreover now she is so
crippled and old that she has trouble dragging herself around so this further
does not help the situation and when a person has no authority or has lost her
authority with a group of children … nothing on her part or anybody else’s partwill regain it. As for Sr. Albertine (the officière) she is certainly not ideal forkeeping boys but could have done better had she but tried and interested herself
and quit crying over spilled milk! Over a month since the children are in school

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 507

and neither one of them yet even knows half the boys by name or by sight!… notproof of much interest! Sr. Albertine has but been crying for having been named
to Assumption and feeling sorry for herself and until this series of desertions
really started in earnest she never showed the least interest or love for the boys.
You cannot fool children … and Indians much less … and yell all you want, if you
are not interested and the children feel they are not loved they will not budge or
will do their utmost to create disorder and make the Sisters mad. [The ellipses
are in the original.]

Tetrault feared that complaints from the boys over the treatment that they received
in the school might feed an already existing demand for a day school. He said that
although he did not say this to the parents, he could not blame the boys for runningaway. To his evident relief, the parents had not sided with their children. Instead,“Most of the parents blame the children and some even gave them a beating! So forthe moment the storm seems to be weathered o.k.”
However, he saw no future for the two nuns. Although Sister Albertine seemed to
be prepared to buckle down, he thought she was “a very peculiar woman … more aman than a woman … cold as a brick … disgusted with having been transferred toAssumption (as if we asked for her!).” As for Sister Eustache, “she is a totering [sic] little
Mama (or baby) that should be in a sewing room in a hospital or aged institution …
certainly not in charge of a group of children.”103
In 1958, the Benedictine Sisters announced that their order would no longer be providing the Christie, British Columbia, school with staff from its monastery in Mount
Angel, Oregon. According to the prioress of the monastery, Mother Mary Gemma, theorder was stretched to the breaking point to maintain its Oregon college, academy,
and nursing home. She said, “One of my youngest teachers had to have shock treatments this year and two others may have to.” To continue to supply the Christie school
would require four extra people at a time when “I don’t have one extra.” She said shewould be withdrawing her staff at the end of the school year. As she wrote:
I can’t see my Sisters, one by one, looking more and more desperate, and mutely
asking—when is this emergency period going to end?… In the two and a halfyears that I have been in office we have lost 14 teachers, 6 by defection from finalvows, 3 from temporary vows, 2 by illness and 3 who have had to be removed andgiven other jobs.104

The Oblates began to look for other female religious orders that might provide theschool with teaching staff, while recognizing that “they will not work for the salaries
you have been able to pay the Benedictines.”105 In the end, the Benedictines agreed
to extend their service to the end of the 1959–60 school year.106 They were replacedin 1960 by members of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary from Hollywood,
California.107

508 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Brother Tom Cavanaugh had positive things to say about the sisters who were staff
at the Christie school when he was there.
The participants, the staff—approximately, the participants in the school and thestaff, approximately 120 children were there when I first arrived, all First Nations
children. And approximately half and half; half boys, half girls. And the kids, thechildren were from grades One to Eight. There were five ihm Sisters, Immaculate
Heart of Mary Sisters, they were actually from Los Angeles. And they acted as theteachers, child-care workers, infirmarians, seamstress, cooks. It is amazing, likethe sisters in particular, because they were highly qualified teachers, they wereteaching down in universities and that sort of stuff in the States, and they cameto Kakawis, and not only did they teach, but they also did child-care work as
well. So it is a sort of double duty thing, which was pretty heavy on them, at least
I thought. But anyway, they did very well and they were excellent caregivers andthey were excellent teachers.108

Living conditions
The crowded and dilapidated conditions at many schools contributed to the staff
recruitment problem. In order to attract qualified teachers, Principal M. Lafrance
had constructed a teachers’ residence at the Roman Catholic school in Cardston in
the late 1950s. Indian Affairs was reluctant to pay for it, since it had been built without prior approval.109 In the opinion of Indian Affairs official R. F. Battle, Lafrance’s
action was “contrary to Departmental procedure and cannot be condoned—particularly since this is not the first time that buildings have been constructed at the Blood[Cardston] r.c. School without authority.” At the same time, Battle had to admit thatIndian Affairs was “not able to provide living accommodation for qualified teachers in
sufficient time to keep pace with requirements.”110
Accommodation continued to be a problem in Alberta. There was such a housing shortage at the Anglican school in Brocket in 1955 that some staff members werebeing housed in the infirmary. An Indian Affairs official, L. G. P. Waller, suggested thatsome of the staff move into the principal’s residence and that the school simply recruita principal with a smaller family. An Anglican official wrote, “This suggestion is ridiculous but typical of Waller. Agent [H. N.] Woodsworth suggests partitioning off part ofthe staff sitting room. The staff is not opposed to this as they feel a smaller room would
be more comfortable.”111 In a separate letter on the issue of school staff accommodation, Woodsworth wrote that “most buildings in the Agency are in a state of disrepair
and some of them are actually becoming unfit for human habitation. In recent years,
there has been no increase of accommodation to take care of the increasing staff,
especially teachers.”112

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 509

In 1959 in Alberta, two teachers and their families were without living quarters at
the Morley school, and the Roman Catholic school at Cluny could provide accommodation for only six of its eleven staff members.113 In the summer of 1959, eight trailers
were requisitioned for teacher housing at the Hobbema, Gleichen, Cluny, Morley, andCardston residential schools.114 Staff member J. A. Coady wrote to R. F. Davey, the chiefsuperintendent of education in 1960, saying that he had been teaching for the department for ten years, the last five at the Hobbema school. During his time at Hobbema,
he had been living with his family “in a shack above a garage.” The only other accommodations for staff were “two very small and inadequate trailers.” He was “entirely
fed up with having to live in shacks that had all the ear marks [sic] of gopher holes.”115
The fact that many schools were remote from urban life was another problem. Whenasking for a new girls’ supervisor and assistant girls’ supervisor in 1956, Wabasca,
Alberta, principal A. E. W. Godwin asked that “young girls not be sent to this school as
the place is too isolated.”116
Problems were by no means limited to Alberta. In 1955, the entire staff at the Sioux
Lookout school in Ontario was reportedly “fed up with the condition of the building.
The greatest stumbling block to their contentment seems to be the soot and dirt fromthe boilers constantly permeating the school.”117 In 1957, the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan,
school did not have a residence for married teachers, but the principal was able tooffer a job applicant the “engineer’s cottage.” While admitting that it was “small,” theprincipal said that it was “modern in every way, with two bedrooms and bath, kitchen
and a large living and dining room, hot and cold water and modern sanitation.” Single
teachers lived in the teacherage that was located above the classrooms.118 In 1959, oneof the boys’ supervisors at the Norway House, Manitoba, school resigned because “hewas not able to have a room entirely to himself.”119
Fires destroyed several residential schools during this period, often causing
staff members the loss of both their accommodation and their personal belongings. The staff members lost all their belongings, which were not insured, when the
Anglican school at Onion Lake, Saskatchewan, burned down in 1943.120 The housesof two employees of the Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan, school were destroyed by fire in
December 1948.121 In January 1949, the building intended to serve as the principal’s
residence at the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school was destroyed by fire the day
before the principal was scheduled to move into the residence. Losses were estimatedat $6,000.122 Similarly, the principal’s house at the Shingwauk Home in Sault Ste. Marie,
Ontario, was damaged by fire in the early 1950s.123
By the 1960s, there was a sliding scale of accommodation rates for staff who worked
at the Prince Albert school. Dormitory supervisors, whose rooms were located next tostudents’ sleeping quarters and who were on call twenty-four hours a day, lived rentfree. For other staff members, the fee for a single room was $20 a month. An additional
private sitting room could cost $5 a month more, as would a private bathroom or a510 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

private kitchen. Employees who were provided with full board had an additional $35 amonth deducted from their salaries. Staff members who took occasional meals at theschool were charged on a pro-rated basis.124
The food itself was often plain. Elizabeth Pearson recalled the food at the Alert Bay,
British Columbia, school as being “very, very basic. I guess it was healthy, but it wasvery, very white.… All I remember of the meals is white potatoes and white fish andwhite sauce and that hated white blancmange pudding.”125 Still, at many schools, staff
food was better than what the students were eating. One teacher discovered that thestaff ate better than the students only when she filled in for a student supervisor at
mealtime. She said, “It was quite an eye-opener.”126

TurnoverThe poor pay, heavy workload, and poor living conditions led to ongoing staff
turnover. Some staff members were always on the move. In December 1956, Birtle,
Manitoba, principal N. Rusaw reported that four female staff members would soon
be leaving. One had been let go with no reason given; one had “not been working
out satisfactorily,” since she did “not know how to work”; one had given her notice
and would not be missed, since she was a “terrif [sic] person to grumble” and did“not have the interest of the children at heart”; and the fourth was on a “man hunt”
and was expected to stay only until the end of the school year.127 Between 1947 and1956, Eva Lilley worked in the Sioux Lookout, Alert Bay, Lytton, and Gordon’s residential schools, usually as a cook or kitchen matron.128 Between 1955 and 1968, Berit
Klaveness Rasmussen worked as a supervisor and matron at the Cardston, Sioux
Lookout, Gordon’s, and Dauphin schools.129 Between 1956 and 1960, Lilian Page
worked as a cook at the Gordon’s, Norway House, and Carcross schools.130 Helen
Smith taught at the Gleichen, Alberta, Anglican school in 1953 and 1957; at the Birtle,
Manitoba, school in 1956; and at the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, school in 1954.131 Edna
Jubb was the supervisor in Alert Bay in 1950, a supervisor at the Sault Ste. Marie school
in 1952, a matron at the Cardston Anglican school from 1953 to 1960, and matron of
the Dauphin school in 1960.132 She retired from the school in 1967.133
A complaint lodged by a former staff member at the Alert Bay, British Columbia,
school in 1960 revealed the seriousness of the staff turnover problem. Phyllis Ursel
claimed to have been dismissed as the nurse at the school for “not being loyal to theschool,” because of a letter of complaint she wrote to Ellen Fairclough, then the federal cabinet minister responsible for Indian Affairs. Ursel wrote that fifty-seven staff
members left the school during a period of a little more than two years. She said
that the older boys came to the dispensary at night for Aspirins because they had
hunger-induced headaches. Because of a shortage of drinking fountains throughout

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 511

the building, she said, children were drinking water from toilet bowls. When it came tohygiene, there were only “(3) old bath tubs down in the basement for (110) girls, andthat is all—no showers at all.” She felt she had been fired because she tried to address
the problems created by the “lack of combined effort or feeling toward the welfare of
the School in general.”134
Anglican official Henry Cook defended the principal and the school, saying that
Ursel had misrepresented her qualifications and had been disruptive. He had to
acknowledge, however, that turnover was high. In March 1960, he presented the following list of reasons why fifty-eight staff members had left the school since the beginning of 1958:
19 – discharged because they were obviously incompetent
6 – were hired only as temporary staff
9 – left for more remunerative employment
1 – died
9 – left because they could not “take” the children and/or staff members
4 – were called home
2 – were married
8 – left angry with the principal

Of these fifty-eight, only two had been there for more than three years.135 To put
this in perspective, in June 1959, the Alert Bay school had twenty-four regular employees.136 That an institution with only twenty-four employees could, over a two-year
period, have nineteen employees who were judged to be “obviously incompetent”
underlines the depth of the school recruiting crisis.
In responding to Ursel’s charges of poor conditions at the school, Cook pointed
out that the food budget was set by the federal government. He added, in the school
principal’s defence, that he had overspent the budget in the two previous years. There
was a plan to install wash basins and showers as part of a modernization of the facility.
As Ursel had pointed out among her complaints, there was no playground equipment,
and radios were not allowed in the dormitory. Cook said the school equipment had
been vandalized, and radios were banned for “behaviour control purposes.”137
As Table 44.1 shows, problems with staff turnover at all Indian Affairs schools (bothresidential and day schools) actually increased in the 1960s.

512 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Table 44.1. Indian Affairs school teaching staff turnover, 1956–57 school year to 1963–64
school year.
Year

Percentage of Turnover of Teaching Staff

1956–57

24.8

1957–58

21.2

1958–59

25.2

1959–60

24.5

1960–61

25.3

1961–62

24.1

1962–63

27.5

1963–64

29.3

Average annual turnover

25.23

Source: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG55, FA 55-22, Acc. 1980-81/069, box 118, file 1105, part 2,
Rates of Pay & Conditions of Employment of Teachers, 1964–1965, R. F. Davey to Peter Fillipoff, 25 May 1965.
[AEMR-150636]

Church officials often expressed dissatisfaction with the staff members they
did manage to recruit. A 1960 report observed that after the departure of a teacher
described as a “busybody and troublemaker,” there was “considerable (sic) less bickering” at the Alert Bay school.138 Indeed, the word troublemaker occurs in manyassessments of school staff. It was the term used to describe the assistant sewing
matron at the Prince Albert school in 1948.139 It was also the term that one of Phyllis
Ursel’s former principals had used to describe her. According to the Alberni school
principal, Ursel had resigned from that school after he had criticized her for her “personal conduct” and “laxity in her duties.” He had later become aware that she had
been involved in “leftist organisations and ‘peace’ movements.” In short, she was “astaff trouble maker … and you will certainly know how objectionable such a person
can become.”140
Anglican Church official G. R. Turner was often very blunt in his assessments ofschool staff. After describing how record keeping at the Prince Albert school had deteriorated to the point where the staff could not say with certainty who was registered in
the school in 1948, Turner attributed the problems to alack of proper supervision and a perfectly useless and incompetent staff. The
lack of proper supervision, in all fairness to Rev. Mr. Fisher [the principal], canbe attributed to his poor health and overwork as well as an apparent hesitancy
to dismiss unsuitable staff. We in i.s.a. [Indian School Administration] must takea good share of the blame about the staff, though, because we were the ones
responsible for sending Mr. Fisher people like Harris and Calrow who had been
in other schools. Mr. Mayo reported some time ago that Calrow was absolutely
useless at Gordon’s. I don’t know anything about Harris’s former service at Sioux

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 513

Lookout, etc., but one only has to talk to him to discover that he is absolutely
useless and devoid of common sense.141

According to Turner, one woman at the Shingwauk school in Sault Ste. Marie was“useless.” In fact, because of her continual and unjustified nagging of the children, she
was thought to be “a definite menace.” Another staff member was “also of little use,”since he had “no control at all over the boys who call him a Nazi, etc.” The senior boys’supervisors had been little more than “a succession of absolute duds.” Other staff
members were in failing health: one needed rest to “avoid a complete breakdown”; asecond thought she could carry on until the end of the term, but did not plan to returnfor the following year; and the best that could be said about a third was that he looked
better than he had in the past.142 A few months later, Turner thought it might be necessary to replace the cook, because
she clearly does not want to carry out instructions in regard to serving meals
or feeding of High School pupils; she grumbles about this and that either
because she is cantankerous or because she thinks she is indispensable and she
apparently has taken full advantage of the presence of a new and inexperienced
Principal to develop these characteristics to the full.

His overall suggestion was that the “present staff be shaken up drastically, that[principal Roy] Phillips be brought to Ottawa (or visited by the Superintendent) andtold plainly that he must be more aggressive, bolder and determined to be ‘the boss.’”143

The life of a principal
Turner’s dissatisfaction with the Shingwauk school highlights a significant issue:
effective principals were particularly difficult to recruit, yet they set the stage and thetone for everything else that could happen at the residential schools.
Residential school principals were expected to use untrained staff to run underfunded institutions in accordance with the conflicting expectations of churches andgovernments. It was a complicated, demanding task. Many failed; turnover among
principals was a serious problem. The Anglican school at Wabasca had at least twelve
principals from 1948 until 1966, when it was leased to the Alberta government’s
Northland School Division.144 The churches generally insisted on appointing members of the clergy to the position of principal. This practice created particular problems for the Protestant schools, since few members of the school staff, other than theprincipal, were clergy. As a result, few of their candidates for the position of principal
had much experience working in a residential school. James DeWolf, for example, wasappointed principal of the Cardston, Alberta, school in 1952. He had studied at a theological college and worked as an assistant Anglican priest, but he had never worked

514 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

in a residential school.145 The principal appointed at the Gleichen, Alberta, school in
1955, R. J. Crocker, had also studied theology, served in the war, and been ordained
as Anglican priest. He had never worked in a residential school before taking on thejob of principal.146 The principal of the Anglican school in Wabasca appointed in 1950,
A. E. W. Godwin, was a clergyman who had served in the army and as a parish priest
in the Ottawa region.147 In 1956, all three of the men appointed to be principals of the
Brocket, Gleichen, and Carcross schools were church ministers.148 None of the fourcandidates that the United Church considered for the principalship of the Edmonton
school in 1961 were working in a residential school at the time that they applied. It is asign of changing times that none of them were clergymen.149
Principals might stay in office until ill health or old age forced their retirement. In
some cases, successful principals came to be judged as failures by staying in office toolong. Others appeared to be able to outlive conflict and controversy, holding their jobs
in part because the schools and the government had so few options. In February 1947,
Indian Affairs education official Philip Phelan advised Roman Catholic Archbishop
J. T. McNally about the need at the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school for “a younger
and more energetic” principal than the current principal, J. F. Brown. Were it not for
the “excellent services given us by the Sisters,” Phelan felt, the school “would be in avery bad condition.” Brown was forced to resign by the church at the end of the 1947–
48 school year.150 His replacement, J. P. Mackey, had been principal of the school from
1929 until 1943, when he resigned, citing his own failing health. In his 1943 letter ofresignation, composed in the Halifax Infirmary, Mackey had written, “I have not been
well and I did not have what it takes to continue further.”151 After returning to his old
job as principal in 1948, Mackey stayed on the job until 1955, when he was replaced
after he experienced the sudden onset of illness.152
Oliver Strapp had a lengthy and controversial career as a residential school principal. (The details of several of the controversies are presented in earlier chapters inthis report.) He was born in 1892 in the United Kingdom, and came to Canada in 1911.
He served overseas from 1916 to 1919 with the Canadian military. He was ordained
as a Methodist minister in 1924.153 His early church assignments, undertaken on
behalf of the newly created United Church of Canada, were with First Nations communities at Cape Croker (1924 to 1927) and Oneida (1927 to 1929) in Ontario. He
was vice-principal of the Mount Elgin, Ontario, school from 1929 to 1934; principalof Mount Elgin from 1934 to 1944; principal of the Brandon, Manitoba, school from1944 to 1955; and principal of the Edmonton, Alberta, school from 1955 to the endof 1960.154 In September 1960, at the Edmonton school, James Ludford was arrested,
charged, and convicted of committing acts of gross indecency with a student.155 In thewake of the scandal, Strapp resigned as principal at the end of December 1960.156 At
the time, he would have been sixty-eight years old.157

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 515

After Strapp retired, he was replaced by A. E. Caldwell, who had recently retired
as principal of the Alberni, British Columbia, school. By 1961, Caldwell wanted to go
back into retirement, but was prevailed upon to continue in the job, since no replacement could be found.158 Roy Inglis, a United Church minister, had been appointed
principal of the Morley, Alberta, school in 1946, after having served in the navy andas a minister in Saskatchewan.159 After a troubled decade in Morley (described earlier in this report), he was made principal of the Brandon school in 1955.160 In March
1957, the regional supervisor of Indian agencies, Ralph Ragan, concluded that Inglis“has been given every opportunity to improve conditions there, but no improvement
has been forthcoming.” It was recommended that he be replaced at the beginning of
the 1957–58 school year.161 Two months after Ragan wrote his letter, Inglis was gone,
replaced by an acting principal.162
In 1908, C. F. Hives’s career in residential schools commenced when he began
working as the farm instructor at the Red Deer, Alberta, school. By 1916, he was principal of the Anglican school at Lac La Ronge, Saskatchewan.163 He had taken over the
Shingwauk Home in Sault Ste. Marie in 1929. His predecessor at Shingwauk had been
dismissed because he had refused to observe “every-day business principles.”164 Hives
became principal of the Lytton, British Columbia, school in 1941, after the previous
principal, A. R. Lett, had been forced to resign. At that time, Indian Affairs official R. A.
Hoey thought Indian Affairs was “very fortunate in securing the services of an experienced man as Mr. Hives.”165
Seventeen years later, Hives was still on the job, at age seventy-two. In 1958, Ellen
Fairclough, the minister responsible for Indian Affairs, had received reports from
Indian Affairs staff, provincial government staff, school staff, and children, whichsuggested that Hives was exhibiting “an inability to handle the staff of the school,an unwholesome attitude towards Indians, improper treatment of the children, andfailure to co-operate with Provincial school authorities.” She was worried that Hives
wished to continue in his post for another year or two, until his son was ordained
as an Anglican minister.166 Despite his advanced age, Hives proposed staying on foranother two years and replacing other retiring staff in the interim, “so that they would
be accustomed to the work” by the time he left.167 Instead, in October 1958, he was toldthat he would be dismissed at the end of the school year.168
Principals did not always feel supported by the missionary societies that sponsoredtheir work. In 1950, T. C. Ross, the principal of the Presbyterian school in Kenora,
Ontario, wrote an exasperated letter to Frieda Matthews, the head of the Presbyterian
Women’s Missionary Society, defending the amount that had been paid to a school
handyman. Ross felt that for every dollar the man had been paid, the school had
received a dollar and a half in value. He went on to say that, at times, he felt as if IndianAffairs was516 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

much more interested than is the Women’s Missionary Society in our welfare. We
do not really want to believe that. We know that the Women’s Missionary Society
has neither the individuals nor the finance necessary to provide frequent visits tothis school by Executive Members. The Department on the other hand is able tohave specialists of various types visit us fairly frequently.

After noting that taking care of visiting dignitaries occupied a surprising amount of
his time, Ross went on to say that there was a marked difference between the attitudes
of Indian Affairs and those of church visitors to the school. The Indian Affairs visitors
were usually experts in their field and seldom ventured “any suggestion based on theobservations of only one visit to the school. Most Church people (here I refer not only
to ladies) can suggest improvements as soon as they set foot inside the door.”169 When
Ross informed Matthews that one of the night watchman’s duties was ensuring thatmale and female students did not slip from one dormitory to another at night, she
responded that she thought the current watchman was too old for the job and needed
to be replaced.170 Ross was not happy with this instruction, pointing out that the current night watchman was also the school gardener and was largely responsible for theschool’s “fine vegetable garden.” The salary the school offered would “not tempt anyone who has not reached retirement age.” Previous applicants for the job had “beenmen in their sixties, seventies or eighties.”171
Into the 1950s, the Anglicans expected many of their principals to also carry out
missionary work on local reserves. A report on the Anglican school at Cardston,
Alberta, noted that the new principal, James DeWolf, was “greatly overworked in that
he is spending more time at Reserve work than his two predecessors.”172 The following
year, the principal of the Brocket, Alberta, school was also expected to serve as a missionary.173 In 1955, Gleichen, Alberta, principal R. J. Crocker said he found it “difficult
to do much missionary work on the reserve.”174
Some found the work very stressful. Indian agent J. P. B. Ostrander warned theIndian Affairs office in July 1949 that he believed the principal of the Round Lake,
Saskatchewan, school, J. A. Card, was “entirely unfit physically and mentally to continue as principal.” He said that he had to reintroduce himself to Card each time hevisited the school. The principal also could not recall if the school had been inspectedduring the current school term. Ostrander said that “it is practically impossible to
do business with Mr. Card.” As a result of his condition, Card had “difficulty in controlling the children and dealing with the parents.” Ostrander said he had refrained
from raising the issue in the past because he thought the school was going to beclosed. However, since it now appeared that it would remain open, Card needed tobe replaced.175 A few weeks later, a group of parents petitioned the school to have oneof the teachers removed because the “children’s report cards are very unsatisfactory,
worst ever received, and she abuses the children too much.”176 Although the teacher,a Mrs. Linton, said that she left the administration of corporal punishment to theThe staff experience: 1940–2000 • 517

principal, Ostrander reported there was a strap on display in her classroom. “If she
does not use it for punishment at least she keeps it on display as a threat of punishment, which does not promote harmony in the classroom.” Ostrander continued toassert that the principal was the underlying problem at the school and recommended
against the removal of the teacher.177 The Round Lake school continued in operation
for another year, closing at the end of the 1949–50 school year.178 Principal Card wasstill in office at the time of the school’s closing.179
Albert Brown Christie had been in Canada for only a year when he was appointed
to the position of principal of the Wabasca, Alberta, school.180 Before that, he had been
the “master” of a boys’ school in England. According to Indian Affairs official G. H.
Gooderham, Christie
has had no experience in this sort of work nor with stock and farming prior
to coming to Canada. It was very evident that he did not get along wellwith his staff, and he was very outspoken in his denunciation of practicallyeverybody else who was in similar work, particularly those who are not of the
Anglican faith.181

After less than a year on the job, he was forced to resign.182
In 1948, Robert Cathcart, the principal of the Anglican Whitefish Lake school
in Alberta, was transferred to a more southerly school because the winters at
Whitefish Lake aggravated his “asthma-bronchial condition.” The Anglican Indian
School Administration was uncertain whether it would be able to replace Cathcart:
Superintendent H. G. Cook wrote, “Young men simply will not go North these days.”
In that same year, the principal of the Shingwauk school at Sault Ste. Marie resigned,“having over-reached the retiring age,” and the principal of the Chapleau, Ontario,
school resigned “upon the advice of his doctor.”183 The principal of the Alert Bay,
British Columbia, school also resigned in that year, due to health reasons.184 The following year, G. W. Fisher, the principal of the St. Alban’s school in Prince Albert andthe Lac La Ronge school (which had been relocated to Prince Albert after its destruction by fire), died. According to his physician, the cause of death was “heart strain due
to over work.” He had been principal of the Lac La Ronge school for twenty years.185 In
1956, A. E. W. Godwin resigned as principal of the Wabasca school, due to ill health.186
Parents on the Blood Reserve threatened to withhold their children from theAnglican school in Cardston if Principal D. S. Pitts was not replaced in the summer of1952. They said Pitts told students that “your father is no good, your brothers are no
good, your uncles are no good and you are no good and so on.” Their petition to IndianAffairs called for “a man who is familiar with the Indians, who likes to be with themand the work as a missionary and who we could co-operate with.”187 By the end of
October, the Anglicans had arranged to move James DeWolf to the school in January
1953.188 Unlike a number of other principals discussed here, DeWolf went on to have

518 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

a relatively successful career. He was, however, eventually replaced as principal of the
La Tuque, Québec, school in 1968 because it was felt that school needed a Frenchspeaking principal.189
In 1946, E. S. W. Cole was appointed principal of the Brocket, Alberta, school on the
Peigan Reserve.190 In 1948, he was transferred to the Gleichen, Alberta, school.191 By
1951, church officials worried that he was “neglecting his own home and personal life
for that of school.” They feared he would become a “nervous wreck if he stays too longat school without a break.”192 The breakdown of his marriage appears to have precipitated his departure from the school in 1955.193
Yet, in 1955, when it looked as if Principal C. F. Hives of the Lytton, British Columbia,
school might retire, Cole was considered for that post.194 In recommending Cole, anAnglican Indian School Administration official wrote that Cole’s family troubles had
been “corrected,” and described him as “the best school administrator we’ve had ina long while. Now and then he gets crazy ideas but by far and large he runs a goodschool.”195 Hives, however, did not retire.196 In 1956, the Anglicans found a position
for Cole as principal of the Carcross school.197 Two years later, they concluded that
Cole would not “co-operate with either Church or Government officials and would
not observe i.s.a. [Indian School Administration] regulations pertaining to staff.” As aresult, he was forced to resign.198
According to Ellen Fairclough, the minister responsible for Indian Affairs, Cole’s
administration at Carcross was “marked by a series of difficulties, particularly with thestaff of the Carcross School, which reached such proportions that the church authorities felt they would not be able to secure and retain competent staff for the school aslong as Mr. Cole was principal.”199
Cole’s successors at both Gleichen and Carcross were also forced to resign. In
September 1955, the Anglican Indian School Administration reported that there were
no serious problems at the Gleichen school. However, it had been necessary to warn
Principal R. J. Crocker that “he would have to get reports and accounts into Head Officeon time or we’d replace him with someone who would.”200 By the end of the 1955–56
school year, Cook had asked for Crocker’s resignation, informing Indian Affairs that hecould not “condone such laxness of administration as Mr. Crocker has displayed.”201
Crocker had spent just a year and a half in the position.202 In 1962, the Anglicans also
removed Cole’s successor at Carcross, G. Bullen, because he was responsible for “thelack of harmony which existed generally among the staff.”203
Crocker’s successor at the Gleichen school, H. B. Miller, also was forced to resign.
In March 1959, seven teachers from the school petitioned Indian Affairs for Miller’s
removal. They said that under his administration, the school atmosphere was oneof “insincerity, suspicion, and petty intrigue.” They attributed the constant turnoverin supervisors to the “program of calculated viciousness” to which the principal
subjected them, “belittling them publicly and undermining their discipline.”204 The

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 519

previous year, the principal had made all the staff sign a loyalty oath.205 Henry Cook,the superintendent of the Anglican Indian School Administration, had visited theschool in early 1958 and concluded that although Miller was “ardent about the school
and the good of the children,” he was likely to “obey the letter rather than the spiritof the law—he’s a strict disciplinarian and might be vindictive.” Cook concluded that
this was a case of a principal who “would not give an inch,” being up against “a trouble-maker type teacher” and “an inexperienced do gooder type teacher.”206 Miller wasforced to resign in 1959.
However, to prevent the teaching staff from feeling that they had won a victory overthe principal, the Anglican Church also recommended that the teacher believed to beMiller’s chief critic be transferred to a different school.207 Indian Affairs official Lyman
Jampolsky objected to Cook’s depiction of that teacher as “being responsible for mostof the discord.” Jampolsky said he had “no direct knowledge of unprofessional conduct” on the teacher’s part, and neither was there any evidence that would “support
a forced transfer.”208 Despite this, Indian Affairs agreed to the transfer request as wellas the principal’s departure.209 The teacher was transferred to the Morley, Alberta,
school.210 However, by 1965, he had taken a position as a teacher-counsellor with theBlackfoot Indian Agency.211
At the same time, Superintendent Cook reported that, due to problems at the Fort
George, Québec, school, Principal Stanley McTaggart “might have to be removed.”212
Upon visiting the school, Cook found “conditions and relationships at the school and in
the Community such that I deemed it wise to ask Mr. McTaggart for his resignation.”213
The record does not provide specific reasons for the decision to request McTaggart’s
resignation. However, when Cook learned that the United Church was considering
hiring McTaggart to work at another residential school, he informed Indian Affairs
official R. F. Davey that he would “in no way give” McTaggart a recommendation
for any such post.214 Davey communicated Cook’s concern to the United Church of
Canada. As a result, McTaggart was not offered a position at a United Church school.215

Staff conflict
The staff handbook for the Presbyterian school at Kenora included a number ofrules intended to reduce conflict among staff members. Employees were advised to“make a habit of being punctual” at meals and not to “sit around the table relaxing andtalking after that.” Complaints about food were to be taken to the matron, not to thecook.216 It was also recommended that they make “a real effort to keep the atmospherein the sitting room as light and pleasant as possible,” even though “it is almost impossible to avoid altogether ‘talking shop.’” Given the stresses that came with the job, “itdoes help if we all are (or at least appear to be) in a pleasant, light-hearted humour.”217520 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Light-hearted good humour was not always easy to maintain. Conflicts among staff
members and between staff and principals were a staple of life in many residential
schools. There is evidence of regular conflicts between teachers and other residence
staff. In 1952, G. R. Turner of the Anglican Indian School Administration said that a
lot of trouble at the Moose Factory, Ontario, school could be eliminated “if the teachers lived outside of the building. They are so much better paid than the rest of thestaff and somehow feel superior and are not above making public their opinion of thelabours and work of the other staff members.”218 One of the purposes of the Gordon’s,
Saskatchewan, school policy of requiring teachers not to play any role in the operationof the residence was to eliminate “all cause of friction between church paid staff andteachers.” The Gordon’s principal, Albert Southard, felt that in some schools, “there
has been trouble due to interference between the two staffs.”219
Administrators could also come into conflict with one another. A dispute brokeout at the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school in the early 1950s between thevice-principal and the matron. Indian School Administration official H. G. Cook feltthat Vice-Principal Stanley McTaggart “was determined to try and have things done
his way and did not recognize at all the experience or responsibilities of a Matron.” In
the face of this, the matron became increasingly stubborn. Although each promised
to co-operate in the future, Cook worried that the “animosity is too deep seated.”220
Despite the fact that Cook concluded that the vice-principal was a “pastmaster [sic] at‘covering up’ and trying to play one person against another,” as discussed previously
in this chapter, he was appointed principal of another school.221
Teachers’ private lives were closely watched, as the following examples from southern Alberta in 1954 make clear. In June, an Anglican Indian School Administration
official wrote that, upon hearing that a female employee at the Gleichen school “wasmaking a bit of a fool of herself about Gleichen,” he “instructed Principal thoroughly
to check on this and discharge her if his findings warrant same.”222 Later that year, ateacher at the same school was discharged for drunkenness.223 At the Cardston school,an employee was judged to be “a beer drinker to excess at times and has to be roused
out of bed periodically.” Although he and a co-worker were engaged to be married,
there were questions as to whether his first wife, who, he claimed, had been killedduring the Second World War, was, in fact, alive. In light of all these questions, it was
decided to simply dismiss him.224 A report on the Anglican school at Brocket in thelate 1950s noted that a female staff member was “becoming somewhat friendly with anative lad living near the school.” The principal was advised “to try and guide her awayfrom the association as diplomatically as possible.”225
In November 1957, two teachers and a nurse resigned their positions at the Lytton,
British Columbia, school. They all objected to statements that the principal, C. F. Hives,
had made about the character of two teachers who had resigned the year before. In
responding to the resignations, Hives noted that the complainants could not get away

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 521

from the fact “that there was discontent at the teacherage,” and that it had been exacerbated because someone “gossiped and gave the remaining one a ‘black name.’”226
In 1947, the principal of the Christie, British Columbia, school wrote to his superior,asking whether it was appropriate to allow one of the Oblates at the school “to drink
at all or to give him some while it is under my control.”227 He was advised to make surethat the priest in question never had more than one drink on any occasion and not to“multiply the occasions.”228
Clothing and hairstyles were also monitored. The Prince Albert, Saskatchewan,
school handbook from 1967 said, “Slacks will not normally be worn by lady staff members except when playing games or hiking with their children. Hair curlers and rollers
will not be worn by staff members while on duty.”229 When Merle Nisly first arrived at
the Poplar Hill school in northwestern Ontario in the 1970s as a volunteer, he was told
to cut his hair and stop wearing bell-bottom pants.230
Staff members recalled some principals as being “dictatorial” and matrons as being“holy terrors.” Problems could arise when the principal’s wife was the matron, or, as
happened in some schools, the principal’s children took on positions of responsibility
in the schools.231 It was not uncommon for schools to employ married couples. Jamesand Evelyn Ellcome both worked at the Cardston school. Dawson Beaver and hiswife worked at the Carcross school. In both cases, the men did engineering and theirwives worked in the school, in the first case, as a teacher, and in the second case, as anurse.232 Some principals were wary of hiring married couples. When it was suggested
that the Edmonton school hire a husband and wife, Principal Oliver Strapp “indicatedcertain drawbacks to such employees.”233
In 1958, Indian School Administration official H. G. Cook considered adopting
a policy of not hiring “married teachers with a non-working wife,” because he had
concluded that a “troublemaker” at one school was being encouraged by a spouse
who had formerly worked at the school and had “nothing to do all day so thinks up
trouble.”234 Into the 1960s, there were schools where the principals’ wives served as
matrons, a situation that often led to staff divisions. At one school, Cook concluded
that because the principal could not “curb his wife’s activities,” she was “running theschool as Matron.”235 Conflict around his wife’s role in the operation of the Dauphin,
Manitoba, school led A. J. Scrase to resign as the principal in 1960.236 In the end, Scrase
continued in office, but his wife ceased to serve as matron.237
Others had more positive memories. Olive Saunders, who worked at Norway
House, recalled, “The teachers at Norway House were the finest bunch of teachers
you could ever wish for. Just lovely young people. We all blended together and we all
blended with the community very easily.” She had particularly positive memories ofPrincipal Bernard Lee and his wife Isobel. She said that, at times, staff members would
come down with cabin fever and take their frustrations out on Lee, but he “would
never retaliate.” She also felt that Isobel could “still the troubled waters.”238

522 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Isobel’s son, Jack Lee, recalled how his mother worked for the Norway House
school without pay.
The budget was so low that my mother had to work for him for free. Five, six days,
she worked for him for free because there wasn’t the money in the budget tohire any help, any office help. And when my mother had to give birth to us, she
had to be at work the next day after she gave birth to do the payroll. There was atime when my father said that they didn’t have money to buy a chainsaw to cut
wood to heat the school, so he made a fictitious employee and put him on thebooks and used the salary to buy the chainsaw. And the name of that fictitious
employee was Charlie, and the name of that chainsaw, when people wanted torefer to the chainsaw, they referred to it as Charlie.239

Mark DeWolf also felt that his mother had had a difficult time at the school, raising
seven children in what was, to her, an isolated location.240
The wife of Principal W. J. J. Woods of the Brocket, Alberta, Anglican school taught
the junior grades. By 1952, Mrs. Woods had been working in Indian Affairs schools fortwenty-three years and was judged by a school inspector to be “an exceptionally goodteacher, full of enthusiasm and most industrious. She is crippled with arthritis and canmove only with extreme difficulty. In spite of this she works with great energy in theclassroom and gets a very good response from the children.” She was described as the“moving spirit of the school.”241
Oliver Strapp came into conflict with a number of teachers during his lengthy
career as principal of the Mount Elgin, Brandon, and Edmonton schools. In at least
two cases, he found himself at odds with staff members who were critical of the way
students were treated at the school. By 1949, Strapp had concluded that the Brandon
school’s senior teacher, John A. McNeill, was “never so happy as when engaged in an
agitation or controversy.” Since McNeill’s wife was judged to be a good Kindergarten
and Grade One teacher, Strapp hesitated to replace him until he could also replace
his wife.242 By February 1950, McNeill had resigned, alleging that the school was notproperly heated, the children were not properly clothed or shod, there was little recreational activity, too much money was being devoted to the farm, and nothing was
being done to stop “immoral practices among the boys.”243 McNeill had undermined
his credibility with Indian Affairs by writing and publishing a booklet that he entitled“The Noble Redman.” One Indian Affairs official, upon reading the section in the bookentitled “Use of the Atomic Bomb,” concluded that “this fellow is cracked.”244
At the Edmonton school, Strapp also came into conflict with a teacher who wasviewed as being too sympathetic to Aboriginal perspectives, although their initial differences centred on matters of workplace safety. One of the classrooms was directly
over the garage in which the tractors were stored. The teacher, C. McIlwraith, workedout of that classroom. He reported in 1956 that two students had been overcome byfumes from the tractors. Strapp dismissed the complaint, arguing that if the fumes had

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 523

been that intense in the classroom, the tractor operator in the room below would havebeen asphyxiated. He did acknowledge that the decision to locate the garage under aclassroom and residence was not wise; he noted that this had been an Indian Affairs
decision. In a letter to R. F. Davey, the superintendent of education, Strapp wrote that
McIlwraith did not get along with other staff and had told him that “the children here
are suffering under unjust staff members and he intends to be their defender.” Strapp
said that McIlwraith’s actions and attitudes were creating chaos in the school.245
At a meeting of the Edmonton Presbytery Committee dealing with the school,
Strapp acknowledged that McIlwraith was a very good teacher and was getting very
good results, but he was also “a member of the Friends of the Indians Organizationand seems to be exerting an influence that is detrimental to the harmonious conduct of the school.” Strapp said that if McIlwraith were not let go, he would quit.246
McIlwraith’s job at the school was eliminated when, as part of the government’s integration policy, his students were transferred to local public schools. However, he continued working for Indian Affairs as a travelling shops teacher. This work sometimes
took him to the Edmonton school. Strapp attempted to have McIlwraith banned fromthe school, but Indian Affairs told him he had to let the teacher into the building.247
Two teachers, Victoria Ketcheson and Patricia Watson, resigned from the Anglican
school at Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, in 1952, claiming that the majority of theirco-workers
appear to be social misfits, unable to get jobs elsewhere. They are a quarrelsome,
suspicious and gossipy lot. Their treatment of the children is worse than that ofeach other. Many openly consider [them] “dirty breeds” and sub-human [sic].
They apply one set of standards to “whites” and quite another to Indians. This is
aptly expressed by the oft-used phrase—“they’re only Indian”—anything goes.
Nothing is done to induce the staff to fulfill their duties as either Christians orworking members of this institution. The children are maltreated, cussed at,made to bear the brunt of senile sex instincts, exposed to the most brutish formsof behaviour and nothing is done to stop such proceedings. 248

The rest of the staff responded with a letter that described the allegations as “grossly
untrue and utterly unwarranted.” In a separate letter to his superiors, Principal A. J.
Scrase suggested that the two women were acting from religious motives, since they
had recently been “speaking favorable [sic] of the Roman Catholic Church—not onlyin connection with schools, but in their teaching.”249
In the spring of 1968, the staff members at the Roman Catholic school in Cardston
were locked in conflict. According to the principal, E. O. Drouin, one teacher, Marjorie
Crews, was turning students against the other teachers, failing to control students inthe classroom, and getting involved with reserve politics. In addition, she and several other teachers had joined together to force the principal to overturn a decision
to expel a student. Crews accused the principal of strapping students so harshly that524 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

their wrists were swollen and bruised, of exhibiting anti-Protestant bias towards her
and other teachers, and of being too quick to expel students. The correspondence on
the matter was increasingly hostile. By the end of the school year, Drouin resigned andstated that if Crews and another teacher were “permitted to keep on teaching in thisschool they will ‘blow it up’ completely within a short time.”250
Staff divisions surfaced at the Morley school in the early 1960s. In 1963, the former
boys’ supervisor at the school, Dave Gilholm, wrote Indian Affairs about the ongoing
conflicts at the school. He said that when he started at the school in the fall of 1962,
some of the staff had “brain-washed” him into hating one of the teachers and the local
United Church minister. He later felt that these attitudes were without justification
and were simply intended “to rid the school of willing and interested workers.”251 For
his part, school official Ron Campbell felt that Gilholm was “a grand sizer, guitar player
and a fine living chap but just can’t organize or lead his charge. In fact, he closes thedoor to his problems and loses himself in study or strumming his guitar.”252 An IndianAffairs report on the school noted that there had been “friction and tension” amongstaff at the school for years, and, currently, the staff and the reserve were divided into
three camps: pro-principal, anti-principal, and neutral.253
A matron might also find herself isolated from the rest of the staff. After visiting thePrince Albert school in 1948, Superintendent G. R. Turner reported that staff resented
the fact that the matron, E. Jackson, was younger than most of the people she supervised.254 And, while matrons might fill in for principals, they were rarely promoted
into the job on a full-time basis. Jackson, for example, served as acting principal of
the Prince Albert school in 1948.255 Turner reported that when a new principal wasappointed, the matron found it difficult to adjust to the loss of authority.256
The matron of the Gleichen school resigned in 1954 after differences of opinion
between herself and “most of the school staff.” She had also circulated a petition calling for the principal’s resignation; no one signed it.257
Tensions were particularly stressful in remote communities. One worker at the
Anglican school in Aklavik in the Northwest Territories was described as “not fitting in at all with the staff, pupils, or people in the community.”258 In another caseat the same school, a girls’ supervisor, whom the principal was “not overly happy”
about keeping for another term, was still on the job the following year. She wasjudged by Superintendent Henry Cook to be “considerably better than a year ago but
still impetuous.”259
In 1970, a special meeting was held in an effort to reduce divisions among kitchen
staff at Akaitcho Hall in Yellowknife. Some workers were said to be creating “tention[sic] and gloom” in the workplace by their moody behaviour and refusal to speak to
co-workers. There were also questions about who was in charge of the kitchen when
the kitchen supervisor was absent. One of the female kitchen workers said that themain cause of tension in the kitchen was the fact that the male workers “resented

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 525

taking orders from women.” Another worker, a former student, said he felt his attempts
to help others had been “rebuffed and resisted.” Shortly after the meeting, one of theassistant supervisors asked to be relieved of her supervisory responsibility.260
Twenty years later, it was reported at an Akaitcho Hall staff meeting that several
staff members were considering looking for other work. At the heart of the matter
appeared to be a lack of clear direction about the treatment of residents thought to beabusing drugs and alcohol.261 In 1992, kitchen staff at Akaitcho Hall reported such alevel of frustration due to poor communication that they asked for a “neutral person
who they can talk to.”262

Aboriginal staff
A 1946 meeting of Alberta school superintendents concluded that “the ideal Indianteacher would be a native who has undergone the necessary training to enable him
to instruct in the schools of his own people.” The system was not yet producing theseteachers in significant numbers, but it was said that “one of the superintendents has
known such teachers and recommends them highly.”263 Despite that, however, until
the 1960s, there were very few Aboriginal people teaching in residential schools.264
In 1942, the Fraser Lake, British Columbia, school employed a former student as the
manual training instructor. He had been working at the school for the previous sevenyears as an assistant to the carpenter and the previous manual training instructor.265
This was an exception: most of the Aboriginal people who worked in the residential
schools during the 1940s and 1950s worked as cooks, cleaners, and handymen.
It is clear from the record that in the 1940s and 1950s, Anglican school principals
and church representatives had concerns about employing Aboriginal staff. A reporton the Anglican school at Brocket, Alberta, in the late 1950s observed that the principal was “not satisfied with native watchman—want to hire whiteman [sic] if possible.”266 In 1954, the principal of the Anglican school at Cardston, Alberta, wanted todismiss a number of “Blood Indian workers,” although his plans depended “on what
new white staff he gets.”267 An Anglican report on the Moose Factory, Ontario, schoolfrom that same year recommended that an employee be replaced with “a white assistant Kitchen Matron.”268 It was a cause for concern that, after the resignation of A. E. W.
Godwin as principal of the Anglican school in Wabasca, Alberta, in 1956, “there would
be only one white woman on staff and four locally hired Indian helpers.”269 That same
year, an Anglican official, after visiting the Sioux Lookout, Ontario, school, concluded
that “there are too many Indians on staff for efficient operation of the school. They dotheir best but are not too reliable generally.”270 In the same vein, an Anglican reportfrom the Moose Factory school in 1959 stated: “Mr. Wheatley finds himself with too
many native staff. The boy’s [sic] side is good but the girls [sic] supervisors were weak.

526 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

If he could get an experienced girls [sic] supervisor he would be able to use two of his
graduating girls who have already proven to be good leaders.”271
In the early 1960s, the principal of the Anglican school in Fort George, Québec, wasreported as wanting to hire “a white supervisor for the girls.”272
However, there were other, more positive, assessments of Aboriginal staff. In 1954,
Mrs. Clair, a Cree woman who had attended the Lac La Ronge, Saskatchewan, school,
was working at the Carcross school in the Yukon. She was described as a “very fineperson, willing worker and everyone likes her. Can certainly get the most out of thechildren.”273 At the Wabasca school, Alphonse Alook was described as being “a towerof strength to the Principal especially of late. Can do fair carpentering and is loyal to
the school. Principal recommends an increase in his salary.”274 Four young Aboriginal
women, three of whom were sisters, had been hired to work at the Fort George school
in 1953.275 A 1956 report on three of them said, “The Herodier girls are all doing a finejob.” They were not, however, being housed in the same way as non-Aboriginal staff.
The report observed that it was fortunate that “the native girls do not mind doubling up
in cramped quarters otherwise staff accommodation would be insufficient.”276 When
Aboriginal staff members were the subject of a positive assessment, there was often
an element of surprise in the report. An Anglican report on a new kitchen employee atthe Fort McPherson hostel in the Northwest Territories observed that “she is clean andcareful and Mr. Hyett reports that she is reliable. She is a native.”277
At the Carcross school, most of the domestic staff members were Aboriginal.
According to Richard King, who taught at the school during this period, these workers
kept their contacts with the non-Indian staff to a minimum. They were interestedin (and of some interest to) the children of the school. All of them had attended
that school at one time or another and knew most of the families of the children
quite well. But there was never occasion for them to be in contact with thechildren except for odd intervals when they had short conversations.278

After 1940, many of the Aboriginal people who went on to work at the schools wereformer students. Caught between two worlds, they could easily find themselves in an
awkward social position. Anna Beaver was a former student of the Morley, Alberta,
school. When her education was completed, she had no home to return to: her father
had moved to a distant district and her mother had remarried. She was hired by theschool to work as a laundress and also to supervise the younger girls during theirplaytime.279 A school inspector reported that she had been “quite active as matron’s
assistant in supervising the play and recreational activities of the girls.” He felt thatthe “children look to Anna Beaver as a leader and are happy in their associations withher.”280 However, in 1944, parents of children attending the school engaged a lawyer
in an effort to have her dismissed.281 An Indian Affairs investigation concluded that
allegations that Beaver had been “abusing the younger girls, by corporal punishment

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 527

or otherwise,” were exaggerated. However, Indian Affairs official C. Pant. Schmidt
reported that when Beaver was not working, she spent most of her time with the older
girls. Among them, she “assumed an authoritative attitude over the pupils, and thishas, to a certain degree (more or less) been approved—not to say encouraged by the
Matron with the knowledge of the Principal, it being thought by them that it was beneficial as regards discipline amongst the girl pupils.”282 Schmidt believed that by favouring Beaver, the matron and principal had fostered resentment towards her among theolder girls. This, he believed, underlay the calls for her dismissal. Even though theprincipal did not believe the allegations, he chose to let her go.283
The work these former students performed was often difficult and the hours were
long. Ida Ralph-Quisess attended three residential schools in Ontario. She then went
to work in the kitchen at the McIntosh, Ontario, school.
Mostly I was in the kitchen help. We were up by seven, and we were still thereat seven. The main cooks were out by then, when my helper and I, or I was herhelper, I don’t know, we were, there was two of us anyway, we were still there
cleaning up. After seven we were done, and we start again. The next day at seven
we have to be at the school, making breakfast for all these children, and we[were] off for an hour in the afternoon, maybe two hours, and [then had] to startanother meal. That was after lunch, we were out for two hours, and we were backagain to make supper for 200 people. I’m counting the nuns, and the, the priest
that were there, and the teachers, made about 200 people to feed every, threetimes a day. No days off. Seven days a week we had to work. There was four of us,
for all that many people to cook for. 284

A number of former Aboriginal staff members felt they helped make an importantdifference in the lives of the students. Jeanne Rioux went to the Edmonton, Alberta,
school and later went to work as a supervisor at the Hobbema, Alberta, school.
And I was going around just checking because I had to make the rounds andstuff and I come around the corner and these two little boys are standing there
and a nun is standing there and she was just in a process of giving them shit
for peeing in the grass right there. She grabbed their hair and she banged theirheads together and she said, “You don’t do that here. There’s washrooms.” And
I thought well I’m not sure that she needed to do it that much that hard to letthem know, you know, they’re not stupid but anyways so that was one of the firstthings I saw and I thought, Boy, I’m telling you if I ever see that again I’m goingto say something. And I think part of why I was sympathetic was because of myown experience, right? I was coming to that place in my life where I was making
a decision within myself that I was not going to tolerate that for myself andthen I go there and I realized I’m not going to tolerate that for them either. You
know if it’s not good for me, it’s not good for them. So there were many different
instances where I was talking with either the priest or the nuns mostly thepriest who spoke that way but, you know, they were not sympathetic at all to the528 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

children. There was no sympathy and so they would tell me, “You know, don’t
worry about it, they’re just savages anyways you know.”285

Mary Chapman was a former residential school student who went to work in
the kitchen of the Kuper Island, British Columbia, school in the early 1960s. At her
prompting, the school began serving students and staff the same meals. It was her rulethat “if we run out of roast, the kids run out of roast, I don’t give them bologna, I takethe roast from the staff and I give it to them.” She also prepared weekly packages for
those students who, she thought, needed extra food.286
Ronalee Lavallee not only attended the Marieval, Saskatchewan, school from 1965
to 1971, but she also went to work at the school for twenty-two years. Lavallee had anumber of positive memories of working at the school.
Friday evenings I would have to be at work at three, so I always made a trip
into town, and go and buy some pop or juice, and popcorn, or chips, ’cause wealways had movie night Friday night. And in the dorm, they had a child-care
worker’s sleeping room. It was a single bed, and two big, long couches, and I
said it was so cute because I’m not one for scary movies, eh, [laughs] so I would
sit on the edge of my bed, and all those little, like, there were sometimes thirty
little boys, and, and I think of it when it really get to a scary part, they’d all comerunning, and jump behind me on my bed, and sit behind me.
So, like, there’s lots of, you know working with, with them, lots of good memories.
How every Monday was our bug shampoo night, and there was eight sinks,
and I would take them one at a time, and I’d start one at one sink with the bug
shampoo, and do them ’til I had the eight sinks full of these little boys. I’d put
the first one in the shower, and, and then I’d start another one. Second one in
the shower.
And there’s lots of good memories, playing floor hockey with them, and how they
always wanted to trip me, or badminton, playing in the gym, badminton. They’dhave me running from one end of the side of the gym to the other side. [laughing]
They were torturing me, but it was a good torture. It was fun. How we walked thehills, like, just allowing them to have that freedom that I never had when I was inboarding school.287

Vitaline Elsie Jenner, who had unhappily attended the Fort Chipewyan, Alberta,
residential school, went to work as a girls’ supervisor at Breynat Hall, the Roman
Catholic residence at Fort Smith, Northwest Territories. To her surprise, she enjoyedmost of the experience.
It was so pleasant. Like the shoe was on the other foot, and I worked with one of
the nuns. She was a most beautiful nun. Sister Tremblay was beautiful. She hadsuch a good heart, and she always would ask me, you know, “Vitaline, you’vebeen there. You know what it’s like. What do the, these girls need?” That made

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 529

my self-confidence feel so good, because now I was being asked, ‘cause she knew
I had been in the residential school, she knew, because I shared that with her.

One of the staff members at the residence had once supervised her at the Fort
Chipewyan school.
Before I started, I said, “You know, Sister,” I said, “you and I are gonna beworking together, and I want to tell you something before I start. I want to tell
you how mean you were to me in the residential school. You hear me? Are you
listening? How mean you were to me. But you know what? One thing I’ll tell you
right now, you are not going to do that to any of the children that we’re going tosupervise here, because I know what it’s like, I’ve been there, and you, we, you
and I are not gonna be mean to these children. Yes, we will discipline when theyneed to be disciplined, but we will do it in love. Sister, you represent God, but tome nothing, nothing, because that God doesn’t exist, the God that they, that you
guys told me about doesn’t exist for me in my life anymore.”
So, I got along. She just came to me again through another nun. “What would
you like us to do? How would you like, what kind of games do you want to playwith the young, the young girls? What kind of games, so we can make themfeel at home?” I said, “Sister, you know what? If we can, let’s, let’s hold them,
let’s hold them.” I said, “You know I bet you they all want to be hugged, like
I was in that residential school. ’Cause you know what? They’re away fromtheir parents.”288

She later went to work at Lapointe Hall in Fort Simpson. There, she said, a priest
attempted to sexually assault her. “I was reading, and I had my book up, I was sittingup, propped up in my bed with pillows, and I just, like, all of a sudden he came, thepriest came into my room, and he lunged at me, and he tried to kiss me.”289 From thatpoint on, she avoided the priest as much as possible.
As late as 1960, there were only twenty-three First Nations teachers working in residential schools across the country. Nineteen taught academic subjects and the otherfour taught home economics and industrial arts.290 Stanley McKay, who was educated at the Birtle residential school, taught in the Norway House school in the 1960s.
Although there was much that he enjoyed about the work, he left after two years.
I couldn’t work anymore for Indian Affairs in terms of education. I couldn’t workin their system. I loved the classroom. I think I managed to develop a really,
really good rapport with the students in the school and the classroom was a goodplace, but there was a lot of interference from Indian Affairs in the educational
system and I sensed there were problems in the process that I didn’t want to be apart of.

In his opinion, the education he was being forced to provide was not relevant to
the lives of the children. There was, for example, a heavy emphasis on English and530 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

no recognition of the role of Cree in the communities from which the children came.
“They were doomed to fail under the system that existed. The majority of them would
certainly and did.”291
McKay went on to pursue a career in the ministry, eventually serving as the moderator of the United Church of Canada.292
Verna Kirkness, who was raised on the Fisher River First Nation in Manitoba,taught at both the Birtle and Norway House schools. Because she did not have statusunder the Indian Act, she had not been sent to residential school.293 She did not likethe atmosphere at the Birtle school, where, she felt, administrators sought to discourage students from spending additional time with her. In her memoir, she wrote thatshe “wondered if they were afraid the children would tell me things about their lives
away from the classroom.”294 Her complaint about the treatment of the students to
the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Society led to an inspector’s being sent to theschool for a week. During that period, conditions improved, but she felt that it did not
result in any long-term change.295
She had a much more positive experience at Norway House. She described theprincipal, Bernard Lee, and his wife as being gentle people. She was encouraged by
an Indian Affairs official to take on the position of senior teacher at the school. She
also conducted parent–teacher meetings in Cree. Students were not discouraged fromspeaking their Cree, and sex segregation was not as strictly enforced as it was at Birtle.
Kirkness and many of her co-workers developed lifelong friendships as a result of
their years as Norway House teachers.296
Another Aboriginal teacher from the 1960s was Clive Linklater, who taught
at the Blue Quills, Alberta, school. Alberta Conservative Member of ParliamentFrank Fane recommended that Linklater be transferred in 1961 because he was “atrouble-maker.” Indian Affairs Minister Ellen Fairclough said she was reluctant to takesuch action without “complete justification,” since Linklater was “an Indian and alsoa Roman Catholic.”297 Linklater, who had been educated at the Qu’Appelle school in
Saskatchewan, kept his job in Alberta, and went on to play a role in the transfer of theBlue Quills school to Aboriginal control.298 He later served as a vice-president of the
National Indian Brotherhood (now the Assembly of First Nations).299
In the 1960s, schools also began to hire Aboriginal people to teach classes on language and cultural practices. George Clutesi taught traditional songs and dances at
the Alberni school in 1965.300 Redfern Louttit, a former residential school student,
was teaching Cree there one day a week in 1967.301 In 1970, the Hobbema school was
hiring Aboriginal teacher aides, whose duties included assisting in “native language
instruction and interpretation” and “native culture instruction.”302
It was also in the 1960s that a number of Aboriginal people were promoted to theposition of school principal. Ahab Spence, a former residential school student, wasappointed principal of the Sioux Lookout, Ontario, school in 1963.303

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 531

He was an enthusiastic supporter of the federal integration policy. Since, under
the integration policy, students attended local public schools, classrooms at residential schools were no longer in use. Spence sought to have additional training courses
offered to students in these discarded classrooms.304 In a report on the work the school
was doing, he wrote:
There is a change in the Role that our school must play in Indian education.
We still must teach the Indian pupil English thus preparing him for the town
school. (This can be done without giving the Indian child the impression that his
language is inferior!!). Our school could also be performing a different but more
useful function in the Whole field of Indian Education in the Role of Feeding
Residential schools or Hostels (regardless of denomination) located in larger
Urban centres.

In what Spence saw as the third stage of integration, a student would be housed in“good Christian homes” and be “fully introduced into the White society in which hewill be living perhaps during the rest of his life time.”305
Under Spence’s administration, the Sioux Lookout school had a staff of twenty-three,half of whom were Aboriginal.306 Spence went on to work for Indian Affairs, serve aspresident of the Manitoba Indian Brotherhood, and end his career teaching at Brandon
University and Saskatchewan Indian Federated College, University of Regina. Much of
his later career was devoted to work supporting the Cree language.307
Colin Wasacase became the principal of the Presbyterian school in Kenora in 1966.308
In keeping with past practice, his wife was made school matron.309 From the 1970s
onwards, Aboriginal people were appointed to administrative positions at numerous residential schools, including those in Mission and Kamloops, British Columbia;
Blue Quills, Alberta; Prince Albert, Duck Lake, and Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan; andFort George, Québec.310 Although the total number of schools declined rapidly from1969 onwards, they became a significant source of Aboriginal employment, particularly in Saskatchewan, where six schools were operated by First Nations educational
authorities. In 1994, of the 360 people working in the Saskatchewan schools, 220 wereof Aboriginal ancestry—almost two-thirds of the total.311

The children of staff members
Sometimes, married staff members left a residential school once their children
reached school age. The principal of the Anglican school in Aklavik and his wife
announced in 1954 that they were leaving “due to the need of assuring better educational opportunities for their children.”312 In 1955, the principal of the Anglican
school in Wabasca, A. E. W. Godwin, was becoming concerned about the future of
his fourteen-year-old daughter. According to a church official, “To date her mother532 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

has coached her via Correspondence Courses and she’s done well. Family howeverfeels she’s missing the association of white girls her age.”313 Some parents, such as
Cardston, Alberta, Anglican school principal J. DeWolf and Edmonton school principal J. F. Woodsworth, enrolled some of their children in the residential school. In
other cases, staff sent their children to a local day school.314 Mavis Gould’s father was
the farm instructor at the Edmonton school. She and her sister attended the school: at
one point, she was taking Grade Five in the morning and Grade Six in the afternoon.
She recalled that there were very few organized activities for girls. She said that “it was
like the archaic stuff, you know. Girls didn’t count or something.”315
Jack Lee’s father, Bernard, was the principal of the Norway House school in the
1960s. Lee said,
I moved with my family to Norway House when I was about one or two years
old, and started school in the Indian residential school system, basically, at thevery start as a day student. But, you know, I had so many good friends there,
I used to tell my father, I want to move in. So I did. And as a white boy, I lived
with them for a short period of time, and saw and felt everything that everybody
has been talking about, except I saw it as a white boy coming from a white
European family.

Lee recalled the absence of adult supervision.
It was a sea of children, very few adults. And you had to work out your own
disagreements, your own problems with the other children if you got teased, or if
you can’t join games. There was no parent to go back to for comfort, there was noparent to go back to for guidance, you had to work things out on your own. 316

Mark DeWolf was the son of the principal of the Anglican school in Cardston. As
the only non-Aboriginal student in the class, he said, he felt isolated; for a variety ofreasons, fellow students chose to steer clear of the principal’s son. The DeWolf children did make friends with the children of Mrs. First Rider, an Aboriginal woman who
was in charge of the school laundry. His sister Christine also attended the residential school. Both she and her brother were responsible for tasks at the schools where
their father worked. Mark worked at the small tuck shop at the Cardston school, andChristine helped to prepare the dormitories at the LaTuque, Québec, school. Mark
DeWolf was aware of his father’s being persecuted for supporting social justice causesin the Maritimes, and also recalled his father’s efforts to improve student health andto record examples of Aboriginal culture. “I’m very proud of my father … he is still theman I most admire.”317

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 533

Practising Christians
Each of the churches tried to hire solely members of their own faith to staff theirdenominational schools. The staff handbook for the Anglican Prince Albert schoolstated that each staff member had to be “a practising Christian.” They were all
expected to attend chapel regularly. Non-Anglicans were expected to be “sympathetic
and co-operative as regards the teaching and practice of the Anglican Church.”318
Schools often found it necessary to hire teachers who belonged to different faiths:
such individuals, however, were viewed with suspicion. At the Sioux Lookout schoolin December 1954, Anglican Indian School Administration official H. G. Cook felt that“on the whole all the teachers are good in the classroom but not being Anglicans they
do little about the School.” He also objected to the fact that they would sometimes goover the principal’s head and take their concerns to the local Indian agent.319
One of the teachers Cook was talking about was George Takashima. He recalledthat the principal told the staff that he did not want them to play any role in the livesof the children.
Even before classes began, we were sat down by the principal of this school who
was an Anglican clergyman of the old school, he had come from England, and helaid it on the line that our job was to teach and nothing more. Outside of school
hours and on weekends, we were to have nothing to do with the children. I foundthat strange because we were prepared to do all kinds of activities outside ofschool hours but that’s what we were told.320

In its 1958 report on schooling for Aboriginal children, the United Church noted
the number of United Church members who were working at the residential schools
it operated. The figures ranged from a low of six out of twenty-four staff members at
the Edmonton school to twenty-six out of thirty-three at the Alberni school.321 When a
new girls’ supervisor was hired at the Edmonton school in the fall of 1960, it was notedthat she was “an Anglican woman,” and did not know “anything about United Churchgroup work,” such as the Canadian Girls in Training (cgit, a church-based alternative
to the Girl Guides).322 In May 1961, Edmonton school principal A. E. Caldwell reported
that he was happy with most of his staff, who were “nearly all United Church.”323
Even after the federal government took over the residences in 1969, institutional
life retained its religious nature. In most cases, the former church-appointed principals continued to serve as residence administrators, and student attendance at religious services was often obligatory. In 1972, Joseph Fardella, a child-care worker at
the La Tuque, Québec, school, was fired because he refused to force students under
his supervision to attend the Anglican chapel service on Sunday mornings. Instead,
he woke them, informed them there was a church service, and let them make theirown decision. Fardella, who was Roman Catholic himself, believed it would bewrong of him to force the students to attend. The residence administrator, Reverend

534 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Jean-Maurice Bonnard, instructed him to take the students to the church services.
When he refused to do so, he was fired for insubordination.324 Indian Affairs supported
the dismissal, taking the position that since the school respected the wishes of parents
whenever they requested in writing that their child not be required to attend church,
there was no issue of freedom of religion involved in the matter.325 At an appeal hearing at the Public Service Staff Relations Board, it was revealed that a handbook at the
La Tuque school instructed employees to behave “as representatives of the church… as representatives of the white man’s religion.”326 Ultimately, Fardella’s dismissal
was upheld.327

The staff and the students
Many staff shared the belief that, overall, the schools benefited the children who
were enrolled in them. They were confident that the children were in residence either
because their parents chose to send their children away to school or because there
were problems at home that justified their removal.
James Fiori, an Oblate supervisor who worked at the Roman Catholic school near
The Pas, Manitoba, stated that “people were having a great difficulty feeding their children.” As a result, he said, “they came to the mission, you know, in desperation.”328
Fiori’s belief was shared by Vincent LaPlante, an Oblate principal who worked at
Cranbrook and Fraser Lake in British Columbia. “Some of these children came fromvery, very remote areas,” explained LaPlante. “The families in those particular areas
they didn’t have running water, they didn’t have electricity in some cases, I guess.
They didn’t have the opportunity to look after their children as well as they would have
liked to.”329 Tom Cavanaugh, an Oblate who worked at the Christie, British Columbia,
school in the 1960s and 1970s, said he believed parents wanted their children sent tothe school.
The routine that we had at the residence, the children arrive, I would say mostly
by plane. And from what I understand, the parents were there and put them on
the plane. I know for a fact, because I was there, that some of the children arrived
by boat and by the parents’ fish boats, they would drop them off to school.
And the parents, from my interpretation, they wanted the children there, youknow, for one reason or another they wanted the children there. Some certainly
expressed about education, they knew that kids were going to get a goodeducation at the school.330

For parents who spent part of their time out on the land, a residential school constituted the only way to ensure that a child received an education. An Anglican minister
who worked in northwestern Québec recalled that

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 535

the parents really appreciated the school being there because so many ofthem went away in the winter to trap furs and they, you know, knew this was aplace where the kids were going to be hopefully well fed and well clothed andeducated. I can’t think of any parents who really resented having their kids go.
They wanted them to go.331

In addition to food, clothing, and shelter, many former staff said, parents sought
out the residential school for the opportunities the school could offer their children.
“Who came to residential schools?” asked former teacher Olive Saunders: “The elite.
The councillor’s children, his family’s children, the Chief’s children.… They were wonderful kids. They were smart kids. So they were the elite … because their parents knewthat someday their kids would need to be educated.”332 James Fiori felt that residential
schools constituted the only educational opportunity available to students: “I knowsome of the ones that I have talked to of the whole thing, if they don’t have an education, they will not have a chance. And you know, like I know the north country, youknow, like there simply wasn’t anything available.”333
A United Church minister who worked in Norway House, Manitoba, A. I. Avery,
remembered that “principals always had a pile of requests that parents wanted theirchildren in the residential school.”334 A former student from northern Québec, wholater worked as a supervisor, said that her father, a local chief, had been a strong supporter of sending children to residential school: “He knew the way of life of hunting
would cease and he said, ‘You’ve got to learn, you’ve got to go to school so you canhave the white man’s tools because one day they are going to take over our land andyou’ve got to have the tools to compete with them.’”335
She said she was not aware that children were being taken to the schools by force.
She did recognize, however, that the residences were increasingly being used as
child-welfare facilities.
I think at one time they used residential schools as sort of a social thing too
because there was no Children’s Aid. So if there was a child that didn’t have ahome, there was very few orphan children, but they went to residential school....
There was no welfare … but I can honestly say … I don’t know of anybody who
was taken by force.336

Former residential school students who went on to work at the schools were wellaware of how family hardship had forced children into the schools. “Like, when amother dies, you know, they would put the children there because there was nobody
at home to look after them,” explained a First Nation woman who worked as a cookat the same Catholic school she had attended as a child.337 Joe Aleck, who eventuallybecame the administrator of the Mission, British Columbia, school, recalled that “onesad thing that was happening … was children that were abused and that was the era of
the alcohol syndrome … lot of the children were abused at home and they were taken

536 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

away or sent away to the residential school.… Many at the school were neglected bytheir parents.”338
Another former student, who later joined the school’s support staff, explainedthat she was sent to the residential school when her mother died and her father was
unable to manage. Although she had relatives living nearby, she preferred to stay inresidence because it kept her safe from the physical, sexual, and substance abuse that
she endured in her relatives’ home.339
Vincent LaPlante worked at residential schools in British Columbia. He said thatmany of the students who came to the schools
came from dysfunctional families. There was, on the admission form, there
would be the reason why this child is being sent to the Indian residential school.
It was signed by the Indian agent and by the parent, legal parent or guardian.
In many cases it was the guardian because the family itself was not capableof looking after the child. So the child had difficulties before arriving at theschool. Many of the children came from these dysfunctional families and were
nevertheless able to do pretty well.340

John Fitzgerald said that because so many of the children at the Fraser Lake, British
Columbia, residential school were orphans, he felt he was their surrogate parent.341
Terrance McNamara said that for some of the students he worked with at Kuper
Island, British Columbia, the school was a refuge from a difficult home life.
So that’s something that’s really standing out in my mind, because of the fact thatthey were happy at the school and they didn’t want to leave the school becauseof their own situations at home. And I think that needs to be said, that some ofthe situations at home were very difficult for them and they didn’t want to go
home, they wanted to stay in the residential school.342

But, while they believed the students were in school largely because their parents
wanted them to be there or because their family life had fallen apart, school staff
members recognized how emotionally wrenching it was for young children to be separated from their community. Tom Cavanaugh said:
I used to feel sorry for the young kids coming in, the Grade Ones and Twos.
They’re such little gaffers, you know. And they would come in and they would
be crying, some of them wouldn’t, but some of them would be crying, and theirmom or dad were there and they would be trying to console them, and then theywould have to leave, you know, because they had to go back home themselves.
So it was pretty sad for them, the little ones, you know, to leave. And I thought,
how do you possibly make a kid or make a child feel at home? How do you
comfort them? Because I’d feel sick. If I look back at my own family and if I had
to leave home, you know, at five years of age, be away from my mom and dad forthree, four months at a time, and possibly the whole school year without seeingThe staff experience: 1940–2000 • 537

them, that would devastate me, that in itself, you know. And I thought, this isreally tough.343

Lynn Bishop, who later went on to be the manager of the Winnipeg International
Airport, was a young commercial pilot working in Manitoba and northwestern Ontario
in the 1970s.344 In that job, he unexpectedly discovered how stressful the journey toresidential school could be for the children. It was an experience he never forgot.
On a late day in August, I was asked to go to a lake I had never been to before.
I was told that at a pre-arranged point on the shoreline, there would be two
small children to bring back to the base, where they would attend the nearby
residential school. I was told too that one or both parents would be there to see
the children off. When I got there, I could look down and see two little people
and two not so little people, but what was most odd was the fact that there wasno dwelling of any kind, no structure, no tent. And unless I missed it, there wasno boat. I landed the aircraft. There was no dock. I had to nudge it up under the
shoreline close to where they were standing.
And when I got out, I could sense immediately that there was a high sense of
discomfort, and stress within this group. The father was very somber-faced andgrim. The little boy, who I would guess to be eight years old, was expressionless,but you could tell tense. The mother, it was apparent, had been crying, and wasin a very high state of anxiety. The little girl, who I would guess to be six years
old, no more than six, was trembling and sobbing and clutching her mother’s
garment with a death grip. I suspected, and the father confirmed, that the little
girl was being separated from her mother for the very first time in her life. As wewere about to leave, I mistakenly said to the father, “Well, you will see them at
Christmas.” And he said, “No, June of next year.”
We took off and I recall thinking that what I would do is turn around and do alow pass, bank the aircraft slightly so the children could look down and wave totheir parents. And that was a mistake, because all it did was heighten the senseof separation and the tenseness and we now had two very upset little—I would
think in clinical terms you could call traumatized at that point. They both wailed
and sobbed all the way back to Kenora. It was a long flight. But the indignityof that journey to be inflicted upon the children was not quite over. When we
got to Kenora, parked on the dock was a taxi. I can recall clearly carrying thetwo small suitcases, hard-pressed like a cardboard suitcase, little suitcases tothe car. The children got in the back seat, went up the road, up the hill rather,turned, and out of sight. No chaperone, no welcomer, no adult, no words ofwelcome. And I remember thinking, how cold and uncaring can this get? Being
with the children that day had a very disturbing effect on me, but in due course
the memory receded. And in more recent years, I’ve only thought of it once or
twice, and the children, in particular, until I began to read about the findings andthe residential school situation and all that went with it. And the more I read,538 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the more significant that day became, and more bothersome too became thethought of whatever happened to those children.345

A number of staff members spoke of how lonely the students were, particularly at
the start of the school year. Dorothy McKay, who worked at the Norway House schoolin the early 1960s, recalled:
I think about the first week, you’d hear the children crying themselves to sleep,
but the other side of that is I can remember we would go to the plane with themwhen it was time at the end of June for them to go home [they were] crying andI think that kind of says part of what we did to them. They did not want to go
home. They didn’t know what they were going to and well they knew that they
were going to a difficult situation because they didn’t know it, they no longer
knew about their homes, they’d been away for ten months, most of them,and there would be tears when they had to get on the plane to go home and I
thought, I remember thinking how terrible that was.346

Elizabeth Pearson could remember hearing children crying themselves to sleep at
the beginning of the school year at the Alert Bay, British Columbia, school: “Missing
their mum and dad, and of course their brothers, their sisters were separated on
opposite sides of the building. So they couldn’t communicate except at lunchtime or
playtime … and when they were outside playing.”347 One former staff person spoke of
how every autumn, the children would arrive “in a big open truck…. How often did I
seee [sic] them, expecially [sic] the little six year olds struggling to jump from the backof the truck, blinded by tears of loneliness and confusion.”348
Mary Hamilton worked as a teacher at the Anglican school in Aklavik in the
Northwest Territories. During her time at the school, she thought the children were
well treated.
The only thing that bothered me was that they were away from their parents. I
thought that was so sad, you know, because they were away from their parents.
Now sometimes the parents would come into the community and visit them, but
for the most part they didn’t see their parents until the next summer. And thatwas sad.349

Marion Adams, who taught at the Norway House school, recalled the impact thatparcels from home had on the children. She remembered that if a grandmother sent“new moccasins to someone and that parcel arrived, it had so much power. There wasa problem of not making the others homesick by showing too much.… It was wonderful but it was difficult for the other children who didn’t get a parcel.”350
Students had good memories of specific staff members, particularly if those staff
members had supported them in a difficult time. Richard Nerysoo served as premier of
the Northwest Territories, the first First Nations person in Canada to be elected to leada public government. As a student, he had attended Fleming Hall in Fort McPherson,

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 539

Stringer Hall in Inuvik, and Yukon Hall in Whitehorse. While he was at Stringer Hall,
he felt that the administrator, L. P. Holman, supported him. However, he decided that
he did not care for the school environment, concluding, “I don’t want to be part ofanything that takes me into drinking and all those things.” Intent on continuing his
education, he applied for admission to Yukon Hall in Whitehorse. “That was a hardthing to do. I was a long ways away from home, long ways away from my mother, myparents, any kind of support system I had. But the one thing I always remember about
L. P. Holman, who was a great support to many, was about every month he sent me$20 and I couldn’t believe that ’cause I never asked him for it.”351
Nellie Ningewance recalled the kindness of one of the supervisors at the Sioux
Lookout, Ontario, school.
Her name was Miss Tailfeathers; beautiful young lady. She was our friend; shetook pictures of us all the time. I have a couple of group pictures that she madecopies of for some of us I guess. Once when we were playing baseball they took a
picture of, a group picture and then one in our Sunday best dresses. I have one ofthose. She was good.352

Daniel Andre spoke with warmth of his memory of one nun at Grollier Hall, theRoman Catholic residence in Inuvik, Northwest Territories.
Although Sister Tremblay, the nun that was the main supervisor upstairs for, forthe junior boys, she was the best nun in the whole place, like, everybody knew
it. She was the most kindest and generous and loving supervisor there was. She,she, she even argued with other supervisors and stuff, and about, or how shecalled us her boys, and so, like, she was just ready to fight tooth and nail for us.
She died not too long ago, too, like, I don’t know how many years ago. But before
she died, I got a hold of her, and I wrote to her, and she said she still held us all
in her prayers and stuff, and yeah, she was a beautiful soul. I thank God for her,and ’cause all the other supervisors were pretty bad according to the students
that told us. And she was the one that, that, that got us into camping and stuff,
and bringing us in the bush, yeah. And I think she was especially attached to mybrother Donald, and Robert and I because she knew that we lived right in thebush and not in town, and, and we were there ever since we were so small, andthen we grew up there. And she tried to protect us as best as she can, but somethings she couldn’t do it.353

Curriculum: “It is the White way that is
acceptable and praiseworthy”
In the period following 1940, it became obvious to some teachers that trying to eliminate Aboriginal culture was self-defeating and prevented the schools from teaching540 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

basic skills effectively to Aboriginal children. They were frustrated by the requirement
to teach what, in their opinion, was a culturally inappropriate curriculum. Cameron
Reid, who worked as both a supervisor and teacher in Norway House, Manitoba, inthe 1950s, recalled that “the one thing that I remember from that experience as wellas the teaching it was not paying any heed to their background, and to their culture. It
was the Canadian system and the Canadian schools and … so Fun with Dick and Janewould be the Grade One book.”354 Mary Hamilton, who taught grades Three and Fourin Aklavik in the early 1950s, despaired at the books filled with stories about “goingto the circus or going somewhere else that the kids had never seen.” She decided towork with the students to develop stories based on their own experiences of the land
and animals. The books developed by Hamilton and her students so impressed theschool inspector that copies were sent to Ottawa to be considered in the developmentof new materials.355
Despite this important example of a more effective approach, it appears to be
exceptional. Generally, little effort was made to look into Aboriginal cultures forsources of stories and traditions that might actually reinforce the children’s sense of
Aboriginal identity and disrupt the historical aim of assimilation. During this period
after the 1940s, some teachers were among the most frustrated with the imposition ofsuch a foreign system.
George Takashima simply gave up on the provincial curriculum for his students
and returned to basics. “After the first two or three days, I said to myself, what I learnedin teachers’ college forget it, drop it, it’s not going to work. You have to go with what
they [the students] understand, where they’re at.”356
Takashima was also disturbed by the poor record keeping at the Sioux
Lookout school.
When we went into the classroom, we had no record of these students. Manyof them were students who had been in that school the previous year but there
were no records and so we didn’t know where these students were. It would
be a shame to have to start right from the beginning to figure out where thesechildren were at but that’s what we had to do, spend one week trying to sort out
where these students’ learning limits were before we could begin teaching.357

Donald Hepburn, who had worked as a principal in Inuvik in the Northwest
Territories, was even more emphatic: “It’s grossly unfair to use scores on a paper-andpencil test of mental ability developed for use with English-speaking, white, AngloSaxon Protestant parents on those kids.”358 Hepburn voiced his frustration with theschool curriculum and with the system as a whole in an article he published in 1961
shortly after he submitted his letter of resignation. In the article, entitled “Northern
Education – Façade for Failure,” he wrote,

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 541

The school may occasionally pay lip-service to the contribution of Eskimos
and Indians to Canadian life, but the daily school fare tells the child that it is
the White way that is acceptable and praiseworthy. The ways of his parents andgrandparents are of little or no value. The White ways are worth studying fivedays a week; his people’s ways are worth scarcely a passing glance.

Hepburn’s critique was not limited to the curricula: he thought it was necessary forthe federal government to “abandon its monstrous residences.” There might be a needfor a residential school for students of high-school age, but there was “no place for thehuge residential elementary schools now in operation.”359
Others questioned the impact of their work as well as the curriculum. Mary
Hamilton, who worked at a day school in Fort Chimo (now Kuujjuaq) in Arctic
Québec, recalled that during an orientation session for the job, “somebody from thegovernment came and spoke to us and said you know ‘we didn’t do a good job with
the Indians, we did this and we did that and we did the other thing and we shouldn’t
have done it so we’re going to do a better job with the Eskimo people,’ but it turned out
just the same.”360
Terri Welsh taught at a Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, public school in the 1960s.
Many of the students in her elementary class came from the Prince Albert residence.
The first day of school five different buses pulled up with kids ranging from six
to nine. The kids were shy, quiet, overwhelmed, and confused, but still ready totrust me. The school was called Central, it was in the middle of the town, a small,
dirty, old, brick building. Our room, unfortunately, was in the basement. It was
damp, it was dirty, it had spiderwebs, it had light bulbs, and it had a furnace inthe corner.

When she complained to the administration about the space, she was told that“there was no space that was adequate, that their parents weren’t taxpayers and they
weren’t residents of pa [Prince Albert], et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.” Welsh continued
to push for better accommodation. “The good news, within three weeks a shiny trailer
showed up and was placed at the end of the playground. The bad news, we were neverattached to the building and we all had to run to get to the bathroom.”361
Some of the vocational education teachers sought to engage the students in projects that would be of use and enjoyment to them. At the Presbyterian school in Kenora,
George McMillan helped the senior boys build kayaks that they could take home at theend of the school year.362 One year, Danny Saunders, the carpentry teacher at Norway
House, and his students created specially crafted wooden drawers to fit underneatheach boy’s bed so they could have a safe place to store their letters, coins, and keepsakes from home. The next year, Saunders and his class built a scoot (a flat-bottomed
boat with a rear-mounted, above-water propeller that allowed it to travel over water,snow, and ice). The scoot made it possible for members of the Norway House community to travel across the lake quickly and safely during freeze-up and breakup.363

542 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

It is apparent from the statements of former staff there were a variety of attitudes
and policies towards the use of Aboriginal languages at residential schools. Someteachers, such as George Takashima, thought the restrictive language policies werebizarre: “I thought to myself, well that’s crazy. If they can’t speak English, how are you
going to prevent them from using their own language until such time that they could
express themselves?” Rather than enforce the ban, he would speak Japanese when
students spoke in their own language. “They would look at me and oh, what language
is that and I said, ‘Well, I come from southwestern Ontario.’”364 Although she did not
object to children speaking to each other in their own language, Elizabeth Pearson
recalled that the principal (J. Edwin Allsopp) at the Alert Bay, British Columbia,
school was, in her words, “kindly but stern” in enforcing rules restricting the use of
Aboriginal languages.365
One staff member from a British Columbia school said students were told not tospeak their Aboriginal language during recess. “The idea was to get them comfortablewith English, because that was the language of the dominant society, and I think it wasa good one.”366
James Fiori recalled that at one of the Catholic schools at which he worked during
the 1970s, the principal’s “Cree was far superior to his English. And in fact, he always
made a point, you know, like when we had chapel and what have you, he preachedin Cree, not in English.” He said that French was the first language of the Oblates andthe members of the female religious orders who worked in the school.367 Lawrence
Brennan was a Jesuit who worked at the Spanish, Ontario, school as a teacher andsupervisor. He said that the children were allowed to speak their languages among
themselves, but were to speak English in the presence of the staff.368
Merle Nisly recalled that students were allowed to speak their own language
among themselves at the Poplar Hill school. “But, but my, my memory of the application of that rule was that, that when students were in the presence of someone, ofa staff member who couldn’t understand them, they were not supposed to converse
with each other in their own language.” Nisly decided to learn to speak the students’language. “There was a First Nations man on staff with us, and I remember often goingto him to ask for more language, and learning, so that was my start actually and, andeventually becoming fluent.”369
When she taught at the Kamloops school, Beverley Mitchell encouraged three
girls, who were depressed because they lost the ability to speak their own language,
to tape-record their grandparents telling stories in their own language. Their parents
translated the interviews and the girls wrote a paper based on those translations. Theylater went on to give a presentation about the paper at the University of Victoria.370
Some staff members recognized that students could be subjected to whatamounted to cultural abuse. Betty Ann Caldwell felt that some of the talks that the
principal of the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, school gave would have left the students

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 543

feeling “ashamed of their parents.” She said the principal “talked about how they werebeing given this wonderful opportunity to get an education and to live better lives
than their parents.”371 George Takashima recalled that at the Sioux Lookout, Ontario,
school, the principal said that “we were here to Christianize the savages and that took
me aback.”372
When she taught at the Birtle, Manitoba, school, beginning in 1959, Verna Kirkness
became aware of the degree to which Aboriginal people were absent from the school
curriculum. When she pointed this out to her students, an animated discussion
ensued, leading her to assign “Canada, 1959, Without Whiteman,” as an essay topic.
Well, the response to this assignment was overwhelming! They wrote pages andpages about what they thought it would be like to live in Canada without the
influence of people from other lands. I wish I had kept some of those essays,
as they revealed so much about the students’ feelings, which were probably
enhanced by their confinement in an institution.373

Recreation: “They won cups”
Residential schools provided only limited recreational programming. Recreational
facilities were often makeshift and equipment was in short supply. Betty Pearson
could not recall much in the way of recreational equipment at the school at Alert Bay,
British Columbia. The programming that existed depended largely on the initiative of
individual staff members. At the Shingwauk school in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, staff
members took on responsibility for Scouts, Cubs, Guides, Brownies, and a variety ofchurch organizations such as the Little Helpers and the Church Boys’ League.374 At
the Cardston, Alberta, school in 1954, H. W. Buckle was not only “a first rate teacher,”but he also organized a range of sports activities, coaching skating, giving twenty minutes of physical training a day, and organizing a cadet squad.375 One staff member
in British Columbia successfully coached sports teams, although he was not muchof an athlete: “I wasn’t able to skate, I never played hockey, but I was able to train
the students and they won, they won cups.”376 At a Catholic school in the Northwest
Territories, the principal was so dismayed by the lack of recreational activities for thechildren that he closed down the school chapel and turned it into a gymnasium. “We
could say mass somewhere else. We turned it into a gymnasium so we could play basketball or volleyball or whatever.”377
Terrance McNamara said the Kuper Island, British Columbia, school had an active
recreation program in the 1960s.
And on the east coast of Vancouver Island there were a lot of canoe races in those
years and the students participated in the canoe races. We were very involved

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in athletics. There was a great emphasis on soccer, and the Native people during
those years were very involved with soccer, including the elementary grades.
And during that period of time we would take the weekends and either go overand participate in the soccer tournaments. But in that period of time from May
until June, we had a fife-and-drum band, and it was a really wonderful occasion
for the school to go out and participate in the non-Native parades from Victoria
up to Nanaimo, and even in those years we would go over to the mainland
as well.378

According to Tom Cavanaugh, there was at least one night devoted to recreation at
the Christie, British Columbia, school: “It was mostly volleyball. Get the older kids andthe staff together and they’d choose teams and have different teams, kids and adults
mixed, and they would play volleyball, you know, have little tournaments going on
and that sort of stuff.” The administration also brought in movies once a week. “So thatusually happened every Friday night. Sometimes it would be repeated if it was a showthat the kids really enjoyed, we might even have it Saturday night or Sunday evening
for them before they go to bed.”379
John Fitzgerald recalled that when he was the principal of the school at Sechelt,
British Columbia, he arranged for the school band to visit Disneyland. “We had a greattime. They raised the money, but we had all kinds of deals to raise the money. They
were very good. And we got pictures from Disneyland that I was allowed to duplicate,and every child got a picture that was in the band.”380

Discipline
As noted in earlier chapters, Indian Affairs was slow to develop a system-wide discipline policy, and ineffective in enforcing such a policy. The policy that Indian Affairs
was attempting to impose was intended to restrict who could administer corporalpunishment, and to limit that punishment to strokes on the hand with a regulation
strap.381 A staff handbook for the Gordon’s school in Saskatchewan stated: “Only the
Principal may administer corporal punishment. Any staff member who strikes a childis liable to dismissal and possible prosecution. Difficult disciplinary problems must
always be referred to the Principal.”382
In reality, individual principals set the tone for their school. An Anglican Indian
School Administration report from 1955 refers to a “most painful session” with
Brocket, Alberta, school principal W. J. J. Woods,
on the subject of his method of disciplining the children—girls particularly.
He contended that strapping on the hand was no good and quoted the Bible tosubstantiate his method of punishment. I couldn’t follow his arguments at all.
He admitted acting contrary to iab [Indian Affairs Branch] regulations and my

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 545

instructions, given some three years ago, but claimed he was more experienced
than either the iab or isa [Indian School Administration] in handling the pupils.
Miss Bray was brought along as a witness apparently and stated that Mr. Woods
and she were present the last time Mr. Woods punished the girls for runningaway. After a lot of talking during which he claimed to have received no help
from isa, iab or the Bishop in running the school or the Mission I came to theconclusion that he has let molehill-size problems develop into mountainous
situations. He has no use for Mr. Waller, Mr. Battle or the new Agent Mr.
Woodsworth.383

Woods resigned his position with the school at the end of the 1954–55 school year.384
In a letter to a prospective teacher in 1957, the Gordon’s principal, Albert Southard,
explained that the school was
operated under a very strict discipline and I would expect this to be maintained.
We do not follow the policy of “free expression” here, and Indian children doas they are told. The school stands on the Gordons Indian reserve and for thatreason all contacts with the reserve are kept to an absolute minimum andare discouraged.385

Within two months of sending this letter, Southard was under investigation for allegations of excessive discipline at the school; by September, he had been replaced as
principal and had returned to England.386 Woods had been a principal at Anglican
schools since 1948, while Southard’s career as principal dated back to only 1955.387 In
both cases, it is apparent that their approach to discipline was not only strict, but also
excessive, going beyond the standards that the church and government sanctioned.
Former staff members spoke of events that clearly violated the policies that IndianAffairs was seeking to impose. Delores Pflanz spoke of seeing one of the nuns at the
Kuper Island school beating five or six students at one time in what Pflanz describedas “a total rage.” She also saw students having their mouths washed out with soap for
speaking an Aboriginal language. She said that she went to the residence administrator about one of her concerns about Glenn Doughty, a staff member who was later
convicted of abusing students. She said that instead of responding to her concerns,
the administrator flew into a rage and fired her. In the end, she kept her job, but nothing was done regarding her complaint.388
Some former staff members told this Commission that they never hit a student, butothers spoke with regret about having struck a student in a fit of temper. One former
staff member spoke of losing her control and slapping students.389 Some believed thatthe use of corporal punishment was justified and not excessive. Tom Cavanaugh saidof the discipline at the Christie, British Columbia, school:
I never saw anything that would cause me to think that discipline was overused.
And we used all types of discipline. It was never with a stick or anything. We
used to use the strap. That was an acceptable type of discipline at that time. But

546 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

I would say even the strap, I know like with myself, I’d use the strap a few times.
The first time I used the strap I almost cried myself because I didn’t want tohurt anybody.390

According to Cavanaugh:
I saw perhaps one time that it might have been—there might have been reason
to think that it was overused, but it was dealt with after, you know. And theperson who administered the strap was dealt with after it was done. And that’s
the only time that I ever saw it ever misused. I would say it was on the verge ofbeing misused.391

Some staff members came to question and change their approach to corporal punishment. Donald Hepburn said that he gave up using it after a boy he was going todiscipline broke into tears before he administered the strap: “Why would you want to
reduce this big fourteen-year-old—good kid—to tears?”392 Another former staff member spoke of how she had confronted a supervisor she saw boxing a boy on the ears
and telling him never to do that again.393
Others clearly felt that children needed to be ruled with an ‘iron hand.’ A nun who
worked at a Roman Catholic school said that on one occasion, she challenged anothernun who was impatient with students, telling her that “‘they don’t learn when you
scream and say smarten up or go and sit down if you can’t…. That doesn’t help if they
are yelled at.’ She said, ‘That’s how I was raised.’ I said, ‘Did you appreciate it?’ ‘Well,’she said, ‘that’s how it was.’”394
Indian Affairs had sought to ban humiliating punishments in 1953.395 Despite this,Marianne Kingma, who was a girls’ supervisor at the Mohawk Institute in Brantford,
Ontario, in the 1960s, recalled that punishments were often humiliating. In one case,a student was required to clean part of a floor with a toothbrush, and in another case,a girl was made to stand in the bathroom for an hour.396 Eleanor Jackson recalled
thinking that the humiliating manner in which students who had wet their beds weretreated was “so awful.” At the same time, she said, none of the staff knew how to treat
the problem.397 Another former staff person commented approvingly that fear andhumiliation were effective disciplinary tools.398
Several former staff said that the withdrawal of privileges was more common thancorporal punishment. Tom Cavanagh said,
A lot of the discipline was, you know, depriving the children, if necessary.
Depriving the children from such things as perhaps treats, you know, if the kids
are going to get candy for the show, maybe you are not going to get any candy,
you have been bad this way or that way; or you might say, okay, you are not goingto go to the show this week if you don’t know how to behave; or you have to go to
bed early; or you can’t go to the dance, if there was a dance going on; or you can’tThe staff experience: 1940–2000 • 547

play these games. And the kids accepted that. It is amazing, like some of thosekids are really marvellous, marvellous young beings, you know.399

Abuse
Several former staff members who made statements to the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada said that they had never considered the possibility that students might have been sexually abused. Others spoke of how shocked they werewhen, years after the fact, people were charged with abusing students in communities and schools where they had worked.400 Tom Cavanaugh said he could recall noallegations of sexual abuse while he was working as an Oblate at the Christie schoolin the 1960s.401 Others said that they became aware that something untoward—butundescribed—had happened only when a staff member was quickly and mysteriously
dismissed: sometimes, there one day and gone the next.402
In some cases, staff members intervened on behalf of students who were being
sexually exploited. At one school, a staff member confronted the principal after students told her that the principal had walked into the girls’ washroom when they wereundressing. The staff member told the principal that he should never walk into thewashroom again.403 One former staff member, Edward Lynch, said he once saw asupervisor, Harold McIntee, who was later convicted of sexually abusing students, ina dormitory at night. “I asked him never, ever to come back to the dorm. And basically
he did that. He stayed away from the dorm.”404
In 1995, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (cbc) radio program Ideas
broadcast an hour-long roundtable conversation among several members of the
Oblate order who had worked at residential schools. The latter part of the program
dealt with the issue of abuse. Thomas Lascelles, a member of the Oblate order, whowrote a history of Catholic residential schools in British Columbia, claimed, “The first
instances [of allegations of abuse] only emerged in the last couple of years. I’ve talked
to Oblates who worked in thirty, forty years and they say they never heard of it.”
Lascelles was immediately contradicted by Lorne (Larry) Mackey, who had been
the principal of the Christie, British Columbia, school. Mackey said that when he took
over the school, “I found an incident there with one of the lay staff. I didn’t know theextent of the abuse—because we didn’t even know the word at that time. But I foundthis incident. Well, the next day I fired him out of there.” Mackey went on to say that
he got into trouble with Indian Affairs for failing to “follow the rules and regulations”
and with some parents in the community, since the individual involved had been lavishing gifts on some of the students. Mackey said the event took place in either 1963 or
1964; according to church records, he was appointed principal of the Christie school
in June 1964.405

548 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Mackey did not give the name of the employee who was dismissed in this manner. However, Martin Saxey had been employed at the Christie school as baker andodd-jobs man in the late 1950s. He sexually abused at least one student at the schoolfrom 1957 until 1962.406 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has
found no evidence that Saxey’s employment at the school continued past September
1964—he appears to have left the school’s employ shortly after Mackey’s appointment
as principal.407
When the individual who had been abused by Saxey sued the Oblate order fordamages, the Oblates took the position that “the constant supervision of the children,
coupled with their daily schedules, left no opportunity for Saxey to have sexuallyassaulted” the student. Mackey was one of the staff members who provided evidence
supporting the Oblate position when the case went to court in 2001.408
In the same cbc program cited above, Bert Dunlop, who had been principal of
the Mission, British Columbia, school from 1963 to 1968, said, “I was at Mission andbefore God I can say I had no idea this was going on. Maybe I was stupid; no idea it wasgoing on. One case came to my attention in here so I treated it. One of the staff said, ‘I
think one of the supervisors might be fooling around with some of the kids.’”
Dunlop said he confronted the staff member and told him to leave the schoolthat evening. “We had no other recourse! There was no one to report him to, like you
have now. There were no legal regulations. That’s the way I handled it; the only way
I could.”409
There were, of course, police officials, government officials, and church officials towhom the matter could and should have been reported. There were also “legal regulations.” The sexual abuse of children was, and had been for a considerable period oftime, illegal in Canada. Just two years earlier, an employee at an Oblate-administeredresidence in the Northwest Territories had been convicted of violating these laws
by abusing children living at a residence there.410 In this period, there also existed anational Oblate organization: the Oblate Indian and Eskimo Welfare Commission.411
The organization published a regular bulletin and organized workshops that brought
together principals of Oblate-administered schools. In short, the church had mechanisms to communicate news of such convictions to school staff, and to advise them of
the proper steps to take.412 It would appear, however, that calling the legal authorities
was not seen as an appropriate step to take in either case. Instead, perpetrators weredismissed, allowing them to avoid prosecution. The goal, it would appear, was not
to protect children, since those who were dismissed were free to abuse other children in different settings. Instead, the goal was to avoid bringing the church’s nameinto disrepute.
Decisions of this nature had consequences for children in residential schools andelsewhere. Keavin Amyot worked as a dormitory supervisor at the Mission schoolin the 1960s, and resigned in 1969.413 Three years later, he was convicted of indecent

The staff experience: 1940–2000 • 549

assault on a child in Edmonton.414 In April 1987, he pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting four Inuit boys in Sanikiluaq, Northwest Territories.415 In the 1990s, former students of the Mission school informed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Residential
School Task Force that they had been abused by Amyot at that school in the 1960s.
Amyot died in 2003 before charges against him with regard to those allegations could
be finalized.416 Since Amyot left the Mission school a year after Dunlop did, it appears
that Amyot was not the individual Dunlop fired. However, the approach that Mackey
and Dunlop used when faced with evidence of abuse—firing the suspect and notreporting the matter to the police—suggests that school officials may well have discovered that Amyot had been abusing students at the Mission school, and then dismissed him rather than reporting the case to the police.
In some cases, the uncovering of an incident of abuse at a school led to a completechange in staff. In 1947, it was discovered that a boy at the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan,
school had been infected with venereal disease as a result of being sexually abused by
the boys’ supervisor at the school. The supervisor was a former student who had been
abused in the past by the school engineer. (Both the supervisor and the engineer weretried and convicted for these assaults.) Indian Affairs official R. S. Davis concluded
that, in his opinion, “this thing has been going on in the school for years.” He wrote,“It might have been found out by one of the principals and hushed up, until today it isquite common.” Davis thought that the current principal, Fred Mayo, was “very good,
but he is an old man, and besides being principal he has to be plumber and everythingelse.” Overall, he recommended that “a qualified staff be put in, as at the present timethey are only getting what they are paying for, and they are dear at that price.”417 Davis’s
recommendations were acted upon: the principal was replaced and staff members
from the Lac La Ronge school, which had been destroyed by fire, were transferred to
the Gordon’s school.418
A new set of scandals involving male and female students and staff members in1955 led to another staff turnover at Gordon’s. Anglican Indian School Administration
official G. R. Turner wrote that the school was held in such disrepute that “the schooltruck is often greeted in the town of Punnichy with the cry ‘there is the truck from the——’ (a common expression for house of ill fame) and several parents from outlying
reserves have written that they are not going to let their girls come back here because
they are afraid they will become pregnant.” He emphasized that “only first-class competent staff members be provided in order to restore the prestige and reputation ofthis school, and the confidence of the Indian parents.”419
Vincent LaPlante worked at two Oblate-run residential schools in the 1960s and1970s. He said that he believed a number of allegations of abuse by members of the
Oblate order were false, and suggested that the prospect of compensation had led
people to make false accusations.420 John Tritschler, who worked as an Oblate at theMission school, said that many former staff felt that the focus on the sexual abuse of

550 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

students also meant that abusers and non-abusers had been “tarnished with the sametar-brush.” For him, meaningful reconciliation would involve honouring the Roman
Catholic Church for “the good that it tried to do, given the historical perspective that it
had at the time and the lack of foresight that it had at the time.”421

Conclusion
Former staff and the children of former staff members have expressed the view thatmuch of the discussion of the history of residential schools has overlooked both thepositive intent with which staff members had approached their work and the many
positive accomplishments of the school system. They certainly believed the system
was underfunded, but they also believed that they and their parents devoted much of
their lives to educating and caring for Aboriginal children.
There were some residential school employees who specifically sought out work inthe schools in order to take advantage of young people. There were also people who
used their authority and the lack of outside scrutiny to impose harsh and abusive discipline on students. The men and women who answered a missionary call were also
clearly intent on converting Aboriginal children and their parents to their particular
Christian faith, and, in this sense, they worked to undermine existing Aboriginal cultural and spiritual beliefs.
Most of the staff members did not make a career in residential schools, spending,at most, a year or two on the job. Others stayed on the job for many years in conditions
that were often very different from those they grew up with, working for low pay, andliving in cramped and confined quarters with, at times, less than congenial colleagues.
They spent their time teaching, cooking, cleaning, farming, and supervising children.
On their own, these can be seen as positive, not negative, activities. The school staff
members, for the most part, were not responsible for the policies that separated children from their parents and lodged them in inadequate and underfunded facilities.
Many staff members spent much of their time and energy attempting to humanize aharsh and often destructive system. Along with the children’s own resilience, these
individuals share credit for any of the positive results of the schools.
The responsibility for the limits of that system lies with the Canadian state, thechurches, and the Canadian people who benefited from the colonization of Aboriginal
people and their lands.

CHAPTER 45

Getting to the Settlement AgreementThe signing of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (irssa) in2006 was a major turning point in the relationship between Aboriginal andnon-Aboriginal Canadians. The Settlement Agreement compensated residential school Survivors for individual acts of abuse, as well as for the collective impactsof the schools on Aboriginal people and communities.1 The Settlement Agreement
created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, and provided fundingfor commemoration initiatives and the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.
The Settlement Agreement and the series of apologies by institutions that participated in the residential school system were the result of a complex process. Aboriginal
people and their organizations worked for decades to ensure that the legacy of residential schools became a public issue. Aboriginal political organizations played a
key role in advocating for justice for residential school Survivors as well as ensuringthat Aboriginal issues were kept on the national political agenda. Through publishedmemoirs and anthologies, and the tireless advocacy of Survivors, the Canadian public became increasingly aware of the harms caused by the residential school systemand the need for redress for Survivors. Over time, the churches that had operated
the residential schools experienced a significant evolution in their attitudes towards
Aboriginal rights. Churches that had previously boasted of their mission to Christianizeand ‘civilize’ Aboriginal children came to apologize for their role in the operation ofresidential schools in Canada.
The disclosure of pervasive abuse and cruelty in the residential school system
resulted in some police investigations and convictions of a number of the individuals who had abused students. Building on these criminal court decisions, Survivors
launched civil claims seeking compensation for the abuse they experienced in residential schools. Thousands of civil lawsuits were filed.
The hearings of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples served as forums inwhich Survivors spoke of their residential school experiences. The Royal Commission’s
1996 report further focused public attention on the history and legacy of the residential school system.

552 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Changes in Canadian law in the 1990s allowed Survivors to launch class-action
lawsuits in relation to their residential school experiences. At the same time, the dispute-resolution program that the federal government had established as an alternative to the courts came under criticism from Aboriginal organizations, the Canadianlegal establishment, and, eventually, a parliamentary committee. As a result of thesegrowing pressures, in 2005, the federal government chose to enter into a processintended to negotiate a settlement to the growing number of court cases. This led to
the negotiation of the irssa in 2006, and its approval by the courts in the following
year. In June 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, on behalf of Canada, apologized
to Aboriginal peoples for Canada’s role in the residential schools before membersof Parliament, residential school Survivors, Elders, and Aboriginal political leaders.2
That same month, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, which hada mandate to tell Canadians about the history of residential schools and the impact
those schools had on Aboriginal people, was formally established.3

The growth of national Aboriginal political organizations
Efforts to establish a nationwide Aboriginal organization date at least as far back as
F. O. Loft’s League of Indians of Canada in 1919.4 Although the league was short-lived,a variety of provincial and regional organizations were established, and efforts weremade to create national organizations in the 1940s.5 In 1961, Canadian Aboriginal
leaders established the National Indian Council (nic), the first such national organization to achieve a stable membership and funding base.6 In 1968, as a result of internal divisions, the nic split into two separate groups: the National Indian Brotherhood(nib) represented the interests of status and Treaty Indians, and the Canadian Métis
Society (cms) represented Métis and non-status Indians. The cms was later reorganized as the Native Council of Canada (ncc).7 In 1982, the nib became the Assemblyof First Nations (afn), an organization intended to serve as a Canada-wide assemblyof chiefs.8 The following year saw the creation of the Métis National Council.9 The ncc
was organized as the Congress of Aboriginal People in 1993.10
The nib’s first political challenge was the federal government’s 1969 White Paper,with its call for the termination of the Treaties, the repeal of the Indian Act, and an
accelerated program of integration. The nib, working with various provincial organizations, forced the federal government to abandon this policy. In subsequent years,
the nib played an increasingly prominent role in Canadian political life. By the early
1970s, for example, the federal government had adopted—at least in principle—thenib’s policy of “Indian Control of Indian Education.”11
In 1971, the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada (itc) was formed to create a united voice
on issues affecting Inuit people.12 Many of its early leaders had attended residential

Getting to the Settlement Agreement • 553

schools in the Northwest Territories and Churchill, Manitoba.13 The itc also acted as acoordinating body for Inuit regional land-claim organizations as well as for other Inuit
organizations.14 After years of negotiation, a central objective of the itc was achievedin 1993 with the signing of the Nunavut Lands Claims Agreement by the federal government, the government of the Northwest Territories, and the Tunngavik Federationof Nunavut (the regional association representing Inuit in what is now Nunavut).15
When implemented on April 1, 1999, this agreement served as the basis for the creation of a new northern territory, to be known as “Nunavut.”16 The itc changed its
name to the “Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami” in 2001.17
Aboriginal organizations had also begun achieving success in asserting their rights
in the courts. In ruling on the Nisga’a claim in the 1973 Calder case, the Supreme
Court of Canada recognized the validity of Aboriginal title but split on whether itstill existed in British Columbia. This decision was followed by the James Bay andNorthern Québec Agreement, among the Cree and Inuit of northern Québec and thefederal government, the Québec government, and the Québec hydroelectric utility.
This agreement, often referred to as a “modern Treaty,” included protection for hunting and trapping rights, royalty guarantees on the sale of electricity, and upfront cash
payments. The Nisga’a ruling also led the federal government to establish an Office of
Native Claims.18
When the initial draft for a repatriated Canadian constitution did not include recognition of Aboriginal rights, Canada’s Aboriginal organizations mounted an intensive
lobbying campaign, which succeeded in having Aboriginal and Treaty rights included
in Section 35 of the Constitution.19 The fact that the Special Committee of the Houseof Commons on Indian Self-Government concluded in 1983 that First Nations formed“a distinct order of government in Canada” is another sign of the impact of national
political Aboriginal organizations during this period.20
These developments were part of a global movement asserting the rights ofIndigenous peoples. Canada’s leaders played a key role in this movement. For example, they were central to the creation of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples
in 1975.21
These national and international organizations would, in coming years, play a central role in placing the issue of residential schools on the national agenda and negotiating the Settlement Agreement. An example of this work occurred in 1990, when the
afn adopted a resolution calling for an apology and compensation from the federal
government for damage done to Aboriginal languages and culture by the residential
school policy, compensation for abuse, and funding for healing initiatives.22

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Changes in church attitudes on Aboriginal rights
Starting in the 1960s, many people within the churches operating residential
schools began to re-examine their relationship with Aboriginal people. Pressure forchange came from a number of directions. One of the most significant was the global
movement for national liberation in lands that had been colonized by European
nations. Another was the American civil rights movement of the 1960s. A third factor
was the development of a Catholic social justice movement that came to be known as“liberation theology.” All these pressures led to the churches’ re-examining their attitudes towards those who had been the target of missionary activity, whether at homeor abroad.23
In 1967, the Anglican Church published a report on Aboriginal social conditions
that concluded that the church had to bear a portion of responsibility for what weretermed “injustices” experienced by Aboriginal people.24 That same year, the churchcommissioned University of Toronto sociologist Charles E. Hendry to undertakea comprehensive study of the issues surrounding the church’s relationship with
Aboriginal people. The 1969 result, Beyond Traplines: Does the Church Really Care?,pointed to what Hendry described as the “Jekyll-and-Hyde role” that missionaries
played with regard to Aboriginal people. “On the one hand they have smashed native
culture and social organization. On the other hand they have picked up the pieces
of an indigenous way of life which had been smashed by other Europeans.”25 In preparing the report, he spoke with former students. “They spoke of boys and girls being
whipped or slapped when they spoke their native language. The aim was to make thechildren speak English. They spoke of being taught to despise the way of life of theirparents as pagan and disagreeable; and they spoke of being absent from home for ten
months of the year for several years.”26
Hendry recommended that the church develop not only new approaches to its
dealings with Aboriginal people when it came to spiritual matters, but also “the acceptance of new, more active forms of social and political cooperation and intervention.”27
The move toward inter-church cooperation and a greater involvement in social
issues affecting Aboriginal people was given concrete expression in 1975 when representatives from the Anglican, Lutheran, Mennonite, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic,and United churches came together to create the “Inter-church Project on Northern
Development,” later known as “Project North.”28 The immediate issue around which
Project North supporters coalesced was Aboriginal opposition to the proposed construction of a natural-gas pipeline in the Mackenzie Valley in the Northwest Territories
prior to the settlement of outstanding Aboriginal land claims. Project North members
carried out public education campaigns in support of Aboriginal calls for a moratorium on pipeline construction and also appeared before the federally appointed commission of inquiry into the pipeline to call for such a moratorium.29 Project North wasGetting to the Settlement Agreement • 555

renamed the “Aboriginal Rights Coalition” in 1988 and merged with other ecumenicalorganizations, taking on the name kairos: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives in2001. Issues such as Aboriginal land rights and self-government remain prominent
components of its work.30
Project North also attempted to persuade the federal government to take increased
action regarding the impact of residential schools. In 1992, members of Project Northwrote to Tom Siddon, the minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, calling for a federal government apology, increased funding for community initiatives
to recover cultural and spiritual traditions, and, generally, a more vigorous governmental response to the legacy of residential schools.31 In his reply, Siddon stated that
although he was disturbed by the recent disclosure of physical and sexual abuse, he
did not believe “a public inquiry is the best approach at this time,” and declined tomake firm commitments about the federal government’s response to the legacy of theresidential schools.32
Individually, a number of churches and church organizations spoke out on
Aboriginal issues during this period. For example, the title of the Canadian Catholic
Bishops 1976 Labour Day Message was “Northern Development: At What Cost?”33
In 1979, the Saskatchewan Conference of the United Church initiated a “Year of
Repentance” for injustices done to Aboriginal people in Canada.34
These measures were followed by a series of apologies that churches issued regarding the impact of their missionary work among Aboriginal people. In August 1986,
Robert Smith, the moderator of the United Church of Canada, asked forgiveness fromFirst Nations members of the United Church, and acknowledged that “we tried tomake you be like us and in so doing we helped to destroy the vision that made youwhat you were. As a result you, and we, are poorer and the image of the Creator in
us is twisted, blurred, and we are not what we are meant by God to be.”35 In 1991, theRoman Catholic Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate offered an apology for theirrole “in the setting up and the maintaining of those schools” and “the existence ofthe schools themselves.”36 Archbishop Michael Peers, Primate of the Anglican Churchof Canada, apologized in August 1993 for the fact that in many of the residential
schools operated by the church, “so many were abused physically, sexually, culturally and emotionally.”37 In its General Assembly, the Presbyterian Church in Canada
adopted a confession in June 1994 that asked to be forgiven for the fact that the lives ofmany Survivors were “deeply scarred by the effects of the mission and ministry of the
Presbyterian Church in Canada.”38 In October 1998, Reverend Bill Phipps, the moderator of the United Church of Canada, offered an apology for the “pain and suffering”
caused by its involvement in the “cruel and ill-conceived” residential school system.39
The churches’ evolving approaches to Aboriginal people would soon be tested.
In the 1990s, Aboriginal people, both individually and organizationally, began to
speak out about their experience at residential schools. Belatedly, law-enforcement

556 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

agencies began prosecuting former church staff. Former students also launched civil
lawsuits against the government and the churches, while political pressure mounted
for a national investigation into the operation of the schools.

The Survivors organize
At the same time as the last of the residential schools closed, Aboriginal people
and their organizations began to take steps to ensure that the legacy of the residential
school system was placed on the national agenda. In the 1970s, a growing numberof Aboriginal people began publishing memoirs that shared their experiences at residential schools. Early examples of such memoirs include Jane Willis’s Geniesh: An
Indian Girlhood, published in 1973; Anthony Apakark Thrasher’s Thrasher: Skid Row
Eskimo, published in 1976; and Alice French’s My Name Is Masak, also published in
1976, Basil Johnston’s Indian School Days, published in 1988, was another important contribution to this literature. In the 1990s, more memoirs and accounts were
published, along with histories of the residential school system, such as Celia HaigBrown’s Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School, publishedin 1988; J. R. Miller’s Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of the Native Residential Schools,
published in 1996; and John Milloy’s A National Crime: The Canadian Government
and the Residential School System 1879 to 1986, published in 1999. These books, which
represent a sample of the numerous works published, highlighted the harsh disciplineand cultural alienation that characterized life at residential schools, while celebrating
individual triumphs of healing.
Aboriginal political organizations expanded on these Survivor initiatives and continued the task of documenting the oral histories of the residential school system. As
noted in an earlier chapter, national attention was drawn to the issue when, in October
1990, Grand Chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Phil Fontaine appeared on the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s The Journal to speak of the abuse that he andfellow students experienced at the Fort Alexander, Manitoba, school.40 The following
year, Fontaine was elected National Chief of the afn.
In 1994, the afn published Breaking the Silence: An Interpretive Study of Residential
School Impact and Healing as Illustrated by the Stories of First Nations Individuals.
Based on interviews with thirteen former students, the study illustrated how Survivors
described the trauma of the residential school experience, and discussed that trauma
within an Aboriginal framework of healing.41 It concluded that “the traumatic effects
of residential school life, the regimentation, separation and violence … have had
far-reaching impacts resulting in scores of individuals being lost, isolated and turning
to alcohol abuse … to cope and/or forget.”42 In order to address these impacts, theGetting to the Settlement Agreement • 557

report emphasized that “the healing must begin … the atrocities suffered by many inthe residential school system must be addressed.”43
In 1992, the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council (ntc), a body that coordinated political action among the fourteen Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations on the west coast of
Vancouver Island, undertook a major study of the impact of the residential schools on
its members. In 1996, the ntc published Indian Residential Schools: The Nuu-chahnulth Experience, a report that contained excerpts from 110 interviews with former
students, as well as with several former teachers. The anthology focused on themesof the residential school experience, such as the impact of separation from family andhome, the loss of native language and culture, and the abuse that was suffered. The
anthology also shared Survivors’ healing experiences as well as their attitudes towards
litigation, financial compensation, and personal and institutional apologies.
During this period, groups of Survivors were coming together to support each otherand create associations to provide spiritual healing, raise awareness of the abuse suffered by former students, and advocate for a just resolution to the legacy of the residential schools. In 1981, former students of the Shingwauk school in Sault Ste. Marie,
Ontario, organized a reunion, which was held at the former school site. By then, thesite was part of Algoma University.44 The reunion inspired Michael Cachagee andother Survivors to found the Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association. The association’s mission was to provide for the well-being of alumni, their families, and theircommunities through mutual encouragement and support.45 In 1987, Nora Bernard,
a former student of the Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, school, began interviewing fellow Survivors in the kitchen of her home in Truro, Nova Scotia. Her work led to thecreation of the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School Survivors Association.46 The
Manitoba Indian Residential School Survivors Society (later known as “Spirit Wind”)
was founded in 1988 by Ray Mason from Peguis First Nation.47 The Cariboo Tribal
Council, led by Bev Sellers, organized the First National Conference on Residential
Schools in Vancouver, British Columbia, in June 1991.48 In 1992, former students of
the Fort Albany, Ontario, school organized the Keykaywin Conference.49 At the conference, participants shared stories of the sexual and physical abuse they had suffered.
The conference resulted in the publication of written testimonies.50 This event led to
the formation of the St. Anne’s Residential School Survivors Association (Peetabeck
Keway Keykaywin).51 The British Columbia–based Indian Residential School Survivor
Society (irsss) was formed in 1994. It focused on helping Survivors who had started
claims through the steps of the litigation process.52 The Indian Residential School
Survivor Society was formally established in 2002.53 The Survivor associations campaigned tirelessly for public recognition of the history and impacts of the residential
school system. Many of these associations and their leaders played crucial roles in thevarious court cases that led to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.

558 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples
In the summer of 1990, in an effort to persuade Elijah Harper (an Aboriginal member of the Manitoba legislature) to drop his opposition to the Meech Lake Accord,a proposed package of constitutional amendments, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney
offered to establish a royal commission on Aboriginal issues. Like many Aboriginal
leaders, Harper was frustrated by the fact that the accord, which recognized Québec
as a “distinct society” within Canada, had been reached after a brief negotiation, while
the federal–provincial conferences on Aboriginal rights held after the patriation of theConstitution had failed to reach any agreement. As Harper noted, Aboriginal people
also constituted a distinct society. Harper’s political leverage came from the fact that
the Manitoba government was seeking to dispense with a requirement to hold public hearings on the bill in order to approve the accord before the three-year period
in which parliament and the ten provincial legislatures were required to approve theaccord, elapsed. A motion doing away with the hearings required unanimous consent.
Since Harper refused to give his consent, the deadline passed and the accord died.
In July of 1990, a request by the mayor of Oka, Québec, that Québec Provincial
Police remove Mohawk protestors from a local cemetery precipitated a national crisis.
The protestors, most of whom were from the Kanesatake First Nation, were protesting a decision to turn the cemetery and a pine wood claimed by the Mohawk intoa golf course. One police officer was killed by gunfire when the police attempted toremove the protestors. The federal government dispatched 2,500 military personnel
to the scene. Other First Nations staged protests in Québec and across the country toshow their support for the Kanesatake Mohawk. The standoff lasted for eleven weeks
without further loss of life. The golf course project did not proceed.
These two events contributed to the establishment of the Royal Commission on
Aboriginal Peoples (rcap) in August 1991.54 The comprehensive mandate of the Royal
Commission was to study the evolution of the relationship among Aboriginal peoples,the government of Canada, and Canadian society as a whole.55
Over four years of community meetings, the rcap heard from many Survivors of residential schools, who shared their experiences of suppression of culture and language,
physical violence, sexual abuse, and substandard living conditions.56 The rcap’s 1996
final report devoted a chapter to the residential school system.57 The report concluded
that “a full investigation into Canada’s residential school system, in the form of a public inquiry established under Part I of the Public Inquiries Act, is necessary to bring tolight and begin to heal the grievous harms suffered by countless Aboriginal children,
families and communities as a result of the residential school system.”58 The rcap recommended that the inquiry both conduct research and create a national repository ofrecords on the residential school system.59 In addition, the inquiry would be empowered to recommend remedial action, including “apologies from those responsible,Getting to the Settlement Agreement • 559

compensation on a collective basis to enable Aboriginal communities to design andadminister programs that assist the healing process and rebuild community life, andfunding for the treatment of affected people and their families.”60
In response to the rcap report, the federal government issued Gathering Strength:
Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan.61 In relation to residential schools, Gathering
Strength contained two significant components: the “Statement of Reconciliation” andthe setting aside of $350 million in funding for a community-based residential school
healing strategy.62 Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development Jane Stewart
delivered the “Statement of Reconciliation” on January 7, 1998. Stewart said that,particularly to those individuals who experienced the tragedy of sexual andphysical abuse at residential schools, and who have carried this burden believingthat in some way they must be responsible, we wish to emphasize that what you
experienced was not your fault and should never have happened. To those of you
who suffered this tragedy at residential schools, we are deeply sorry.63

This marked the first time that a government minister formally expressed regret for
the negative impacts caused by the residential school system.
The Aboriginal Healing Foundation (ahf) was established with a mandate toencourage and support community-based, Aboriginal-directed healing initiatives
that addressed the legacy of physical and sexual abuse suffered as a result of the residential school system, including intergenerational impacts.64 It was given a commitment of $350 million in funding. The ahf funded numerous educational, spiritual,and healing projects all over Canada.
Although Gathering Strength set up the first formal acknowledgement of responsibility by the federal government for its role in the residential school system andresulted in the creation of the ahf, the federal government largely ignored the rcap’s
other recommendations, such as its call for the launch of a public inquiry, compensation, and a national repository of records.

Survivors turn to the civil courts
An earlier chapter in this report recounted the prosecution of residential schoolstaff for physically and sexually abusing students. It described how officials were skeptical of student and parental reports of abuse. When complaints were taken seriously,
school officials preferred to dismiss abusers rather than report them to the police. It
often took concerted community action to prod the police into investigating complaints of abuse. As a result of these factors, prosecutions were limited in number, particularly during the years the schools were in operation. From the late 1980s onwards,
prosecutions and convictions became more frequent. These convictions were often

560 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

the basis upon which former students launched civil cases seeking compensation forabuse that they experienced at the schools.
By the late 1980s, Survivors were seeking compensation in civil courts for the damages done to them in residential schools.65 By October 2001, more than 8,500 residential school Survivors had filed lawsuits against the federal government, the churches,
related organizations, and, where possible, the individual who committed the abuse.66
By 2005, it was estimated that the volume surpassed 18,000 suits.67
The civil cases demonstrated that the government and churches could be held
financially liable for the abuse that occurred in the residential schools. They also
provided an opportunity for the courts to rule on who was ultimately responsible
for the harm caused by the residential school system. But, most Survivors were notable to successfully pursue damage claims in the civil courts. Statutes of limitations,which limited the time within which a claim must be filed, posed a significant barrier.
Because civil claims related to sexual assault were typically exempt from provincial
limitation legislation, successful claims were generally limited to those involving sexual abuse.68 The courts also refused to hear claims regarding loss of culture, family, or
language. In one case, the judge highlighted this fact.
I am not here assessing damages for the cultural destruction suffered by native
peoples as a result of the residential school system, as just or deserving as suchcompensation might be. I am limited, as a court must be, to assessing damages
for the wrongdoings which the Limitation Act recognizes as permitted causes ofaction at this time.69

The adversarial nature of the civil litigation process led to aggressive cross-examination of Survivors during examinations for discovery and at trial. Survivors wereforced to relive and recount minute details of deeply traumatic events that occurred
decades earlier when they were children. Their credibility was also attacked on thebasis of alleged inconsistencies in their recollection of the events.70 Such a process
discouraged claims and led to victimization of Survivors for a second time.
Successful civil claims were generally those in which the perpetrator had alreadybeen convicted criminally. Bruce Feldthusen, of the University of Ottawa Law School,
noted that “there does not appear to be a single reported decision where the court was
to believe the residential school plaintiff in preference to the testimony of the alleged
perpetrator where the latter was not a known sexual predator.”71 The civil court system
also proved to be an extremely slow forum for redress for Survivors. The Blackwatercase (discussed below), arising out of the Alberni, British Columbia, school, took nine
years from the filing of the statement of claim to the Supreme Court’s final decisionon liability.72
Despite such limitations, the number of civil cases kept mounting.73 The sheer
number of them was a challenge in itself. According to a 2004 afn estimate, the 18,000

Getting to the Settlement Agreement • 561

civil lawsuits outstanding would take fifty-three years to conclude at a cost of $2.3 billion, not including the value of any compensation awarded to Survivors.74
The cases were lengthened by ongoing legal disputes over who was legally—and
therefore financially—responsible for the abuse committed. In cases where Survivors
sued the federal government but not the church associated with the school, the federal government sought to have the church added to the case as a defendant.75 This
led to complex legal arguments about which church institutions (such as the missionary orders, the individual dioceses, or the administrative bodies) were responsible
for administering the residential schools, and whether the federal government or the
churches were legally responsible for operating the schools. These disputes added
greater complexity, legal costs, and delay to the civil proceedings.
The limitations of the civil courts in providing redress to Survivors became apparent from a review of a number of cases. After the 1988 conviction of Derek Clarke
for abuses committed when he was a dormitory supervisor at the Lytton, British
Columbia, school from 1964 to 1975, former student Floyd Mowatt filed a civil caseseeking damages.76 In 1999, Justice Janice Dillon of the British Columbia Supreme
Court found that the government and the Anglican Church were both vicariously liable for Clarke’s acts.77 (“Vicarious liability” is a legal doctrine that holds that a person
or persons can be held legally responsible for the actions of another person under
their direction or control.) Church officials had become aware of the abuse while
Clarke was working at the school. Instead of reporting him to the police and IndianAffairs, they had simply dismissed him. For this reason, Justice Dillon ruled that the
Anglican Church had breached its fiduciary duty (a legal duty to act in another party’s best interest) to Mowatt.78 She assigned 60% of the responsibility for the damages
to the Anglican Church and 40% to the federal government.79 In a separate case (T.
W. N. A. v. Clarke), several plaintiffs claimed damages for abuse. Canada and theAnglican Church admitted that the abuse occurred and that they were liable for it,
but argued that the plaintiff’s award should be reduced because their early lives werecharacterized by “dysfunctional families, ill health, alcoholism, violence, poverty andabandonment.” Because of this, Canada argued, in Justice Paul Williamson’s opinion, that the students “would have grown up with significant difficulties regardless ofwhat happened” at the school.80 In his decision, Justice Williamson rejected this argument. However, the British Columbia Court of Appeal accepted the argument that thedamages should be lowered in consideration of the “pre-existing susceptibilities anddisabilities” and the traumatic events that occurred in the plaintiffs’ lives prior to theabuse in residential school.81
The 1993 conviction of William Starr for assaults he committed when he was theadministrator of the Gordon’s, Saskatchewan, residence from 1968 to 1984 gave rise
to a number of civil cases. In 1998, Justice Ronald Barclay noted that more than 400
lawsuits were filed related to abuse at Gordon’s, many of which involved Starr.82 In

562 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

V. P. v. Canada, the federal government attacked the credibility of the plaintiff’s testimony. Justice Darla Hunter of the Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench found thatthe sexual assaults had been committed and that the federal government was vicariously liable for those assaults, and awarded $80,000 in damages.83 In D. B. v. Canada,
the federal government questioned the plaintiff’s credibility by focusing on the differences between the evidence given at trial and in out-of-court examinations conducted
two years earlier.84 Justice Ellen Gunn found that the plaintiff had not established that
it was more likely than not that the assaults had occurred and dismissed the action.85
In H. L. v. Canada, the federal government argued that if any sexual assaults had
occurred, they were outside the scope of Starr’s employment at Gordon’s.86 JusticeJohn Klebuc of the Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench concluded, however, thatsince the government had provided Starr with access to, and power over, the student,
and had set up a substandard management and supervisory structure over the school,
it was vicariously liable for the abuse.87 The court awarded the victim $495,000.88 On
appeal, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal overruled Klebuc’s decision to award thevictim financial compensation for loss of past and future income.89 Although theSupreme Court of Canada restored the award for loss of past income (but not of future
income), it reduced the amount awarded. This was done to take into consideration thetime the victim himself had spent in prison (on the principle that a person cannot suffer loss of income while incarcerated) and for the period of time that he had received
social-assistance payments.90
In 1995, Arthur Plint, a former dormitory supervisor, was sentenced to elevenyears in jail for abuses committed at the Alberni school in British Columbia between
1947 and 1968. In 1996, twenty-seven former students of the school, led by Willie
Blackwater, filed a lawsuit claiming damages for abuse they suffered at the school.
They were seeking damages from several individuals, the federal government, and theUnited Church of Canada. Although they did not deny that assaults took place, thefederal government and the church denied that they were vicariously liable for Plint’s
actions.91 In 1998, Justice Donald I. Brenner of the British Columbia Supreme Court
found that the federal government and the United Church were both vicariously liable for Plint’s actions.92 Brenner ruled in 2001 that the federal government bore 75%of the financial responsibility for the damages and the United Church bore 25%.93 A
British Columbia Court of Appeal ruling that Canada bore 100% of the responsibility
was overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2005, which restored the earlier
75%/25% finding.94
Despite the fact that many churches had apologized for their role in the residential
school system, at the same time, those same churches defended their role in the residential school system in the civil actions, and often employed aggressive legal tactics.
The structure of the churches, particularly the Roman Catholic Church, added afurther level of complication to the cases. On a worldwide basis, the Roman CatholicGetting to the Settlement Agreement • 563

Church is organized into dioceses, each of which has a bishop (or, in larger dioceses,
an archbishop) appointed by the Pope.95 The courts had ruled that there was nonational Roman Catholic entity that could be sued for damages.96 Only other Catholic
entities involved in the direct operation of the schools, such as the Oblates of Mary
Immaculate, or specific Roman Catholic dioceses could be sued. In a different Albertacase, the court dismissed claims against the General Synod of the Anglican Church on
the basis that it was merely a coordinating body and not directly involved in any of the
day-to-day operation of the schools.97
Disputes over these issues extended the court process and increased costs. They
also raised concerns as to whether the entities being sued would have the financial
resources to meet their liabilities. The legal costs, as well as money paid in out-ofcourt settlements and damages to successful litigants in the Clarke civil cases, led
the Anglican Diocese of Cariboo to declare bankruptcy.98 There were reports during
this period that four Catholic organizations involved in the operation of residential
schools might also be forced into bankruptcy.99 To address these concerns, in 2000,
representatives of the United, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Roman Catholic churches
requested a meeting with Prime Minister Jean Chrétien to discuss the “present andfuture implications for the churches of crippling lawsuits resulting in curtailment ofimportant community work.”100
In June 2000, the federal government had transferred political responsibility for thecivil residential school cases to a newly created Office of Indian Residential Schools
Resolution, under the direction of the deputy prime minister.101 In the summer of 2001,
this office commenced negotiations with representatives of the church organizations
on how to apportion costs for the payment of out-of-court settlements.102 These talks
failed to reach an agreement. As a result, in October 2001, Deputy Prime Minister
Herb Gray announced that the federal government would fund 70% of the damages
in out-of-court settlements or settlements reached through alternative dispute-resolution processes. This was limited, however, to “cases of validated physical or sexual
abuse.” The churches would be liable for the remaining 30% of the damages.103 Overthe course of the following year, the federal government negotiated individual agreements with the Anglican Church and the Presbyterian Church as to how the out-ofcourt settlements were to be funded. The Anglican agreement, which was based on
the principle that the church was liable for 30% of any award for damages, committed
the church to $25.7 million in compensation for former residential school students. In
return, the government agreed to stop naming Anglican Church institutions as third
parties in civil lawsuits.104 In a similar agreement, the Presbyterian Church agreed tocontribute $2.1 million towards out-of-court settlements.105
The United Church of Canada objected to the fact that the federal government
was limiting compensation to sexual and physical abuse cases and was not prepared
to provide funding to compensate Survivors for “the loss of language, culture and564 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

spirituality” that it felt constituted “a part of the legacy of the schools.”106 Therefore,
it did not enter into a formal bilateral agreement with the federal government overthe matter of compensation. Instead, the United Church and the federal government
worked out an informal arrangement in which the United Church contributed 25% to
30% of settlement awards, on a case-by-case basis.107
By May 2002, negotiations between the federal government and the Catholic entities (who had operated the majority of the schools) ceased without any agreement’s
being reached.108

The Alternative Dispute Resolution Process
In November 2003, the federal Office of Indian Residential Schools Resolution
launched its National Resolution Framework. A central element of this was a voluntary dispute-resolution program that came to be referred to as the “Alternative
Dispute Resolution [adr] Process.” This was a voluntary process for resolution of certain claims of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and forcible confinement, without having
to go through the civil litigation process.109
The adr process had been preceded by a number of pilot projects. These projects
involved groups of approximately forty to sixty complainants from a single community who were willing to proceed on the terms contained in a framework agreement
designed by the federal government and Survivors.110 These framework agreements
created a process to “validate the claims” of Survivors, where the validation was doneby “fact finders” (lawyers chosen by the Survivors and the government), who would
ask Survivors and other witnesses a series of questions and make factual determinations.111 The pilot projects included monetary compensation as well as other remedies, such as therapy and education.112
The adr process established two compensation categories. Category A applied topersons who claimed physical abuse with injuries lasting more than six weeks andwho required medical treatment or hospitalization, or were victims of sexual abuse,or both. Up to sixty points were awarded for sexual abuse, based on the severity of
injuries and severity of consequences, or up to twenty-five points for physical abuse.
If the abuse took place in British Columbia, Ontario, or the Yukon, compensation was
capped at $245,000. If the abuse took place anywhere else, it was capped at $195,000.
Category B applied to claims of physical abuse that did not result in injury lasting six
weeks or more or require hospitalization or serious medical treatment, and to claimsof wrongful confinement. Compensation was capped at $1,500, except where aggravating factors were present, in which case, it was extended to $3,500.113 Ted Hughes,
a former judge of the Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench and the former deputy
attorney general of British Columbia, was appointed as the chief adjudicator of theGetting to the Settlement Agreement • 565

adr program.114 In early 2004, the federal government began receiving applications
for participation in the adr process. By July 2006, approximately 4,900 adr applications had been filed.115

The AFN report
In November 2004, the Assembly of First Nations published a highly critical assessment of the adr process. One of the most significant criticisms was that applicants
did not always automatically receive the full amount of compensation to which they
were entitled. On the basis of the federal government’s interpretation of its bilateral agreements, adr claimants from Anglican- and Presbyterian-run schools werecompensated up to 100% of their settlements.116 (Survivors from United Church-run
schools were provided 100% compensation as a result of the informal arrangementwith the federal government discussed previously.)117 Canada paid 70% of the award
to Survivors from Catholic-run schools.118 To recover the other 30%, Survivors would
have to initiate separate court action against the appropriate Roman Catholic entities.
The adr compensation model was also criticized for its failure to provide compensation for the consequences of abuse experienced at the schools and the impacts
it could have on the Survivor’s life. The compensation model failed to address emotional abuse, loss of family life, or loss of language and culture. The afn report also
expressed concern about the fact that compensation was limited by the applicationof the principle that abuse be measured against the “standards of the day.”119 In addition, the process was criticized as being slow and ineffectual. In the first year since thelaunch of the program, only nineteen claims were settled, with 700 other applications
filed and awaiting hearing.120
In place of the model, the afn recommended the adoption of an approach that
addressed both compensation and the need for healing and public education on thehistory and legacy of the residential schools.121 The afn proposed a two-part approachto compensation. The first part was a lump sum to be awarded to anyone who attended
residential school (with additional amounts for every year that a student attended).
This would provide general compensation to those matters not covered by the adr,such as emotional abuse, loss of family life, or loss of language and culture. A second, individual compensation program was recommended for those who had been
physically or sexually abused. Other recommendations focused on reconciliation andpublic education, and included the creation of an opportunity for Survivors to tell andrecord their experiences.122 Many elements of this proposal were eventually incorporated in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.
The findings of the afn report were supported by a February 2005 report from the
Canadian Bar Association (cba). This report also identified the need to make legal

566 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

aid available to applicants and to ensure that compensation paid reflected awards incomparable cases.123 The cba pointed to the apparent bias in a system in which thegovernment acted as both the defendant and the administrator.124
The House of Commons Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern
Development undertook its own study of the effectiveness of the adr program.
Representatives of many Survivor associations appeared before the committee,
including Spirit Wind, the National Residential School Survivor Society, Childrenof the Shingwauk Alumni Association, the Indian Residential School Survivor
Society, and the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School Survivors Association.125
Representations were also made by the afn and the cba.
Ruth Roulette, a Survivor who attended the Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, school,
spoke of the harsh and frightening levels of discipline that she experienced at theschool. One of the transgressions for which she was punished was speaking Ojibway.
She said that the experiences left her emotionally scarred for life. Under the adr system, she qualified only for Category B level compensation. “I was offered only $3,000,
which I turned down as a slap in the face.” Because she had not suffered sexual abuse,her appeal was denied. She told the committee, “I feel that I was re-victimized by an
uncaring and an unsympathetic government process that was only interested in denying justice at whatever cost.”126
The committee’s April 2005 report concluded that “the adr process is an excessively costly and inappropriately applied failure, for which the Minister and her
officials are unable to raise a convincing defence.”127 The process was criticized forhaving been developed without the consultation or input of Survivors, for failing to
be impartial and even-handed, for limiting compensation to an excessively narrowclass of Survivors, and for the slow pace at which it provided compensation. It wasalso noted that the adr was “strikingly disconnected from the so-called pilot projects
that preceded it.”128
The following month, the Supreme Court of Canada issued a decision that allowed
Survivors to pursue class-action lawsuits for residential school damages. The repudiation of the adr program, coupled with the prospect of large-scale class-action suits,
forced the government and the churches back to the negotiating table.

Class-action lawsuits
Changes in Canadian law in the 1990s created the opportunity for Survivors to makeuse of class-action lawsuits to pursue their claims for compensation. In a class-action
lawsuit, one party sues as a representative of a larger “class” of people. Such suits areseen to serve a public benefit because they reduce overall costs by eliminating theGetting to the Settlement Agreement • 567

need for repetitive hearings, allow for greater access to the courts, and can modify the
behaviour of actual and potential wrongdoers.129
In order to proceed, a class-action claim must be certified by a judge in a preliminary proceeding. This requires the claim to demonstrate that:• it has a “cause of action” or actionable claim• it represents an “identifiable class” of two or more persons• it has common issues among the class• it is the preferable procedure for the claim• it has a representative plaintiff who will fairly represent the class
As late as 1991, such suits were permitted only in Québec.130 Ontario adopted legislation allowing for class-action lawsuits in 1992.131 British Columbia’s class-action
legislation came into force in 1995.132 Alberta adopted its legislation in 2003. In thesubsequent years, most other provinces adopted similar legislation.133 The Federal
Court Rules were amended to provide for an expanded class procedure in the Federal
Court in 2002.134 The Nunavut, Northwest Territories, and Yukon courts have come torely on the 2001 Supreme Court of Canada decision that requires courts to fashionclass-action rules out of the applicable civil rules of practice in the absence of specific legislation.135
In 1995, Nora Bernard, on behalf of the Shubenacadie Indian Residential
School Survivors Association, retained John McKiggan of the law firm Arnold Pizzo
McKiggan.136 Since Nova Scotia did not have class-action legislation at that time, theassociation filed a representative action that sought compensation for all Survivors of
the Shubenacadie school on a variety of grounds, including loss of culture and language.137 (A “representative action” was a civil procedure in which authorized individuals, with a common interest, could sue on behalf, or for the benefit, of all similar
individuals. Any decision would be persuasive but not binding for the claims of otherindividuals.) The Shubenacadie Indian Residential School Survivors Association
dropped its action in Nova Scotia and joined a national class-action case (described
below) in 2002.138
In Alberta in 1999, the volume of civil cases was so large that the Court of Queen’s
Bench established a special protocol for dealing with residential school cases.139 The
parties were directed to select fifty sample cases that would be expedited and serveas test cases. Rulings made in these cases would act as a guide to the other residential
school actions.140 After five years spent on addressing pretrial matters, the first test
case was scheduled to begin trial in January 2006. The case was adjourned to allow theparties to focus on the negotiation of what became the irssa.141
In October 1998, a group of Survivors of the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario,
filed a statement of claim in the Ontario Superior Court on behalf of all students who
attended the school between the years 1922 to 1969, as well as their families.142 The

568 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

plaintiffs, who were led by Marlene Cloud, claimed $2.3 billion in damages from thefederal government, the General Synod of the Anglican Church, the New England
Company (the missionary society that operated the school), and the local Anglican
diocese for the sustained, systematic program of physical, emotional, spiritual, andcultural abuse they suffered.143 Cloud and the other Survivors claimed damages fora breach of fiduciary duties, breaches of the Family Law Act, loss of culture and language, and breach of Treaty and Aboriginal rights.144
In 1998, a group of lawyers formed an association to coordinate their work onbehalf of residential school Survivors. In May 2002, this association formalized theirrelationship, creating what came to be referred to as the “National Consortium.” The
National Consortium brought together lawyers from nineteen law firms in eight provinces and two territories, allowing them to jointly pursue a national class-action suitand support each other in individual and class-action claims. Over time, it came torepresent approximately 8,000 Survivors.145 In addition to the National Consortium,
in 1997, the Merchant Law Group, a law firm with origins in western Canada, began
acting for many Survivors in civil actions related to residential schools. The Merchant
Law Group also commenced residential school class-action suits in the Federal
Court, as well as in the provinces of Québec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, andBritish Columbia.146
In June 2000, Charles Baxter Sr., Elijah Baxter, and others filed a class-action lawsuit against the federal government in the Ontario Superior Court. The statement ofclaim sought damages for negligence, breach of statutory duties under the Indian Act,and breach of Treaty obligations.147 The claim, which was amended on a number ofoccasions, included three classes: a ‘Survivor class’ (any student who attended residential school between January 1, 1920, to December 31, 1996, and was alive as of
May 30, 2005), a ‘family class’ (spouses, children, grandchildren, parents, or siblings ofSurvivors), and a ‘deceased class’ (students who attended residential school between
January 1, 1920, and 1997, and had died before May 30, 2005). Since it included claims
on behalf of students who attended residential schools throughout Canada, it wasoften referred to as the “national class action.”148
Over time, Survivor associations and litigants from around the country joined
the Baxter class-action suit. The Shubenacadie Indian Residential School Survivors
Association dropped its representative action in Nova Scotia and joined the Baxter
class-action suit in 2002.149 Spirit Wind, the largest Manitoba Survivor association,entered into a memorandum of understanding with the National Consortium to support the Baxter national class action in 2005.150
By 2003, the plaintiffs in the Baxter class action dropped their claims against the
churches and sought compensation solely from the federal government. In response,
on April 24, 2003, Canada brought a claim against the churches, arguing that they

Getting to the Settlement Agreement • 569

were responsible for the day-to-day operation of the schools, and named eighty-five
separate church institutions.151
In addition to the Cloud and Baxter class-action suits, seventeen other class actions
were filed in nine provinces and territories during this time.
For example, in the Dieter case, the plaintiffs, led by Keith Dieter, sought to certify
a class of all Aboriginal persons resident in Canada who were transported to, and/or confined in, residential schools in one or more of the western provinces between
January 1, 1920, and December 31, 1996. The plaintiffs claimed damages for physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, and loss of language and culture, based on
negligence and breach of fiduciary, statutory, and common law duties, as well as
Treaty obligations.152
In the Pauchay case, the plaintiffs, led by Norman Pauchay, sought to certify a classof all Aboriginal persons who attended various residential schools across Canada from1940 to 1989. The plaintiffs asserted claims for damages for physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, and loss of language and culture, based on the alleged breach of aduty to provide an adequate education to the plaintiffs and to protect them from harmin relation to the establishment, operation, and maintenance of residential schools.153
In the Straightnose case, the plaintiffs, led by Alvin Straightnose, sought to certify aclass of all Saskatchewan residents who attended a residential school in Saskatchewan
between 1920 and 1996, and who suffered abuse (including emotional, cultural, andpsychological abuse) and/or who did not get a “proper education.” The plaintiffs
sought damages for “systemic child abuse, neglect and maltreatment.” The causesof action included negligence, vicarious liability, breach of non-delegable statutory
duties, fiduciary breach, and breach of duty to provide an adequate education.154

The road to certification
In October 2001, Justice Roland J. Haines of the Ontario Superior Court declined tocertify the Cloud case. He held that the experiences of the students were too diverse toconstitute a representative class, that many of the claims would be barred by statute oflimitations provisions, and that the plaintiffs failed to establish that a class-action suit
was the preferable procedure for their claims.155 In June 2003, Haines’s decision was
upheld by the Ontario Divisional Court.156
In December 2004, the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned the earlier rulings andcertified the Cloud case.157 The Court of Appeal ruled that the classes were clearly
defined, that all class members suffered at least some of the harm identified as a resultof residential schools, and the claim was not too general.158 Its decision also emphasized that the proceeding sought to represent “many who are aging, very poor, and in570 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

some cases still very emotionally troubled by their experiences at the school.”159 The
decision was also highly critical of the adr process, categorizing it as asystem unilaterally created by one of the respondents in this action and could
be unilaterally dismantled without the consent of the appellants (i.e. the classmembers). It deals only with physical and sexual abuse. It caps the amount ofpossible recovery, and most importantly in these circumstances, compared tothe class-action it shares the access to justice deficiencies of individual actions.160

On May 12, 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear the federal government’s and churches’ appeal of the Ontario Court of Appeal decision.161
After the Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision in Cloud was released in December
2004, the parties in Baxter had a case conference with Justice Warren Winkler of theOntario Superior Court to set a timetable for the certification motion. During thecase conference, it became clear that as a result of the third-party claims against the
churches, significant evidentiary issues had emerged, which threatened to significantly delay the proceedings. On May 30, 2005, Justice Winkler refused to hear preliminary arguments about the third-party claims, and directed the certification motion
to be heard first.162 The motion was never heard, since, in the subsequent months,
Aboriginal organizations, church organizations, and the federal government enteredinto talks that would lead to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.

A political accord leads to negotiations
The repudiation of the adr process by the House of Commons Standing Committee
on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development in April 2005, followed by the certification of the Cloud class-action suit the following month, set the stage for the negotiation of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. On May 30, 2005, thefederal government and the Assembly of First Nations, led by Phil Fontaine, signed an
accord agreeing to the following provisions:
1)

Canada recognizes the need to continue to involve the Assembly of First
Nations in a key and central way for the purpose of achieving a lasting
resolution of the irs [Indian Residential Schools] legacy, and commits
to do so. The Government of Canada and the Assembly of First Nations
firmly believe that reconciliation will only be achieved if they continue towork together;2)

That they are committed to achieving a just and fair resolution of the Indian
Residential School legacy;Getting to the Settlement Agreement • 571

3)

That the main element of a broad reconciliation package will be a payment toformer students along the lines referred to in the afn Report [the afn reporton the adr process];

4)

That the proportion of any settlement allocated for legal fees will
be restricted;

5)That the Federal Representative will have the flexibility to explore
collective and programmatic elements to a broad reconciliation package asrecommended by the afn;

6)

That the Federal Representative will ensure that the sick and elderly receive
their payments as soon as possible; and7)

That the Federal Representative will work and consult with the afn to ensure
the acceptability of the comprehensive resolution, to develop truth andreconciliation processes, commemoration and healing elements and to lookat improvements to the Alternative Dispute Resolution Process.163

On May 31, 2005, one day after the accord between the afn and the federal government was reached, the federal government appointed former Supreme Court JusticeFrank Iacobucci to act as negotiator. He was mandated to reach a residential school
agreement by March 31, 2006.164
While negotiations were ongoing, the Alberta test cases and the class-action suits
were temporarily suspended to permit the parties to focus on negotiating a settlement.
Until this point in time, Inuit organizations had not been involved in the class-action process. On August 10, 2005, Nellie Cournoyea, the chair of the Inuvialuit Regional
Corporation (the organization representing the Inuvialuit, the Inuit people of thewestern Arctic), wrote to Iacobucci, expressing her concerns that Inuit and Inuvialuitorganizations had been left out of the political accord and subsequent negotiations.
She feared that an agreement could be reached that would exclude Inuit Survivors.165
To remedy this, the letter requested that Iacobucci’s mandate be broadened to include
negotiations with Inuit political organizations.166 On September 1, 2005, a teleconference took place between representatives of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the Inuvialuit
Regional Corporation, Makivik Corporation (which represents the interests of theInuit of Nunavik in northern Québec), the Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (which represents
the interests of Inuit of Nunavut), the Labrador Inuit Association, and Pauktuutit (anInuit women’s organization). During the call, Iacobucci indicated that his mandate
was limited to the lawyers representing residential school Survivors who had filed legal
actions against Canada.167 After the meeting, two additional class-action suits werefiled. In the Northwest Territories, Rosemarie Kuptana was named as the representative plaintiff in Kuptana v. Canada (Attorney General). In Nunavut, Michelline Ammaq
was named as the representative plaintiff in Ammaq v. Canada (Attorney General).168

572 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The negotiations led by Iacobucci addressed a wide range of topics, including
confidentiality of the process, eligible schools and institutions, settlement implementation procedure, counsel fees, and the goals of healing and reconciliation.169
Iacobucci also met with other stakeholders, including representatives from the British
Columbia Survivors’ Society, the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, the Native Women’s
Association of Canada, and the Grand Council of the Crees.170
In 2006, the parties agreed to merge the existing class-action suits into a single classaction in each of the nine jurisdictions in which they had been originally filed (British
Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Québec, Yukon, Nunavut, andthe Northwest Territories). This action would be referred to as “Fontaine v. Canada(Attorney General).” In this case, Phil Fontaine acted as the representative plaintiff onbehalf of all former residential school students and the afn.171

The Agreement in Principle and the Settlement Agreement
On November 20, 2005, Canada, the plaintiffs from the various class-action suits,
the afn, the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, the Makivik Corporation, the Nunavut
Tunngavik Inc., and representatives from the various church entities signed an
Agreement in Principle (aip). This agreement formed the basis of a settlement package that Iacobucci would recommend to the federal government.172 The aip incorporated many of the recommendations contained in the Assembly of First Nations andthe Canadian Bar Association reports on the adr process. After further negotiations,the parties signed the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement on May 23,
2006.173
The irssa has five substantive components: the Common Experience Payment, theIndependent Assessment Process, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, funding for commemoration projects, and support for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation.
All who resided at a residential school would be eligible for a Common Experience
Payment (cep), based on verified residence and attendance at one of the residential
schools listed in the Settlement Agreement. Claimants would receive a base paymentof $10,000 for attendance plus $3,000 for each additional year or partial year of attendance. As well, $1.9 billion was to be allocated to a trust fund under the Settlement
Agreement for the purpose of making these payments. In the event that such amount
was insufficient to pay all the verified claims of the Survivor class members, the government of Canada agreed to supplement that fund with the additional funding necessary to ensure full payment for all such claims. If $40 million of the allocated funds
remained unspent after all the claims had been paid, all recipients would be eligible
for an additional amount up to $3,000 in personal credits for educational purposesGetting to the Settlement Agreement • 573

for themselves or eligible family members. Remaining funds would go to the National
Indian Brotherhood Trust Fund and to the Inuvialuit Education Foundation.
In addition to the cep based on residence at a residential school, there was an
Independent Assessment Process (iap) available for those who were sexually assaulted
or who suffered injury from serious physical assaults or neglect at the schools. This
process included compensation for abuse by other students on the basis that theoperating church or government had a legal obligation to provide reasonable supervision. Entitlement to an iap hearing and award did not require that a student be aresident at the school. For example, students who attended a residential school as day
students, or children of school staff who lived on-site with their parents and attended
classes at the residential school, were eligible to make an iap claim.
The iap was overseen by an Oversight Committee consisting of representativesof the parties to the Settlement Agreement. Adjudicators approved by the OversightCommittee heard the claims and were supervised by a chief adjudicator also
appointed by the Oversight Committee. The iap was to have independence from theparties in the adjudicative work.
The irssa required that the iap adjudicators use a points system, under which
points were assigned to each claim, based on the type and frequency of assaults. In
addition and in response to the recommendations of the afn report, points would
be assigned according to the consequences of the abuse for each Survivor. The categories used were “serious dysfunction,” “some dysfunction,” “continued detrimental
impact,” “some detrimental impact,” and “modest detrimental impact.” Additional
points could be awarded for difficulties in obtaining and retaining employment,
and inability to undertake or complete education, resulting in underemployment or
unemployment. Verbal abuse, racist acts, humiliation, and the witnessing of violence
to others were also recognized as aggravating factors deserving of additional compensation points. The total number of points awarded to a claimant determined theamount of the claimant’s award.
The maximum iap payment under the points system was $275,000, but up to an
additional $250,000 could be awarded in complex cases, based on actual income loss
“determined using the legal analyses and amounts awarded in court decisions forlike matters.”174
The iap was to have authority to set the legal fees to be paid to the claimant’s counsel. The Settlement Agreement provided that 15% of each award would be paid by thegovernment of Canada directly to a claimant’s lawyer for legal fees, with legal counsel
entitled to receive an additional amount in fees up to another 15% if approved by the
adjudicator. The government of Canada would provide funds for legal fees up to theoriginal 15%, but any additional legal fees would have to be paid by Survivors fromtheir damage awards.175

574 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The irssa committed $60 million in funding to establish the Truth andReconciliation Commission of Canada.176
The irssa committed $125 million in funding to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation
to “support the objective of addressing the healing needs of Aboriginal People affectedby the legacy of Indian Residential Schools, including the intergenerational impacts,
by supporting holistic and community-based healing to address the needs of individuals, families and communities.”177
The IRSSA also set aside $20 million for commemoration initiatives. The goals of thecommemoration initiatives were broad and included the promotion of healing andreconciliation for Survivors; the contribution to a sense of identity, unity, and belonging; the promotion of Aboriginal languages, cultures, and values; and the memorialization of the residential school experience in a tangible and permanent way.178
With respect to the churches’ financial contribution, the irssa confirmed that thebilateral agreements that the Anglican and Presbyterian churches entered into withthe federal government would be incorporated into the Settlement Agreement, withthe total contribution amount reduced. The United Church agreed to contribute
between $6.4 and $6.9 million, and the Catholic Church entities agreed to contribute
between $54 and $79 million.179

The approval orders
Before it could come into effect, the irssa had to be approved by Superior Court
judges of the nine jurisdictions in which the class-action suits had been filed. In his
decision, Justice Winkler reviewed the history of the residential school system.
The flaws and failures of the policy and its implementation are at the root of
the allegations of harm suffered by the class members. Upon review by theRoyal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, it was found that the children were
removed from their families and communities to serve the purpose of carryingout a “concerted campaign to obliterate” the “habits and associations” of“Aboriginal languages, traditions and beliefs,” in order to accomplish “a radical
re-socialization” aimed at instilling the children instead with the values of Eurocentric civilization. The proposed settlement represents an effort to provide ameasure of closure and, accordingly, has incorporated elements which provide
both compensation to individuals and broader relief intended to address theharm suffered by the Aboriginal community at large.180

Justice Brenner of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, having heard testimony
from over eighty objectors over five days of hearings, discussed the difficult decision
Survivors were being asked to make.

Getting to the Settlement Agreement • 575

This settlement represents a compromise of disputed claims. For that reason it
is undoubtedly the case that claimants will not be happy with every provisionof the settlement. Some might well choose to reject it. However, those membersof the class who decide that the disadvantages of the Settlement Agreement
outweigh its advantages are free to opt out of the provisions … and pursue theirindividual claims.181

Justice Brenner noted that, in at least one respect, the cep, by compensating all
former residential school students, represented an improvement over what might be
granted by the courts.
A repeated theme in these cases is the effect that attendance at Indian
Residential Schools had on the language and culture of Indian children.
These were largely destroyed. However, no court has yet recognized the loss oflanguage and culture as a recoverable tort. Even if such a loss was actionable,most claims would now be statute barred.182

On the condition that the parties address a number of issues, seven courts
approved the Settlement Agreement on December 15, 2006.183 Courts in Nunavut andthe Northwest Territories approved it on December 19, 2006, and January 15, 2007,
respectively.184 On March 22, 2007, the courts in the nine jurisdictions signed identical orders that incorporated the concerns identified in the approval decisions andmerged each of the proceedings into a single class-action suit, certified the action,and gave final approval for the Settlement Agreement. After the courts approved theSettlement Agreement, a five-month opt-out period commenced on March 22, 2007.
Survivors could opt out of the Settlement Agreement, thereby retaining their rights
to pursue remedies in the civil courts. If more than 5,000 individuals opted out, theAgreement would not be implemented.185 By the time the five-month period ended on
August 20, 2007, a total of 1,074 individuals had opted out. The Settlement Agreement
came into effect on September 19, 2007.
The Agreement was a negotiated settlement between specific parties to a series oflawsuits. As a result, it did not cover all Aboriginal people who underwent residential
schooling in Canada. The list of schools in the irssa was limited to schools with aresidential component (including, in some cases, hostels) for which the federal government was prepared to agree it had responsibility for management and operation.
The Agreement also did not address the claims of Métis students who attended provincially operated or mandated residential schools. Aboriginal students who attended
church-run residential schools that were not primarily intended for Aboriginal children were not included, and neither were Aboriginal children who attended mission-run schools in Newfoundland and Labrador. Also not included were Aboriginal
students who may have attended day schools or convent schools while living in private boarding homes, or who spent much of their childhoods in sanatoria.

576 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, with all its limitations,
was a monumental achievement. It was the product of decades of work by Survivors,
their families, and supporters, and represents an historic moment in colonized andexploited peoples’ struggle for justice and recognition.
It proved to be the catalyst for one more remarkable event.

Canada apologizes
In May 1883, when justifying the Canadian government’s decision to build its first
three industrial schools on the Prairies, Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald told
Parliament that residential schools were needed if Aboriginal children were to be successfully assimilated. Day schools, he said, had proved to be a failure.
When the school is on the reserve the child lives with its parents, who aresavages; he is surrounded by savages, and though he may learn to read and write
his habits, and training and mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage
who can read and write. It has been strongly pressed on myself, as the head of
the Department, that Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible
from the parental influence, and the only way to do that would be to put them incentral training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modesof thought of white men.186

Just over 123 years later, on June 11, 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper stood in
Parliament before invited Survivors, Elders, leaders of Aboriginal political organizations, and members of Parliament, to make a very different announcement:
I stand before you today to offer an apology to former students of Indian
residential schools. The treatment of children in these schools is a sad chapter inour history.…
Two primary objectives of the residential school system were to remove andisolate children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions andcultures, and to assimilate them into the dominant culture.…
Today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great
harm, and has no place in our country.
To the approximately 80,000 living former students and all family members andcommunities, the Government of Canada now recognizes that it was wrong
to forcibly remove children from their homes, and we apologize for having
done this.…
The government of Canada sincerely apologizes and asks the forgivenessof the aboriginal peoples of this country for failing them so profoundly. We
are sorry.…187

Getting to the Settlement Agreement • 577

After Harper’s statement, leaders from the opposition parties in Parliament offered
their own apologies. Stéphane Dion, leader of the Liberal Party, said he was sorry that
Canada attempted to eradicate your identity and culture by taking you awayfrom your families when you were children and by building a system to punish
you for who you were.
To first nations, Inuit and Métis, mothers and fathers, I am so very sorry we took
away your children. I am sorry we did not value you as parents. I am sorry we did
not trust and respect you.188

Jack Layton, the leader of the New Democratic Party, began his speech by acknowledging the Elders and paying tribute to the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit leaders who
were in attendance.189 In establishing residential schools, he said, Canada had “set out
to kill the Indian in the child. That choice was horribly wrong. It led to incredible suffering. It denied First Nations, Métis and Inuit the basic freedom to choose how to live
their lives. For those wrongs that we have committed, we are truly sorry.”190
Gilles Duceppe, the leader of Bloc Québecois, said, “Picture a small village, a small
community. Now picture all of its children, gone. No more children between 7 and 16
playing in the lanes or the woods, filling the hearts of their elders with their laughter
and joy. Imagine the ever-present fear of watching their children disappear when theyreached school age.”191
After the politicians spoke, Aboriginal leaders in attendance had a chance torespond. National Chief Fontaine noted thatthe significance of this day is not just about what has been but, equallyimportant, what is to come. Never again will this House consider us the Indianproblem just for being who we are.… Brave survivors, through the telling of theirpainful stories, have stripped white supremacy of its authority and legitimacy.
The irresistibility of speaking truth to power is real.… This day … signifies …
a respectful, and therefore, liberating relationship between us and the restof Canada.192

Mary Simon, President of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, expressed hope that the apology would mark the beginning of a new relationship between the federal government
and Inuit people.
I am also filled with optimism that this action by the Government of Canada andthe generosity in the words chosen to convey this apology will help all of us markthe end of this dark period in our collective history as a nation.…
Let us now join forces with the common goal of working together to ensure that
this apology opens the door to a new chapter in our lives as aboriginal peoples
and in our place in Canada....

578 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

I stand here today ready to work with you, as Inuit have always done, tocraft new solutions and new arrangements based on mutual respect andmutual responsibility.193

Patrick Brazeau, National Chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, observed,“This day is about the survivors and those of you in the gallery. I am proud to be hereon this floor and representing some of you.”194
Clement Chartier, President of the Métis National Council, expressed reservations related to the exclusion of Métis-attended, provincially run, schools from theSettlement Agreement.
I really do feel conflicted, because I am one of the survivors of a Métis residential
school, which was no different from Indian residential schools except for thequestion of who paid. As for who paid, it was those young people who went
there, people like Don, people like me. We paid.
I hope and I do believe sincerely in the words of the minister that we will address
this. I said that the Métis Nation would be here to share this day with thosepeople who have waited for so long. We want to celebrate, and we do celebrate,with them, with you, with all Canadians, because this is a day for all Canadians.
It is a day for us to move forward.195

Beverly Jacobs, President of the Native Women’s Association of Canada, spoke ofthe devastating impact residential schools had on Aboriginal cultures and traditions,and the need for revitalization.
Residential schools caused so much harm to that respect and to that honour.
There were ceremonies for young men and for young women that were taken
away for generations in residential schools. Now we have our language still,
we have our ceremonies, we have our elders, and we have to revitalize thoseceremonies and the respect for our people not only within Canadian society
but even within our own peoples … it is about making sure that we have strong
nations again.196

Willie Blackwater, a Survivor, activist, and plaintiff in a successful court action,
remarked, “The apology makes a huge difference for me, because it will help ... thepain and suffering I inflicted not only on my wife and daughter but also to my son ...
and his mother, because they felt the pain and they felt the atrocities too.”197
Stan Beardy, Grand Chief of Nishnawbe Aski Nation, stated that although theSettlement Agreement did not erase the pain endured by Survivors, it was “animportant first step towards reconciliation between the Government of Canada andFirst Nations.”198
Another step on the journey of which Beardy was speaking was taken when, as
required by the Settlement Agreement, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada was established.199 The Commission’s mandate was to tell Canadians about

Getting to the Settlement Agreement • 579

the history of residential schools and the impact those schools had on Aboriginal peoples and on Canada, and to guide a process of reconciliation.
The Settlement Agreement and the formal apology by Prime Minister Stephen
Harper on behalf of Canada represent the culmination of years of political struggle,
changes in societal attitudes, court decisions, and negotiation. Through it all, theSurvivors kept the issue alive. Their victory deserves celebration.
These events do not bring the residential school story to an end. The legacy of theschools remains. One can see the impact of a system that disrupted families in thehigh number of Aboriginal children who have been removed from their families bychild-welfare agencies. An educational system that degraded Aboriginal culture andsubjected students to humiliating discipline must bear a portion of responsibility
for the current gap between the educational success of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians. The health of generations of Aboriginal children was undermined byinadequate diets, poor sanitation, overcrowded conditions, and a failure to address
the tuberculosis crisis that was ravaging the country’s Aboriginal community. There
should be little wonder that Aboriginal health status remains far below that of the general population. The over-incarceration and over-victimization of Aboriginal people
also have links to a system that subjected Aboriginal children to punitive disciplineand exposed them to physical and sexual abuse.
The history of residential schools presented in this report commenced by placing
the schools in the broader history of the global European colonization of Indigenous
peoples and their lands. Residential schooling was only a part of the colonizationof Aboriginal people. The policy of colonization suppressed Aboriginal culture andlanguages, disrupted Aboriginal government, destroyed Aboriginal economies, andconfined Aboriginal people to marginal and often unproductive land. When that policy resulted in hunger, disease, and poverty, the federal government failed to meet its
obligations to Aboriginal people. That policy was dedicated to eliminating Aboriginal
peoples as distinct political and cultural entities, and must be described for what it is:a policy of cultural genocide.
Despite being subjected to aggressive assimilation policies for nearly 200 years,
Aboriginal people have maintained their identity and their communities. They continue to assert their rights to self-governance. In this, they are not alone. Like theSettlement Agreement in Canada, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights ofIndigenous Peoples is a milestone in a global campaign to recognize and respect therights of Indigenous peoples. It is time to abandon the colonial policies of the past, toaddress the legacy of the schools, and to engage in a process of reconciliation with the
Aboriginal peoples of Canada.

Notes

Introduction
1. TRC, NRA, DIAND, Residential School Office file 6-37-1, volume 1, R. A. Hoey to Dr. McGill,
13 February 1937. [AEMR-010744] For biographical information on Hoey, see: “Memorable
Manitobans, Robert Alexander Hoey,” http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/people/hoey_ra.shtml(accessed 18 April 2013).
2. TRC, NRA, United Church Archives, Acc. 83.050C, box 144-21, “Statement of Policy re Indian
Residential Schools,” June 1936. [UCC-050004]
3. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6730, file 160-2, part 2, T. B. R. Westgate to T. A. Crerar, 21 November 1938. [AEMR-010788]
4. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives Ottawa, HR 8004.C73R 4, Minutes of the Meeting of the
Oblate Fathers’ Committee of Indian Missions, 12 October 1939. [OMI-033064]

Operating and dismantling the system: 1940–2000
1. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8585, file 1/1-2-17, House of Commons Special
Committee on Postwar Reconstruction and Re-Establishment of Indian Population, Minutesof Proceedings and Evidence, 24 May 1944, 306.
2. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6033, file 150-61, part 1, R. A. Hoey to
McGill, 2 October 1944. [NRD-001524-0000]
3. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1945, 168, 190.
4. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1969–70, 128.
5. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1945, 168, 190.
6. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1968–69, 134, 139–140.
7. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 1/25-1, volume 22, R. F. Davey to Bergevin, 15 September 1969.
[AEMR-019616]
8. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1966–67, 47.
9. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6810, file 470-2-3, part 7, Evidence of D. C.
Scott to the Special Committee of the House of Commons Investigating the Indian Act
amendments of 1920, 55 (L-3) and 63 (N-3), 114, 32. For the amendment, see: An Act
respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1919–1920, chapter 50, section 1, creating new R.S.C.
1906, chapter 81, section 10, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 178–179.

582 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
10. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6810, file 470-2-3, part 7, Evidence of D. C.
Scott to the Special Committee of the House of Commons Investigating the Indian Act
amendments of 1920, 32 (H–1).
11. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8585, file 1/1-2-17, House of CommonsSpecial Committee on Postwar Reconstruction and Re-Establishment of Indian Population,
Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence, 24 May 1944, 327. For date of MacNicol’s first election,see: MacNicol, “Our Campaigns,” http://www.ourcampaigns.com/CandidateDetail.
html?CandidateID=122403 (accessed 13 April 2014).
12. For Crerar’s appointment, see: Rea, T. A. Crerar, 172–173. For Crerar’s leaving the IndianAffairs branch operations to the director, see: Rea, T. A. Crerar, 178. For McGill’s career,see: Harold Wigmore McGill and Emma Griffis McGill fonds, Archives Main Catalogue
Search Results, Glenbow Museum, http://ww2.glenbow.org/search/archivesMainResults.
aspx?XC=/search/archivesMainResults.aspx&TN=MAINCAT&AC=QBE_QUERY&RF=WebResults&DL=0&RL=0&NP=255&MF=WPEngMsg.
ini&MR=5&QB0=AND&QF0=Main%20entry%2B|%2BTitle&QI0=Harold%20Wigmore%20
McGill (accessed 11 April 2014).
13. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8585, file 1/1-2-17, House of Commons Special
Committee on Postwar Reconstruction and Re-Establishment of Indian Population, Minutesof Proceedings and Evidence, 24 May 1944, 304–305.
14. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8585, file 1/1-2-17, House of Commons Special
Committee on Postwar Reconstruction and Re-Establishment of Indian Population, Minutesof Proceedings and Evidence, 24 May 1944, 312.
15. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8585, file 1/1-2-17, House of Commons Special
Committee on Postwar Reconstruction and Re-Establishment of Indian Population, Minutesof Proceedings and Evidence, 24 May 1944, 326, 328.
16. Leslie, Assimilation, Integration or Termination?, 101–102.
17. Rea, T. A. Crerar, 235–236; Harold Wigmore McGill and Emma Griffis McGill fonds, Archives
Main Catalogue Search Results, Glenbow Museum, http://ww2.glenbow.org/search/archivesMainResults.aspx?XC=/search/archivesMainResults.aspx&TN=MAINCAT&AC=QBE_QUERY&RF=WebResults&DL=0&RL=0&NP=255&MF=WPEngMsg.
ini&MR=5&QB0=AND&QF0=Main%20entry%2B|%2BTitle&QI0=Harold%20Wigmore%20
McGill (accessed 11 April 2014).
18. Sheffield, Red Man’s on the War Path, 109.
19. Sheffield, Red Man’s on the War Path, 111.
20. Kulchyski, “‘A Considerable Unrest,’” 106–107, 111.
21. Goodwill and Sluman, John Tootoosis, 160–162; Leslie, Assimilation, Integration or
Termination?, 83.
22. Leslie, Assimilation, Integration or Termination?, 88–90.
23. Leslie, Assimilation, Integration or Termination?, 90–93.
24. Leslie, Assimilation, Integration or Termination?, 102–106.
25. Canada, House of Commons Debates (13 May 1946), 1446.
26. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1946, 27.
27. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1946, 28.
28. Canada, Special Joint Committee, Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence, 1946, 79–82, cited in
Leslie, Assimilation, Integration or Termination?, 122.
29. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1946, 420.

Notes • 583
30. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1946, 428.
31. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1948, 186.
32. Leslie, Assimilation, Integration or Termination?, 112.
33. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1948, 186–190.
34. Leslie, Assimilation, Integration or Termination?, 185–186; “Another $100,000 Raised by
UNICEF in Canada,” Ottawa Journal, 2 March 1950, p. 16.
35. Leslie, Assimilation, Integration or Termination?, 189–194.
36. Leslie, Assimilation, Integration or Termination?, 196–200.
37. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, W. M. Duke to J. O. Plourde, 5June 1948; [ABV-001349] W. M. Duke to J. C. McGuigan, 5 June 1948; [ABV-001350] TRC, NRA,
file 6-15-1, volume 2, J. A. MacKinnon to L. S. St. Laurent, 15 November 1948; [AEMR-014845]
TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 6-15-1, volume 2, Hugh L. Keenleyside, 15 October 1948; [AEMR014844] TRC, LAC, Privy Council Office fonds, Cab. Doc. 824 [824-48], Perm. volume 642,
file volume 2, file number C-20-2, A. D. P. Heeney to J. A. MacKinnon, 17 December 1948.
[46a-c012266-d0001-001]
38. Individuals Responsible for Indian and Northern Affairs in Canada, 1755 to 2006, https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100016471/1100100016472 (accessed 13 April 2014);
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/aboriginal-affairs-and-northerndevelopment-canada (accessed 31 December 2014).
39. Leslie, Assimilation, Integration or Termination?, 205, 207, 208, 211–212, 216.
40. Leslie, Assimilation, Integration or Termination?, 231–236.
41. Leslie, Assimilation, Integration or Termination?, 261–262.
42. Special Commons Committee appointed to Consider Bill 79, “An Act respecting Indians,”
Minutes and Proceeding of Evidence (No. 8, 30 April 1950), 272, quoted in Leslie,
Assimilation, Integration or Termination?, 236.
43. Leslie, Assimilation, Integration or Termination?, 183.
44. Leslie, Assimilation, Integration or Termination?, 179–181.
45. Leslie, Assimilation, Integration or Termination?, 365–366.
46. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
46, file 1, “Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School,” J. C. E. Andrews, 1953, 36. [NCA-009046]
47. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
1A, file 43, Albert Southard, 8 March 1957. [IRC-040039]
48. Renaud, “Indian Education Today,” 30.
49. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8795, file 1/25-13, part 2, H. M. Jonesto Deputy Minister, 2 January 1957. [AEMR-011022]
50. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG55, FA 55-22, Acc. 1980-81/069, box 66, file 70142, part 1, Operation of Indian Residential Schools, 1957–1958, Laval Fortier to Secretary,
Treasury Board, 16 August 1957. [AEMR-152098]
51. Leslie, Assimilation, Integration or Termination?, 305, 312–316.
52. See, for example: An Act respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1960, chapter 8, section 1,
reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 390.
53. Leslie, Assimilation, Integration or Termination?, 327–339.
54. Leslie, Assimilation, Integration or Termination?, 393–397.
55. Leslie, Assimilation, Integration or Termination?, 398–406.
56. Individuals Responsible for Indian and Northern Affairs in Canada, 1755 to 2006, https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100016471/1100100016472 (accessed 13 April 2014).

584 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
57. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1965, 25; TRC, NRA, Library andArchives Canada, volume 11316, file 779/25-2, 02/1967–06/1969, “Admission Policy for Indian
Student Residences,” no date. [AEMR-200769A]
58. Hawthorn, Survey of the Contemporary Indians [Hawthorn Report], ii, v. For Hawthorn’s
academic background, see: “The title and degree of doctor of laws (honoris causa) conferred
at congregation,” May 26, 1976, http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/hdcites/hdcites7.html.
59. Hawthorn, Survey of the Contemporary Indians, 6. For use of integration and assimilationinterchangeably, see: Hawthorn, Survey of the Contemporary Indians, 13.
60. Hawthorn, Survey of the Contemporary Indians, 13.
61. Hawthorn, Survey of the Contemporary Indians, 164. For recommendations, see: Hawthorn,
Survey of the Contemporary Indians, 13–20.
62. Hawthorn, Survey of the Contemporary Indians, 15, 17.
63. Weaver, Making Canadian Indian Policy, 60–64.
64. Weaver, Making Canadian Indian Policy, 166, 169.
65. Parliament of Canada, “White Papers,” http://www.parl.gc.ca/parlinfo/pages/WhitePapers.
aspx (accessed 15 April 2014).
66. Canada, Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, page 1 of 24-page portable
document format file.
67. Canada, Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, page 7 of 24-page portable
document format file.
68. Canada, Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, pages 7, 8, and 22 of 24page portable document format file.
69. Canada, Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, page 8 of 24-page portable
document format file.
70. Canada, Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, page 14 of 24-page
portable document format file.
71. Canada, Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, page 8 of 24-page portable
document format file.
72. Canada, Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, page 7 of 24-page portable
document format file.
73. Canada, Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, page 20 of 24-page
portable document format file.
74. Weaver, Making Canadian Indian Policy, 173.
75. National Indian Brotherhood, “Statement on the Proposed New Indian Policy,” Ottawa, 26
June 1969, quoted in Weaver, Making Canadian Indian Policy, 174.
76. Dave Courchene, Press Release, Manitoba Indian Brotherhood, Winnipeg, 26 June 1969,
quoted in Weaver, Making Canadian Indian Policy, 174.
77. Transcript of the Prime Minister’s Remarks at the Vancouver Liberal Association Dinner,
Seaforth Armories, Vancouver, British Columbia, 8 August 1969, quoted in Weaver, Making
Canadian Indian Policy, 179.
78. Cardinal, Unjust Society, 1. For Cardinal’s position, see: Getty, “Harold Cardinal,” http://www.
thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/harold-cardinal (accessed 15 April 2015).
79. Indian Chiefs of Alberta, Citizens Plus, pages 12–13 of 95-page portable document file; Meijer
Drees, “White Paper Red Paper,” 287.
80. Indian Chiefs of Alberta, Citizens Plus, pages 21–22 of 95-page portable document file.
81. Indian Chiefs of Alberta, Citizens Plus, pages 14–15 of 95-page portable document file.

Notes • 585
82. Indian Chiefs of Alberta, Citizens Plus, page 20 of 95-page portable document file.
83. Indian Chiefs of Alberta, Citizens Plus, page 12 of 95-page portable document file.
84. Indian Chiefs of Alberta, Citizens Plus, page 16 of 95-page portable document file.
85. Weaver, Making Canadian Indian Policy, 187.
86. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 340–344.
87. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 348–352.
88. Weaver, “Indian Policy,” 6, 14–15.
89. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 579–580, 979–980.
90. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1946, 803.
91. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1946, 804.
92. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1946, 826–827.
93. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1946, 804.
94. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1946, 805.
95. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1946, 820–821.
96. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 980.
97. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 979.
98. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1946, 456.
99. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 890.
100. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 968.
101. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1047.
102. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1946, 825–826.
103. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 2057.
104. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1068–1069.
105. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 175. For Lickers’s position, see: Leslie, Assimilation,
Integration or Termination?, 116.
106. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1066–1067.
107. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1067.
108. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 744, 747–748.
109. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 170–171.
110. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1440.
111. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 171–172.
112. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1946, 449.
113. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 200.
114. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 521.
115. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 523.
116. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 170–171.
117. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1338–1339.
118. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 552.
119. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 673.
120. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 960.
121. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1447.
122. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1448.
123. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1450.
124. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 3-3, box
70, “A Brief Submitted by the Church of England in Canada to the Special Joint Committee of586 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
the Senate and House of Commons Appointed to Examine and Consider The Indian Act,” 25March 1947, 1. [CRS-002139-0000]
125. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 3-3, box
70, “A Brief Submitted by the Church of England in Canada to the Special Joint Committee of
the Senate and House of Commons Appointed to Examine and Consider The Indian Act,” 25March 1947, 4. [CRS-002139-0000]
126. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 3-3, box
70, “A Brief Submitted by the Church of England in Canada to the Special Joint Committee of
the Senate and House of Commons Appointed to Examine and Consider The Indian Act,” 25March 1947, 6. [CRS-002139-0000]
127. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 3-3, box
70, “A Brief Submitted by the Church of England in Canada to the Special Joint Committee of
the Senate and House of Commons Appointed to Examine and Consider The Indian Act,” 25March 1947, 8. [CRS-002139-0000]
128. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1495.
129. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1496.
130. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1499.
131. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1499.
132. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1473.
133. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 3-3, box
70, “A Brief Submitted by the Church of England in Canada to the Special Joint Committee of
the Senate and House of Commons Appointed to Examine and Consider The Indian Act,” 25March 1947, 9. [CRS-002139-0000]
134. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 3-3, box
70, “A Brief Submitted by the Church of England in Canada to the Special Joint Committee of
the Senate and House of Commons Appointed to Examine and Consider The Indian Act,” 25March 1947, 10. [CRS-002139-0000]
135. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1497. For identification of the school described in thereport as a day school, see: Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1510.
136. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1499.
137. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 472.
138. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 474.
139. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1455.
140. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 3-3, box
70, “A Brief Submitted by the Church of England in Canada to the Special Joint Committee of
the Senate and House of Commons Appointed to Examine and Consider The Indian Act,” 25March 1947, 8. [CRS-002139-0000]
141. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 3-3, box
70, “A Brief Submitted by the Church of England in Canada to the Special Joint Committee of
the Senate and House of Commons Appointed to Examine and Consider The Indian Act,” 25March 1947, 8. [CRS-002139-0000]
142. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1497–1498.
143. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1474.
144. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1508–1509.
145. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1498.
146. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1946, 3, 15.

Notes • 587
147. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1946, 27.
148. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 360.
149. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1946, 27.
150. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 360.
151. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 161.
152. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 173–174.
153. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 361.
154. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 168.
155. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 167.
156. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 170–171.
157. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 365–366.
158. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 171.
159. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B161 2435, “Trends in Indian
Education: An Address Given by Mr. R. F. Battle, Regional Supervisor of Indian Agencies,
Alberta and the Northwest Territories to Friends of Indians Society,” January 1957. [OGP023472]
160. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1946, 13.
161. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7187, file 371/25-1-021,
Memorandum from the Acting Director, DIAND to the Deputy Minister, 22 October 1948.
[NCA-005266]
162. Fortin, “La ruée vers le nord,” 426–427; Frenette, “Une société en voie d’urbanisation,”
495–496.
163. Aboriginal and Northern Development Canada, The Nations Map of Quebec, Innu Takuaikan
Uashat mak Mani-Utenam, http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/Mobile/Nations/profile_uashatmaliotenam-eng.html (accessed 12 November 2014).
164. Frenette, “Une société en voie d’urbanisation,” 509–510.
165. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG22, volume 1202, file 379/2, part 1,
Memorandum from D. M. Mackay [MacKay], Acting Director, DIAND to the Deputy Minister,
22 November 1948. [SIR-000413]
166. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 321/251-352 (Ctrl #407-Q-195), Philip Phelan to J. D’Astous and Mr. Doucet, 31 July 1952. [NPC400715]
167. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2899, file 851-1-A379, part 2A, J. M.
Pauze to the Indian Affairs Branch, Department of Mines and Resources, 30 November 1948.
[120.14786]
168. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG22, volume 1202, file 379/2, part 1, D. M. Mackay[MacKay] to the Deputy Minister, 22 November 1948. [SIR-000413]
169. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 379/36-4-009,
volume 1 (locator H62-107), J. O. Plourde to B. F. Neary, 2 July 1949. [NCA-016687-0009]
170. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 379/36-4-009,
volume 1 (locator H62-107), J. M. Pauze to Bernard F. Neary, 8 August 1949. [NCA-0166870007] See also: TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file379/36-4-009, volume 1 (locator H62-107), Bernard F. Neary to C. Buck, 2 September 1949.
[NCA-016687-0005]

588 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
171. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 321/251-352 (Ctrl #407-Q-195), “Re: Seven Islands Residential School,” A. J. Doucet, 29 September
1952. [NPC-400712]
172. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 68/25-2,
volume 1 (Ctrl #407-Q-134), Philip Phelan to J. D’Astous, 16 January 1953. [NCA-004283]
173. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 321/251-352 (Ctrl #407-Q-195), Philip Phelan to A. J. Doucet, 10 July 1953; [NCA-015545] INAC
– Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 21/25-1-325 (Ctrl #407-Q155), J. D’Astous to P. Phelan, 18 August 1953. [NCA-015588]
174. Mercier and Marquis, “La population et son territoire,” 483–484.
175. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7187, file 371/25-1-021, Bernard F.
Neary, to Director, 26 December 1950. [AIR-000114-0000] For location of Amos in Abitibi, see:Amos, Commission de toponymie Quebec, http://www.toponymie.gouv.qc.ca/ct/ToposWeb/
fiche.aspx?no_seq=1229 (accessed 26 April 2014).
176. Mercier and Marquis, “La population et son territoire,” 505; TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada, RG10, volume 8240, file 371/6-1-021, part 14, H. M. Jones to the Deputy Minister, 25
May 1956. [AIR-000178]
177. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 74/6-1353, volume 1, Laval Fortier to Major Mackay [MacKay], 21 May 1951; [AIR-000652] Libraryand Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7187, file 371/25-1-021, J. A. Desmarais to Philip Phelan,
Ottawa, 15 February 1952. [AIR-000117]
178. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Ottawa, HR 6607.C73R 3,
Commission oblate des oeuvres indiennes et esquimaudes, “Rapport annuel des principauxdes pensionnats indiens: Pensionnat indien d’Amos,” 31 December 1955. [AIR-001113]
179. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8795, file 1/25-13, part 2, M. F. Trackto Mr. Davey, 11 October 1956; [100.00729] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10,
volume 7187, file 371/25-1-021, H. M. Jones to the Deputy Minister, DIAND, 29 October 1956.
[NCA-005278]
180. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6113, file 351-10, part 1, Edgar
Arsenault to DIAND, Ottawa, 26 November 1949. [FTG-000571]
181. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6113, file 351-10, part 1, Edgar
Arsenault to DIAND, 16 September 1950; [FTG-000617] INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS
Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 21/25-1-325, Philip Phelan to E. Arsenault, 14 May
1953. [FTG-000775]
182. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 44/235-351 (Ctrl #407-Q-169), “Fort George Roman Catholic Residential School,” H. A. Mingay,
5 March 1953; [NPC-400479] TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files
Collection – Ottawa, file 21/25-1-325 (Ctrl #407-Q-155), Philip Phelan to J. D’Astous, 14 May
1953. [NCA-015589-0000]
183. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 377/251-005 (Ctrl #407-Q-107), Edgar Arsenault to Regional Supervisor, Quebec, 19 January 1954;[NCA-001450-0009] INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file
21/25-2, L. J. J. Bourassa, 9 September 1957; [FTG-001029] Library and Archives Canada,
RG10, volume 11287, file 371/25-2-020, part 2, R. F. Davey to L. J. J. Bourassa, 17 September
1957; [FTG-000630-0000] Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7187, file 301/25-1,

Notes • 589
Memorandum from A. R. Jolicoeur to Superintendent, Pointe-Bleue, 17 June 1959. [FTG000737]
184. TRC, NRA, INAC – Departmental Library – Ottawa, Indian Missionary Record, Vol. 15, No. 10,
December 1952, “Indian Education in Central Quebec,” p. 2. [IMR-000128]
185. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 21/25-1325 (Ctrl #407-Q-155), J. D’Astous to P. Phelan, Ottawa, 18 August 1953. [NCA-015588]
186. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives Ottawa, HR 6556.C73R 12, [?], List of Requested Funding for
Schools, 5 September 1956. [OMI-033014]
187. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 21/6-1354, volume 1, R. F. Davey to R. L. Boulanger, 2 November 1956. [PTB-000078]
188. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 21/251-325 (Ctrl #407-Q-155), School Municipality of the City of Roberval, Secretary-Treasurer’s
Office, Roberval, QC, “Resolution No 1,” 17 January 1957. [NCA-015587-0001]
189. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 21/25-1354, Pointe Bleue Indian Agency, “Confirmation de l’appel téléphonique à Monsieur Jolicoeurdu 7 octobre 1960 date de l’ouverture des classes,” 12 October 1960. [PTB-000301]
190. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 377/2316-005, volume 1, “Principal’s Monthly Report: Pointe Bleue Residential School, December
1960,” C. Couture, 27 December 1960. [PTB-000509]
191. Lanthier, “L’émergence des nouvelles villes,” 616.
192. Lanthier, “L’émergence des nouvelles villes,” 610, 614, 624, 628.
193. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2.15, box 22, file 3, “Report of the Superintendent, Indian School Administration to the
M.S.C.C. Executive,” Henry G. Cook, 12 February 1957. [AAC-090809]
194. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2.15, box 22, file 3, “Report of the Indian School Administration Superintendent to the
M.S.C.C. Executive,” Henry G. Cook, 14 May 1957. [AAC-090802]
195. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 21/61-355, volume 1, R. F. Davey to the Regional Supervisor, Quebec and A. J. Doucet, 23 June
1958. [LTR-000834] For information regarding the schools to which students were sent, see:
TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 371/25-2,
volume 4, “Memorandum For File,” R. L. Boulanger, 14 February 1968. [LTR-000726-0002]
196. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6859, file 493/25-2-001, part 2, H.
Larivière to C. E. S. Bown, 2 November 1959. [NCA-002034]
197. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 377/36-4006, volume 1, A. J. Doucet to DIAND, Ottawa, 30 July 1957. [LTR-000450]
198. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 21/6-1355, volume 1, H. Larivière to R. L. Boulanger, 23 January 1958. [LTR-000838-0001]
199. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 21/6-1355, volume 1, A. J. Doucet to the DIAND, Ottawa, 6 February 1958. [LTR-000838-0000]
200. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 377/25-1006, volume 1 (Ctrl #58-7), R. F. Davey to the Regional Supervisor, Quebec and A. J. Doucet, 4March 1958. [NCA-015444]
201. For the original plans, see: TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives,
GS 75-103, series 2-15, box 22, “Report of the Indian School Administration Superintendent
to the M.S.C.C. Board of Management,” Henry G. Cook, 21 May 1958. [GDC-007196]

590 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
For continued pressure, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files
Collection – Ottawa, file 21/6-1-355, volume 1, A. J. Doucet to DIAND, Ottawa, 30 May 1958;[LTR-000834] R. F. Davey to the Regional Supervisor, Quebec and A. J. Doucet, 23 June 1958.
[LTR-000836] For school capacity, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical
Files Collection – Ottawa, file 21/6-1-355, volume 1, Memorandum from R. F. Davey, to the
Regional Supervisor, Quebec and A. J. Doucet, 18 June 1959. [LTR-000826]
202. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 21/6-1355, volume 1, H. Larivière to A. J. Doucet, 18 June 1959. [LTR-000828]
203. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 21/61-355, volume 1, H. Larivière to the Regional Supervisor, I. A., Quebec, DIAND, 12 August
1958; [LTR-000833] INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file377/25-11-158, volume 1 (Ctrl #407-Q-198), R. F. Davey to the Regional Supervisor, Quebec
and A. R. Jolicoeur, 9 March 1962; [NCA-000889] INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical
Files Collection – Ottawa, file 316/25-1-355, “Minutes of Meeting Held at Ottawa December
11, 1962 to Plan the Redistribution of Pupils of the Mistassini and Waswanipi Bands for theOpening of the LaTuque Residential School September, 1963,” R. F. Davey, 11 December 1962.
[NPC-400691-0001]
204. Order of Québec Superior Court Chief Justice François Rolland, 27 March 2013, 3.
205. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 21/6-1355, volume 1, A. J. Doucet to the DIAND, Ottawa, 15 June 1959. [LTR-000827]
206. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 377/2326-006, volume 1, “Quarterly Return – Government-Owned Residential Schools: La Tuque
Indian Residential School, Quarter Ending Sept. 30/63,” J. E. DeWolf, 30 September 1963.
[LTR-000001]
207. For Maliotenam (Sept-Îles) and Amos, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG55,
Acc. 1989-90/143, box 74, file 7878-01, part 1, Status of Closed Student Residences as ofJune 1977. [HFG-000024-0002] For La Tuque, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector –IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 372/25-1-024, volume 1, G. Lemay to Jean-M.
Bonnard, 12 June 1978. [LTR-000260]
208. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, fileE-4974/076, volume NC 3, Rene Carriere to Rejean Perron, 22 April 1991. [BAX-000905-0001]
209. Driedger and Epp, revised by Millette, “Mennonites,” http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.
ca/en/article/mennonites (accessed 30 April 2014).
210. Gingerich, “Northern Light Gospel Mission Conference,” http://gameo.org/index.
php?title=Northern_Light_Gospel_Mission_Conference_%28NLGMC%29, (accessed 25 April2014). For Canadian Mennonite missionary work among Aboriginal people, see, for example:
Neufeld and Neufeld, By God’s Grace.
211. Hostetler, “Northern Light Gospel Mission Conference,” http://gameo.org/index.
php?title=Northern_Light_Gospel_Mission_Conference_%28NLGMC%29 (accessed 25 April2014).
212. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, BAN No. 1999-01431-6, box 216, file 494/1-13,
part 1, F. J. Foss to Indian Affairs Branch, North Bay, 28 March 1960. [PHD-004302]
213. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, BAN No. 1999-01431-6, box 216, file 494/1-13,
part 1, R. F. Davey to J. H. Gordon, 29 April 1960. [PHD-004309]
214. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, BAN No. 1999-01431-6, box 216, file 494/1-13,
part 1, R. F. Davey to F. M. Shaw, 26 April 1969. [PHD-004307]

Notes • 591
215. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 144/23-4,
volume 2, G. Swartman to Regional Supervisor, North Bay, Ontario, 1 February 1962. [MCI004187-0001]
216. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11445, file 494/25-1, F. M. Shaw to
Irwin Schantz, 27 August 1962. [PHD-000007]
217. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11447, file 494/25-2, part 1, G. S. Lapp
to Superintendent, Sioux Lookout Agency, 30 August 1962. [PHD-000452]
218. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, box 135, Acc. 1999-01431-6, file 401/25-812, part 2, “A Northern Ontario Educational Experiment, Prepared for The Canadian Adult
Education Association, C. R. Scharf.” [NCA-006746-0001] For date of paper, see: TRC, NRA,
Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 1984-85/112, box 27, file 401/25-1, part 1, C. R.
Scharf to Chief Superintendent, Vocational Training and Special Service, 26 April 1966. [PHD000196]
219. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, box 135, Acc. 1999-01431-6, file 401/25-812, part 2, H. B. Rodine to Superintendent of Vocational Training, Fort William, 27 July 1966.
[NCA-006743]
220. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 1984-85/112, box 101, file 494/25-1, part3, B. A. Shad to Regional Director, 26 October 1971. [PHD-000221-0000]
221. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 1984-85/112, box 101, file 494/25-1, part3, B. A. Shad to Regional Director, 19 November 1971. [PHD-000222]
222. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 1984-85/112, box 101, file 494/25-1, part3, H. B. Rodine to District Supervisor, 1 May 1972. [PHD-000212-0000] For Stirland Lake asboys’ school, see: Auger, Indian Residential Schools, 193.
223. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, letter received 27
July 1976. [AANDC-01471] For the request from local chiefs, see: Auger, Indian Residential
Schools, 194.
224. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 81/25-1(Ctrl #240-12), Band Council Resolution, 31 January 1979. [NCA-001732-0001]
225. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 81/25-1(Ctrl #240-13), Richard Morris to Chiefs, Petahbun [Pehtabun] Area, 9 February 1979. [NCA001721]
226. Fontaine v. Canada (Attorney General), 2011 CanLII 4938 (ON SC), 7.
227. Auger, Indian Residential Schools, 193.
228. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, Margaret Reimer, “Native Mission School Shut
Down over Discipline Controversy,” Mennonite Reporter, Volume 19, Number 22, 13
November 1989. [PHD-000143]
229. Fontaine v. Canada (Attorney General), 2011 CanLII 4938 (ON SC), 6.
230. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, F. O’Grady to Father Provincial,
20 June 1940; [OKM-000292] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 205/25-1, volume
2, 06/1948–12/1955, “Memorandum,” 12 January 1943. [AEMR-200919]
231. For Protestant objections, see: Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6316, file 656-5,
part 7, T. B. R. Westgate to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 18 August 1941. [PAR-008548] For Roman
Catholic objections, see: TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, J. O.
Plourde to T. A. Crerar, 12 June 1940; [GMA-002340] TRC, NRA, No document location, no
document file source, F. O’Grady to Father Provincial, 20 June 1940; [OKM-000292] TRC, NRA,592 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
Library and Archives Canada, file 205/25-1, volume 2, 06/1948–12/1955, “Memorandum,” 12January 1943. [120.05814]
232. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Ottawa, volume 1, section
C-D, binder 4, “Memo: re Authorized Pupilage – Actual Attendance – and Loss to the
Churches, in connection with Indian Residential Schools,” undated. [BVL-001174] Roman
Catholic schools not achieving pupilage: Fort George, Albany, Beauval, Fort Resolution,
Providence, Grouard, Joussard, Sturgeon Lake, Youville, Christie, and Kuper Island. Anglican
schools not achieving pupilage: Chapleau, Mohawk Institute, Moose Fort, Shingwauk,
Gordon’s, Lac La Ronge, Aklavik, Old Sun’s, St. Cyprian, Wabasca, and St. George (Lytton).
United Church schools not achieving pupilage: Mount Elgin, Brandon, Edmonton, Morley,
and Port Simpson.
233. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6316, file 656-5, 7, T. B. R. Westgate to
Secretary, Indian Affairs, 18 August 1941. [PAR-008548]
234. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6207, file 468-5, part 9, “Extract from
Principal’s Report regarding The Mount Elgin School. Original on Annual Report of Principalsof Indian Residential Schools – 1944.” [MER-000973]
235. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1946, 12.
236. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1940, 186; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1941, 165.
237. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7185, file 1/25-1-7-3, part 1, from
George Dorey to T. A. Crerar, 9 December 1943. [AEMR-120443]
238. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 205/25-1, volume 2, 06/1948–12/1955,“Memorandum Presented by a Committee of the Churches Co-Operating with theGovernment in Indian Education to the Minister of Mines and Resources, the Honourable L.
A. [T. A.] Crerar, January 12, 1943.” [AEMR-200919]
239. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6041, file 160-5, part 2, J. Plourde to T.
A. Crerar, 11 August 1944. [SBR-000796-0001]
240. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1067, volume 1, George Dorey to B. F. Neary, 25 February 1947. [PLP-000020]
241. TRC, NRA, St. Paul’s Archives, J. O. Plourde to Reverend and Dear Father, 26 February 1948.
[OMI-033292]
242. According to the Bank of Canada inflation calculator, $419 in 1950 was the equivalent of $313
in 1946. Inflation Calculator, Bank of Canada, http://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculator (accessed 29 April 2014).
243. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, PAA 71.220 B92 3896, H. N. Woodsworth to Director,
Indian Affairs Branch, 27 October 1949. [OGP-030600]
244. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 4, J. Coleman toIndian Commissioner for British Columbia, 14 October 1947. [MIK-002279-0002]
245. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, Burnaby, 988/23-16-879, volume 2, School
Attendance Reports – Christie Residential School, 1953–1956, FA 10-136, Acc. V1984-85/316,
box 15 [500313], N. W. Garrard to D. Kearney, 4 November 1953. [CST-003883]
246. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7185, file 1/25-1-7-1, part 1, R. A.
Hoey to principals and church leaders, 13 December 1946. [AEMR-120450]
247. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, H. F. Dunlop to Philip Phelan, 4November 1948. [SEC-000063]

Notes • 593
248. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 1/25-1-52, volume 1, “Regulations With Respect to Teaching, Education, Inspection, and Disciplinefor Indian Residential Schools, Made and Established by the Superintendent General ofIndian Affairs Pursuant to Paragraph (a) of Section 114 of the Indian Act.” 20 January 1953.
[PAR-001203-0001] For an example of the 1953 application form, see: TRC, NRA, Libraryand Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8954, file 55/25-2, part 1, “Application for Admission to
Residential School,” 14 October 1953. [SRS-006315-0002]
249. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1955, 51; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1957, 56. As an experiment in 1949, Indian Affairs hadtaken on responsibility for directly employing the teaching staff at schools at Shubenacadie,
the Mohawk Institute, and Port Alberni. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 1/25-1-5-2, volume 1,
1952–1969, Laval Fortier to J. P. Mulvihill, 26 October 1953. [AEMR-120563]
250. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7185, file 1/25-1-7-5, Henry G. Cook,
5 April 1954. [AEMR-016463]
251. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1955, 53.
252. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8795, file 1/25-13, part 1, H. M. Jonesto Deputy Minister, 4 June 1954. [AEMR-120584]
253. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1474.
254. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8753, file 601/25-1, part 2, Paul Pichéto F. O’Grady, 27 February 1958. [MRS-000214-0000]
255. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG55, FA 55-22, Acc. 1980-81/069, box 66, file 70142, part 1, Operation of Indian Residential Schools, 1957–1958, Laval Fortier to Secretary,
Treasury Board, 16 August 1957. [AEMR-152098]
256. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8795, file 1/25-13, part 2, H. M. Jonesto Deputy Minister, 2 January 1957. [AEMR-011022]
257. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8795, file 1/25-13, part 2, H. M. Jonesto Deputy Minister, 2 January 1957. [AEMR-011022]
258. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 1/25-13, part 4, 1957–1958, H. M. Jones to Henry S. Cook, 17
December 1957. [ AEMR-120841]
259. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8796, file 1/25-13, part 4, D. M.
Watters to Laval Fortier, 25 October 1957. [NCA-013420]
260. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8795, file 1/25-13, part 3, “Meetingwith church representatives, February 26, 1957. 2:00 p.m., Copeland Building, in connection
with new proposals for the financing of the operation of residential schools.” [AEMR-120778A]
261. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8796, file 1/25-13, part 4, D. M.
Watters to Laval Fortier, 25 October 1957. [NCA-013420]
262. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 1/25-13-2, volume 2, J. H. Gordon to Mr. MacDonald, 27 June
1968. [AEMR-022008]
263. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG2, volume 4926, file 10/19/61, P.C. 1/1457 (1961),
George F. Davidson to The Secretary, Treasury Board, 24 August 1961. [PRIVY-501051]
264. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives, Ottawa, HR 6507.C73R, Doc. 6, “Report of administrationcommittee,” 21 January 1960. [AEMR-011286]
265. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1958, 89; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1959, 92.
266. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 951/25-13,
1957–1975, volume 1, RCAP, R. F. Davey to R. F. Battle, 16 June 1967. [CST-000361-0003]

594 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
267. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1941, 189; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1960, 94.
268. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1941, 165.
269. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1960, 55.
270. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1960, 94.
271. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1949, 199.
272. For use of the concept of “integration,” see: Canada, Annual Report of the Department ofIndian Affairs, 1956–57, 49: “This program of integrated education is being advanced throughagreements with local school authorities, the Department sharing the cost of additional
school construction on the basis of the number of Indian students the local school authorities
agree to accommodate.”
273. An Act respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1951, chapter 29, section 113, reproduced in
Venne, Indian Acts, 350.
274. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, W. M. Duke to J. O. Plourde, 5June 1948; [ABV-001349] W. M. Duke to J. C. McGuigan, 5 June 1948; [ABV-001350] TRC, NRA,
DIAND, file 6-15-1, volume 2, J. A. MacKinnon to L. S. St. Laurent, 15 November 1948; [AEMR014845] TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 6-15-1, volume 2, Hugh L. Keenleyside, 15 October 1948;[AEMR-014844] TRC, LAC, Privy Council Office fonds, Cab. Doc. 824 [824-48], Perm. volume642, file volume 2, file number C-20-2, A. D. P. Heeney to J. A. MacKinnon, 17 December 1948.
[46a-c012266-d0001-001]
275. An Act respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1951, chapter 29, sections 114–122, reproduced
in Venne, Indian Acts, 350–353.
276. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1959, 55.
277. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1958, 61.
278. Daniels, “The Legal Context of Indian Education,” 113–114. For first contribution to a
provincial school, see: TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 1/25-1, volume 22, R. F. Davey to Bergevin, 15
September 1969. [AEMR-019616]
279. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1958, 61.
280. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1959, 55.
281. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1950, 86; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1960, 94.
282. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1956, 76–77; Canada, Annual
Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1956–57, 88; Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1958, 90–91; Canada, Annual Report of the Department ofIndian Affairs, 1959, 96, 98; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs,
1960, 96, 98; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1961, 107; Canada,
Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1962, 78; Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1963, 65; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of IndianAffairs, 1965, 73.
283. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1961, 57.
284. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1961, 45.
285. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1961, 63.
286. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1963, 21–22.
287. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1965–66, 61.
288. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1965–66, 61.
289. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1966–67, 47, 49.

Notes • 595
290. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 1/25-1, volume 22, R. F. Davey to Bergevin, 15 September 1969.
[AEMR-019616]
291. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1966–67, 47.
292. Ladner and McCrossan, Electoral Participation, 12–13.
293. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1967–68, 80.
294. TRC, NRA, DIAND, Residential School Office, file 6-37-1, volume 1, Superintendent of
Welfare and Training to Dr. McGill, 13 February 1937. [AEMR-010744]
295. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 170–171.
296. An Act respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1951, chapter 29, section 113, reproduced in
Venne, Indian Acts, 350.
297. In 1956–57, there were 10,599 students living in residential schools. In 1965–66, the number
was 9,875 (down from 10,294 in the previous year). See: Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1956–57, 88, 90; Canada, Annual Report of the Department ofIndian Affairs, 1963–64, 65, 66; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs,
1965, 73; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1965–66, 124.
298. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1971, 19.
299. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 3-3, box
70, file 3, “Memorandum Re: Possible closing or combining of schools or withdrawing fromco-operation with the Government,” 7 October 1947. [MFI-000981-0001] For opening of the
Dauphin, Manitoba, school, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files
Collection – Ottawa, file 128/25-2-581, volume 1, 1957–61, J. R. Bell to J. B. Dennys, 22 May
1957. [NHR-002750]
300. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2-15, box 29, file 1, “Indian Problems of concern to the Indian school administration,”
Canon H. G. Cook, 30 October 1958. [AAC-084186]
301. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file (205) 701/25-1, volume 6, 08/1960–03/1962, Earl
F. Stotesbury to Officials of the Indian Affairs Branch, 17 October 1960. [AEMR-200070]
302. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 6-21-7, volume 1, H. M. Jones to Deputy Minister, 5 July 1961. [AEMR019709]
303. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 3, H. W. McGill
to Deputy Minister, 1943. [IRC-041083]
304. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, J. O. Plourde to Louis St. Laurent,
22 February 1946. [GMA-002471-0001]
305. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6376, file 766-5, part 2, L. Beuglet
to Philip Phelan, 25 February 1946; [FTV-001048] RG10, volume 6196, file 464-10, part 2, P.
Phelan to J. G. Burk, 24 February 1950; [SJS-001327] St. Paul’s Archives, series 4, box 17, file 3,
Fergus O’Grady to Philip Phelan, 6 November 1953. [OMI-033501]
306. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2.15, box 21, file 7, “Memorandum Re: Problem of admittance to Residential Schools of
Indian children of uncertain Religious Affiliation,” Henry Cook, 17 April 1952. [AAC-087587]
307. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2-15, box 29, file 1, “Indian Problems of concern to the Indian school administration,”
H. G. Cook, 30 October 1958. [AAC-084186]
308. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 6-21-1, volume 1, Laval Fortier to Minister, 28 October 1954. [AEMR019666]

596 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
309. An Act respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1919–1920, chapter 50, section 1, amending
Revised Statutes of Canada 1906, chapter 81, section 10, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts,
178.
310. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6374, file 764-10, part 1, S. H.
Middleton to J. E. Pugh, 26 April 1940. [PUL-071183]
311. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6374, file 764-10, part 1, R. A. Hoey toJ. E. Pugh, 16 May 1940. [PUL-071185]
312. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6254, file 575-10, part 2, A. G.
Hamilton to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 8 January 1940. [BIR-001754]
313. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6279, file 584-10, part 3, Philip Phelan
to J. O. Plourde, 3 December 1943. [SBR-110753]
314. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6190, file 461-10, part 2, D. S. Pitts to
N. Paterson, 5 November 1945. [NCA-005189-0001]
315. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6190, file 461-10, part 2, Norman
Paterson to Indian Affairs, 16 April 1946. [NCA-005192-0000]
316. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6254, file 575-10, part 3, Jean Lambert
to J. Waite, 27 September 1946; [BIR-006305-0001] NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10,
volume 6254, file 575-10, part 3, Philip Phelan to A. G. Smith, 1 October 1946; [BIR-006289]
NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6254, file 575-10, part 3, A. G. Smith toIndian Affairs Branch, 28 November 1946; [BIR-006317] Library and Archives Canada, RG10,
volume 6279, file 584-10, part 3, A. G. Smith to Indian Affairs, 10 February 1947. [SBR-110830]
317. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6352, file 753-10, part 2, Bernard F.
Neary to Harold Moore, 11 March 1947. [120.06816]
318. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6272, file 582-10, part 3, M. Bretagne
to J. O. Plourde, 1 October 1949. [PCR-000788]
319. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6272, file 582-10, part 3, Philip Phelan
to A. G. Hamilton, 14 October 1949. [PCR-101515]
320. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1946, 16.
321. An Act respecting Indians, Revised Statutes of Canada 1951, chapter 29, section 117,
reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 351.
322. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2.15, box 21, file 7, “Memorandum Re: Problem of admittance to Residential Schools of
Indian children of uncertain Religious Affiliation,” Canon Henry Cook, 17 April 1952. [AAC087587]
323. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6272, file 582-10, part 4, J. D. Minnis
to R. S. Davis, 25 September 1951. [PCR-070479-0001]
324. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6272, file 582-10, part 4, Philip Phelan
to Paul Dumouchel, 6 October 1951. [PCR-070480]
325. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6272, file 582-10, part 4, Reverend
Paul Dumouchel to Philip Phelan, 25 October 1951; [PCR-070486] Philip Phelan to R. S. Davis,
29 October 1951. [PCR-101606]
326. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6481, file 940-10, part 6, Philip Phelan
to H. G. Cook, 8 January 1952. [NCA-010967]
327. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG22, volume 852, file 6-21-4, part 1, D. M. MacKay
to Deputy Minister, 16 February 1953, “Disputed Religious Cases”; [NCA-014380-0000]
TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG22, volume 852, file 6-21-4, part 1, 16 February

Notes • 597
1953, “Disputed Religious Cases – Roman Catholic”; [NCA-014380-0001] TRC, NRA, Libraryand Archives Canada, RG22, volume 852, file 6-21-4, part 1, “Disputed Religious Cases –Protestant.” [NCA-014380-0002]
328. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Ottawa, HRH 9, C73R 19, E.
Benoit to G. Swartman, 27 November 1953. [MCI-008011-0003]
329. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives Ottawa, Reverend John Cody to Walter E. Harris, 15
February 1954. [OBG-001193]
330. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, William Bernardo to L. K.
Poupore, 11 March 1959. [SEC-001406]
331. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6870, file 673/25-2-037, part 2, J. A.
Davis to Indian Affairs, 30 August 1955. [SPR-000039-0000]
332. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6870, file 673/25-2-037, part 2, J. A.
Davis to Jean Lambert, 30 August 1955. [SPR-000038]
333. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6870, file 673/25-2-037, part 2, J.
Lambert to J. A. Davis, 1 September 1955. [SPR-000226]
334. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Allan Noonan to James Hill, 7October 1960. [BVT-001832]
335. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, 8757, file 709/25-1-001, part 2, E. E. Joblin to
R. F. Davey, 12 December 1958. [EDM-000163]
336. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, 8757, file 709/25-1-001, part 2, Henry G. Cook
to E. E. Joblin, 16 December 1958. [EDM-000170]
337. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 81/251, volume 2, F. M. Shaw to H. E. Hives, 17 July 1963; [PHD-000131] G. S. Lapp to Regional
Supervisor, North Bay, 26 August 1963. [PHD-000132]
338. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical Services:
Dental Diseases 1931–1978, C. Corrigan to P. E. Moore, 19 September 1944. [AEMR-174407A]
339. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, H. McGill to P. G. Lazenby, 7 September 1944. [AEMR174407H]
340. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, Joseph Jones to P. G. Lazenby, 9 September 1944;[AEMR-174407F] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 8514-530, part 1, Medical Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, P. G. Lazenby to H. McGill, 11
September 1944. [AEMR-174407E]
341. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, G. Dorey to P. E. Moore, 2 October 1944. [AEMR-174406]
342. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7185, file 1/25-1-7-1, part 1, R. A.
Hoey to principals and church leaders, 13 December 1946. [AEMR-120450]
343. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8278, file 494/6-1-015, part 4, Charles
Buck to Superintendent of Education, Indian Affairs, 15 January 1958. [MCI-001914-0001]
344. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 777/16-2-010, volume 1, 1949–1964, NAC, H.
Oldring to E. J. Blake, 25 March 1959. [MAR-001168]
345. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 777/16-2-010, volume 1, 1949–1964, NAC, R. F.
Davey to E. Filion, 15 May 1959. [MAR-001187]
346. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, [illegible, likely Tetrault] to H.
Routhier, 2 June 1959. [GMA-000108]

598 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
347. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 1999-01431-6, box 180, file 485/162-001, part 2, Ontario Provincial Police Report, “Alleged Conspiracy to Defraud—Between
December 1962 and June 1963,” K. E. Wilson, 22 December 1965. [FFR-000647-0006]
348. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives Ottawa, HR 6[ ].C73R 63, A. Lizee to R. F. Davey, 27
November 1964. [OMI-030660]
349. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 1999-01431-6, box 180, file 485/16-2-001,
part 2, Ontario Provincial Police, “Alleged Conspiracy to Defraud,” 24 August 1966. [FFR000647-0005]
350. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 1999-01431-6, box 180, file 485/16-2001, part 2, E. A. Côté to Henri Légaré, 28 February 1967. [FFR-000650] For the decision not toprosecute, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 1999-01431-6, box 180,
file 485/16-2-001, part 2, R. F. Davey to Mr. Churchman, 21 February 1967. [FFR-000660]
351. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 1999-01431-6, box 180, file 485/16-2-001,
part 2, Henri Légaré to E. A. Côté, 6 March 1967. [FFR-000655-0001]
352. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 673/251, volume 1, R. F. Davey to H. Legare, 11 July 1966. [PLD-008514] For the date of Carrière’stransfer, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 1999-01431-6, box 180, file
485/16-2-001, part 2, M. J. Y. Dube to Assistant Deputy Minister, 27 September 1965. [FFR000633-0001]
353. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7194, file 511/25-1-015, G. H.
Marcoux to D. M. MacKay, 9 August 1951. [BRS-000940-0001]
354. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7194, file 511/25-1-015, G. H.
Marcoux to R. S. Davis, 12 October 1951. [BRS-000882]
355. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6259, file 576-10, part 17, O. B. Strapp
to Philip Phelan, 16 October 1951. [BRS-000890]
356. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7194, file 511/25-1-015, P. Phelan toGeorge Dorey, 26 June 1953. [BRS-000958]
357. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7194, file 511/25-1-015, G. H.
Marcoux to Davis, 5 November 1953. [BRS-000966]
358. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 772/25-1-010, volume 8758, 1949–1961, NAC, M. C.
Macdonald to R. F. Davey, 2 August 1955. [MOR-002263]
359. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 772/25-1-010, volume 8758, 1949–1961, NAC, R.
F. Davey to M. C. Macdonald, 5 August 1955; [MOR-002262] Library and Archives Canada –Ottawa, RG10, volume 8757, file 709/25-1-001, part 2, NAC, M. C. Macdonald to R. F. Davey,
30 August 1955. [MOR-000740]
360. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 772/6-1-010, part 3, volume 8672, 1953–1957, NAC,
R. F. Davey to M. C. Macdonald, 9 August 1956. [MOR-005774]
361. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8757, file 709/25-1-001, part 2, M. C.
Macdonald to R. F. Davey, 29 August 1956. [BRS-005021]
362. For an example of these complaints, see: TRC, NRA, No document location, no document
file source, The Canadian Catholic Conference, “A Brief to the Parliamentary Committee on
Indian Affairs,” May 1960, 8. [GMA-001642-0000]
363. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6470, file 890-5, part 6, R. A. Hoey toW. M. Duke, 27 March 1942. [MIS-000111]
364. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Forbes to Very Reverend andFather Provincial, 16 December 1940. [CIS-000175] For Forbes’s position and first initial, see:Notes • 599
TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, G. Forbes to John C. Cody, 26
November 1940. [BVT-000506]
365. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6352, file 753-10, part 1, from R. A.
Hoey to J. F. Woodsworth, 5 March 1940. [AEMR-010796]
366. TRC, NRA, The Archives of the Jesuits of Upper Canada, Regis College, Toronto, ON, Jesuit
Fathers of Upper Canada Archives, Raymond Oliver, first page of letter missing, undated.
[AGA-000355]
367. Shanahan, Jesuit Residential School, 183–188.
368. Jesuit Archives, Toronto, MacKenzie to Provincial, 9 May 1955, quoted in Shanahan, Jesuit
Residential School, 198.
369. Shanahan, Jesuit Residential School, 199.
370. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/25-1015, volume 1, H. G. Mingay to A. Lacelle, 11 May 1953. [KNR-001006]
371. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 129/251-016, volume 1, H. G. Mingay to Education Division, Indian Affairs Branch, 20 April 1954.
[KNR-000273]
372. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/25-1015, volume 1, “Extract from Regional School Inspector Mingay’s Report dated 17 November,concerning his inspection of the Kenora Indian Residential School,” 1956. [KNR-001520]
373. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 6-21-1, volume 2, H. M. Jones to Deputy Minister, 18 July 1958.
[120.00856]
374. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8756, file 673/25-1, part 2, E. S. Jones
to R. F. Davey, 20 December 1956. [SPR-000375]
375. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives Ottawa, HR 6137.C73R 8, “Memorandum of the Episcopal
Committee on Indian Affairs of the C.C.C. to the Honourable J. W. Pickersgill, Minister of
Citizenship and Immigration, concerning the Education of Indians.” [OMI-034605] Although
this document is undated, it is directed to J. W. Pickersgill, who, as the minister of Citizenshipand Immigration from 1954 to 1957, was the minister responsible for Indian Affairs.
Pickersgill, “About Parliament,” http://www.parl.gc.ca/parlinfo/Files/Parliamentarian.
aspx?Item=5996b081-97f6-4bde-8dec-52df3dca3f76&Language=E&Section=ALL (accessed 31
March 2014).
376. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Bishop Routhier to H. M. Jones,
18 May 1961. [GMA-001649-0000]
377. TRC, NRA, St. Paul’s Archives, series 4, box 18, file 2, “The Sociology of Native Canadians,”
Walter Hlady, in Studies & Documents (Etudes), Indianescom’ Inc., 6–12, 9. [OMI-034256] [Inthe portable document format file, pages 5 and 6 are printed in reverse order.]378. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Bishop Routhier to G. W.
Baldwin, 11 January 1963. [GMA-000859-0001]
379. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 494/25-1014, volume 2, Eric Barrington to R. F. Davey, 22 May 1961. [PLK-000922]
380. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11450, file 494/25-2-470, H. E. Hives
to R. F. Davey, 12 December 1961. [PLK-003575]
381. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 6-21-1, volume 2, H. M. Jones to Deputy Minister, 18 July 1958.
[120.00856]
382. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 494/25-1015, volume 1, A. C. Reid to Reverend J. Lemire, 28 June 1957. [MCI-004099]

600 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
383. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 494/25-1015, volume 1, R. F. Davey to F. Matters, 29 November 1957. [MCI-004102]
384. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 6-21-1, volume 2, “High School Education for Indians in Alberta,” G.
Michaud, 23 May 1959. [120.06927]
385. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 6-21-1,
volume 2 (Ctrl #27-6), undated [internal evidence suggests mid-1960s]. [NCA-008291]
386. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 1/25-1-7-6, volume 1, 1953–1970, “Minutes of conference re
Indian high school education in the prairie provinces, January 26th and January 27, 1960.”[120.00934]
387. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8621, file 506/6-1-018, part 1, I.
Tourigny to Colonel Laval Fortier, 6 February 1958. [ARS-000052-0001]
388. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 1/25-1-7-6, volume 1, 1953–1970, “Minutes of conference re
Indian high school education in the prairie provinces, January 26th and January 27, 1960.”[120.00934]
389. TRC, NRA, INAC – Departmental Library, “Indian League Urges Vocational Schools,” The
Indian Record, XXII (9), November 1959. [IMR-000180]
390. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, NAC, Edmonton, file 772/25-1, volume 1, 04/60–
06/70, “Comments from the Roman Catholic Indian people of the Blackfoot Reserve about
the School and Integration,” document not dated, received by Indian Affairs 30 August 1961.
[CFT-004380-0001]
391. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 6-21-1, volume 2, K. R. Brown to R. F. Battle, 5 January 1960. [AEMR019698]
392. TRC, NRA, Clive Linklater, “Integration or Inter-Sociation,” Indian Record, May–June 1963,
page 8. [IMR-000205] For Linklater’s position at Blue Quills, see: TRC, NRA, Library andArchives Canada – Edmonton, [118] 779/6-1-751, volume V, 09/61–03/65, NAC, Edmonton, P.
H. Lyonnais to T. R. Kelly, 19 September 1963. [BQL-003453-0002]
393. Barron, Walking in Indian Moccasins, 113.
394. TRC, NRA, No document location, no file source, Bishop Routhier to G. Kent Gooderham, 21
February 1965. [GMA-001688]
395. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG22, volume 1207, file 675/2, part 2, “A Preliminary
Study of the Lebret Indian Residential School High School Population,” 9 September 1965.
[PLD-017411-0001]
396. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/25-1019, volume 2, L. Charron, 31 July 1965. [PLD-007592]
397. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/25-1,
volume 1, J. G. McGilp to Region Supervisor, Saskatchewan, 13 August 1965. [PLD-0075940000]
398. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8754, file 655/25-1, part 1, R. F. Daveyto L. Charron, 3 June 1965. [PLD-007590-0001]
399. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/25-13019, volume 2, Leonard Charron to H. A. Matthews, 7 December 1965. [PLD-016701]
400. TRC, NRA, “Catholic Indian Groups Adds to Protest,” Calgary Herald, 10 June 1966. [CFT800196]
401. TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, CR-HQ, file 772/6-1-001, volume 10,
04/66–02/72, E. J. Dosdall to A. Charron, 18 September 1968. [CFT-002042]

Notes • 601
402. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 772/25-2-001,
01/64–01/69, volume 3, RCAP, [illegible] for R. D. Ragan to R. F. Davey, 25 September 1968.
[MRY-011382-0000]
403. TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, CR-HQ, file 772/6-1-001, volume 10, 04/66–
02/72, “Proceedings of Meeting of Blackfoot Parents held in Crowfoot School Gymnasium,
1:30 P.M., December 1st, 1968.” [CFT-002183-0002]
404. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, [205]701/6-1, volume III, 01/1968–02/1971, NAC, R.
D. Ragan to P. Deziel, 31 December 1968. [MOR-005193]
405. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, John W. Hennessey to Fathers
and Brothers, 18 September 1968. [OBG-004345-0000]
406. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, J. W. Hennessey to R. M. Hall, 14
September 1968. [BKM-000021-0001]
407. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Minutes of Meeting of Chiefs at
Kamloops Indian Residential School, 22 September 1968. [OKM-000776]
408. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, A. Noonan to Kay [Cronin], 23
September 1968. [OKM-000777]
409. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 600-1-6,
volume 7, Hostel Management N.W.T. [General and Policy], Feb. 1965–June 1965, T. E. Jones
to Arthur Laing, 27 May 1965. [RCN-002657]
410. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG55, v-890, file 8955-4, Deputy Minister,
Citizenship and Immigration to Secretary, Treasury Board, 3 August 1965. [AEMR-023099]
411. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 1/25-13-2, volume 1, R. F. Battle to Deputy Minister, 22 June 1966.
[AEMR-023058]
412. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 1/25-13-2,
volume 1, H. Fischer to Paul Deziel, 2 August 1966; [MRS-001461] TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file
1/25-13-2, volume 2, J. H. Gordon to Mr. MacDonald, 27 June 1968. [AEMR-022008]
413. Canada, House of Commons Debates (16 February 1966), 1303–1304; TRC, NRA, INAC –Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 1/25-13-2, volume 1, R. F.
Battle to Minister, Indian Affairs, 30 December 1966. [MRS-001464]
414. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG145, volume 221, file 766-1817-66, J. Lorne
MacDougall to R. Dion, 7 September 1966; [AEMR-121552] TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 1/2513-2, volume 1, 1965–1968, C. A. Edwards to J. D. Love, 15 March 1968. [AEMR-121597]
415. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 1/25-13-2,
volume 1, R. F. Battle to Minister, Indian Affairs, 30 December 1966. [MRS-001464]
416. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 1/25-13-2, volume 1, 1965–1968, C. A. Edwards to J. D. Love, 15
March 1968. [AEMR-121597] For date of the Public Service Staff Relations Act, see: Heron,Canadian Labour Movement, 96.
417. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 1/25-13-2, volume 2, Sylvain Cloutier to John A. MacDonald, 17January 1969. [AEMR-022074]
418. TRC, NRA, DIAND, Residential Schools Records Office, file 1/25-1-7-5 (118-2), 04/1965–
11/1974, volume 2, T. E. Jones to R. F. Davey, 13 August 1968; [AEMR-250907] DIAND HQ, file
1/25-13-2, volume 2, 06/1968–03/1969, Giolla Kelly to R. F. Davey, 12 August 1968. [AEMR121618B]
419. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “Government-Owned Indian
Residential Schools Operated by the Churches Under Agreements Between the Churches andIndian Affairs,” 1967. [UCB-005855]

602 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
420. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 3-4, box
95, file 1 (1966–1967), “Draft Meeting of Teachers Representatives November 9, 1966.” [NCA008351]
421. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 1/25-13-2,
volume 1 (Ctrl #122-3), R. F. Davey to Churchman, 2 July 1968. [NCA-016572]
422. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 1/25-13-2,
volume 1 (Ctrl #122-3), R. F. Davey to Churchman, 2 July 1968. [NCA-016572]
423. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 1/25-13-2,
volume 1, R. F. Battle to Deputy Minister, 31 October 1966. [MRS-001463]
424. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 1/25-13-2, volume 2, 06/1968–03/1969, J. A. MacDonald to J. J.
Carson, 8 November 1968; [AEMR-121640] DIAND HQ, file 1/25-13, volume 13, R. F. Battle to
Deputy Minister, DIAND, 2 February 1968. [AEMR-014646]
425. TRC, NRA, file 1/25-13-2, volume 2, J. C. Carson to J. A. MacDonald, 22 November 1968.
[AEMR-022060]
426. TRC, NRA, DIAND, Residential Schools Records Office, file 1/25-13-2, volume 2, J. A.
MacDonald to Minister, 22 November 1968, [AEMR-014663]
427. TRC, NRA, DIAND, Residential Schools Records Office, Binder of Circulars, 1960–1969 (Ctrl#300-6), R. F. Davey to Administrators of Student Residences, 6 January 1969. [AEMR-014189]
428. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, volume 13464, file 901/25-1, part 5,
Education – General, 01/1969–06/1969, FA 10-138, R. F. Davey to F. P. Dennis, 10 February
1969. [AEMR-254682]
429. TRC, NRA, DIAND, Residential Schools Records Office, file 1/25-13-2, volume 2, J. A.
MacDonald to Minister, 22 November 1968. [AEMR-014663]
430. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 1/25-13, volume 13, R. F. Battle to Deputy Minister, 2 February 1968;[AEMR-014646] TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection –Ottawa, 1/25-13, 01/68–07/68, volume 13, R. F. Davey to Regional Superintendent of Schools,
13 June 1968. [LOW-016591]
431. TRC, NRA, Document location unknown, file 1/25-13, R. F. Davey to Guy Voisin, 14 June 1968.
[AEMR-014590]
432. TRC, NRA, DIAND, Residential Schools Records Office, file 773/25-2, volume 1, 09/1965–
07/1976, R. F. Davey to Principals and Administrators of Residential Schools and Hostels, 12June 1968. [AEMR-010107]
433. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1969–70, 128.
434. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 1/25-13-2, volume 2, R. F. Davey to R. Steward, 24 January 1969.
[AEMR-022086]
435. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1968–69, 139; Canada, Annual
Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1970–71, 19.
436. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives – Edmonton, file 701/25-20-1, volume 1, 11/69–05/71,“Report of In-Service Training Workshop for Child-Care Workers,” Hilary White and Tony
Lund, 17 November 1970. [IRC-047141]
437. Newman, Indians of the Saddle Lake Reserve, 82, 83, 87.
438. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, [205]701/6-1 volume II, 03/64–12/67, NAC, E. R.
Daniels to Principal, Blue Quills Indian Residential School, 9 August 1966. [BQL-005045]
439. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 779/252-009, volume 1 (Ctrl #55-4), “To whom it may concern,” Julian Moses et al., 5 September
1966; [NCA-007327-0000] INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa,

Notes • 603
779/25-1-009, 05/63–11/70, volume 1, RCAP, Jules Van Brabant and Chief Moses to Arthur
Laing, 7 September 1966. [BQL-000180]
440. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 779/25-2009, volume 1 (Ctrl #55-4), R. F. Battle to the Minister, 26 September 1966. [NCA-007328]
441. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, 779/6-1-009, volume 04/65–12/66,
NAC – Edmonton, Roy L. Piepenburg to E. R. Daniels, 19 December 1966. [BQL-005008]
442. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 779/2511-485, volume 1 (locator R-194-290), E. R. Daniels to P. Meunier, 30 May 1967. [NCA-0180260006]
443. Newman, Indians of the Saddle Lake Reserve, 86.
444. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Jos Houle to G.-M. Latour, 24 July
1966. [OGP-417032]
445. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 701/25-13,
volume 1 (locator 104-7), R. F. Davey to J. M. [likely G.-M] Latour, 10 August 1966. [NCA012574-0001]
446. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 1/25-13, volume 12, 03/1966–12/1967, R. F. Davey to G.-M. Latour,
17 August 1966. [AEMR-013462] For middle name of S. R. Gagnon, see: TRC, NRA, Libraryand Archives Canada, NAC Personnel File, Jean, Raymond, Call No. 12-10057, Application for
Employment, 10 July 1970. [BQL-005825]
447. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1956–57, 61–62.
448. TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, 779/25-18, volume 2, 05/66–11/72, CR-HQ,“Minutes of the Official Regular Saddle Lake School Committee Meeting,” 28 June 1967. [BQL008288]
449. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11318, file 779/25-18-003, part 1,
03/1967, “School Committee Meeting at Saddle Lake Day School,” 25 February 1969. [SLA000438]
450. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11318, file 779/25-18-003, part2, 07/69–12/73, NAC, Untitled document, minutes of Saddle Lake School Committee, 9September 1969. [BQL-008150]
451. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11318, file 779/25-18-003, part 2,
07/69–12/73, NAC, Untitled document, minutes of a special meeting of the Saddle Lake
School Committee, 29 September 1969. [BQL-008153] For employment of Aboriginal people
at the school, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 779/25-2-009, 10/70–08/71,
volume 6, NAC, “The Blue Quills School Controversy,”13 July 1970. [BQL-008103]
452. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11318, 779/25-18, part 3, 06/69–
06/70, NAC, Untitled document, minutes from School Committees Conference in the Saddle
Lake/Athabaska District, 29–31 October 1969. [BQL-006981]
453. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11318, 779/25-18, part 3, 06/69–
06/70, NAC, Untitled document, minutes from School Committees Conference in the Saddle
Lake/Athabaska District, 29–31 October 1969. [BQL-006981]
454. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 779/25-2-009, 10/70–08/71, volume 6, NAC, “TheBlue Quills School Controversy,” 13 July 1970. [BQL-008103]
455. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 779/6-1, volume 1(locator N-336-352), untitled document, minutes of band meeting, Saddle Lake Band Hall, 7
December 1969. [NCA-018486-0002]
456. Cardinal, Unjust Society, 73.

604 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
457. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 779/25-1-1, volume 1, 04/70–02/72, V. G. Boultbee
to M. G. Jutras, 12 March 1970. [IRC-041325]
458. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11318, 779/25-18, part 3, 06/69–
06/70, NAC, “Saddle Lake/Athabaska District Conference of School Committees,” 8–9 April
1970. [BQL-006980]
459. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 779/252-009, volume 1 (Ctrl #55-4), Stanley Redcrow to Jean Chrétien, 10 April 1970; [NCA-0073240001] TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file779/25-1-009, 05/63–11/70, volume 1, RCAP, 22 April 1970. [BQL-000161]
460. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 779/25-2-009, 10/70–08/71, volume 6, NAC, “TheBlue Quills School Controversy,” 13 July 1970. [BQL-008103] For the organization name, see:
TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Georges-Marie Latour to Stanley
Redcrow, 9 July 1970. [OGP-130086]
461. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 779/25-2-009, 10/70–08/71, volume 6, NAC, “TheBlue Quills School Controversy,” 13 July 1970. [BQL-008103]
462. TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, 779/6-1-009, volume 11, 01/70–11/74, CRHQ, E. R. Daniels to J. B. Bergevin, 7 July 1970. [BQL-001094]
463. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Georges-Marie Latour to Stanley
Redcrow, 9 July 1970. [OGP-130086]
464. TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, 779/6-1-009, volume 11, 01/70–11/74, CRHQ, Stanley Redcrow to H. B. Robinson, 9 July 1970. [BQL-001079]
465. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 779/25-1-009,
05/63–11/70, volume 1, RCAP, Alice Makokis to J. B. Bergevin, 13 July 1970. [BQL-000102]
466. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 779/25-2-009, 10/70–08/71, volume 6, NAC, untitleddocument, 17 July 1970. [BQL-007951]
467. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 779/25-2-009, 10/70–08/71, volume 6, NAC, untitleddocument, 17 July 1970. [BQL-007951]
468. “Indians Stage Sit-in over School Transfer Proposal,” Edmonton Journal, 15 July 1970; “Cometo Us Indians Tell Chretien,” Edmonton Journal, 16 July 1970.
469. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 779/25-2009, volume 1 (Ctrl #55-4), Dennis Bell, “Indian School,” CP [Canadian Press], 15 September
1970. [NCA-007310-0001]
470. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “Blue Quills School, Saint-Paul,
Alberta, Chroniques, Volume III, janvier 1952 à décembre 1970,” Soeurs Grises de Montréal,
Prov. S. Albert Archives, 203, page 387 of 410-page portable document format file. [GNA000406]
471. “Indian Students Picket CN Tower,” Edmonton Journal, 20 July 1970; “Indian Sit-in,”Edmonton Journal, 22 July 1970.
472. “Indian Educational Seminar at Blue Quills School,” The Journal (St. Paul, Alberta), 29 July
1970.
473. TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, 779/6-1-009, volume 11, 01/70–11/74, CRHQ, Chief Deiter to Jean Chrétien, 20 July 1970; [BQL-001071] INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS
Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 779/2, 03/60–12/70, volume 2, D., Jim Shot Both Sides toJean Chrétien, 22 July 1970; [BQL-002205] Library and Archives Canada, 779/25-1-1, volume
1, 04/70–02/71, Paul Yewchuk to Jean Chrétien, 20 July 1970; [BQL-007114-0001] INAC –Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 779/2, volume 2 (Ctrl #3-7),

Notes • 605
D. C. Rowland to Jean Chrétien, 21 July 1970; [NCA-009574-0002] INAC – Resolution Sector –IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 779/2, 03/60–12/70, volume 2, D., Mr. and Mrs. Doug
Leighton to Jean Chrétien, 23 July 1970. [BQL-002202]
474. “Indians Will Operate Blue Quills School,” Edmonton Journal, 1 August 1970.
475. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 779/2,
volume 2 (Ctrl #3-7), Jean Chrétien to Stanley Redcrow, 31 July 1970. [NCA-009555-0000]
476. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 779/252-009, volume 1 (Ctrl #55-4), “Confidential: Notes: Re Blue Quills,” undated. [NCA-007302]
For Harpe as substitute teacher, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume8596, file 1/1-13, part 4, “List of Substitute Teachers, 1-1-62 to 31-30-62,” page 6. [PAR-017405]
For Harpe as physical education instructor, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS
Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 779/1-13-009, 04/64–03/71, volume 1, RCAP, T. R. Kelly,
to Indian Affairs Branch, 6 March 1964. [BQL-002009]
477. “Blue Quills School: Signing of Historic Agreement,” Native People, February 1971. For
delegation going to Ottawa, see: “Blue Quills – Another First for Indians Across the Nation,”
The Journal (St. Paul, Alberta), 7 October 1970.
478. “Blue Quills – Another First for Indians Across the Nation,” The Journal (St. Paul, Alberta), 7
October 1970.
479. National Indian Brotherhood, Indian Control of Indian Education, 3.
480. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 301/25-1, volume 9,
Jean Chrétien to George Manuel, 2 February 1973. [NCA-017031-0002]
481. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, R776-0-5 (RG55), volume 21328, T.B. #715958,
Honourable Treasury Board Submission, 30 October 1972. [NPC-523476b]
482. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 301/25-1, volume 9,“Authorization by the Treasury Board to the Extension of the Transfer of the Administration of
Certain Educational Programmes,” page 3 of 4-page portable document format file. [NCA017031-0004]
483. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1973–74, 44.
484. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1970–71, 19.
485. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 1984-85/112, box 47, file 451/25-1,“Mohawk Institute may close after 139 years,” no date. [TAY-001133]
486. TRC, NRA, Diocese of Huron Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, Huron University College,
London, ON, Luxton Papers, box 27, Indian Reserves, Richard Isaac to Whom It May Concern,
13 March 1970. [TAY-001432]
487. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 479/25-13001, volume 3, G. D. Cromb to Deputy Minister, 20 March 1970. [TAY-003053-0001]
488. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 479/25-1001, volume 2, J. B. Bergevin for W. J. Mussell to Olga Maxwell, 26 August 1970. [TAY-001163]
489. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 601/25-1, volume 6,
locator H69-268, David Ahenakew to J. McGilp, 16 February 1970. [NCA-016043-0000]
490. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 673/25-13,
volume 2, D. K. F. Wattie to file, 15 May 1970. [MRS-000613]
491. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 601/25-13,
volume 2, R. Martin to E. Belt, 30 June 1975. [MRS-001557-0000]
492. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 673/25-13,
volume 4, Sol Sanderson to Emile Korchinski, 4 April 1978. [MCF-000180-0000]

606 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
493. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 901/1, volume 16, 01/71–02/71, Education Branch, DIAND, “A
Proposal to Transfer the Control and Management of Student Residences to Indian People,”November 1970. [AEMR-018785]
494. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives Ottawa, No document file source, G. D. Cromb to Regional
Director, Indian and Eskimo Affairs, Saskatchewan Region, 8 January 1971. [OMI-030806]
495. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 601/25-131, volume 1 (Ctrl #77-S-25), J. Wright to K. Gooderham, 7 July 1973. [NCA-004556-0000]
496. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/2513, volume 2 (Ctrl #77-S-1), Qu’Appelle Indian Residential School Council Constitution andBylaws, undated document, stamped 23 August 1972. [NCA-001197-0002]
497. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 601/25-11 (Temp),
volume 3 (locator #N332-305), H. B. Robinson to Minister, 24 November 1972. [NCA-0173500000]
498. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/2513, volume 1, unsigned contract between Her Majesty the Queen and the Qu’Appelle Indian
Residential School Council, 7–8, 1973. [PLD-000219-0001]
499. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/2513, volume 1, unsigned contract between Her Majesty the Queen and the Qu’Appelle Indian
Residential School Council, 8–9, 1973. [PLD-000219-0001]
500. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/2513, volume 1, unsigned contract between Her Majesty the Queen and the Qu’Appelle Indian
Residential School Council, 9, 1973. [PLD-000219-0001]
501. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 672/25-131, untitled, resolution, 8 November 1972. [PAR-019357-0001]
502. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 672/2513-1, volume 1, G. K. Gooderham to Regional Director Saskatchewan, 12 December 1972.
[PAR-006634]
503. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 672/25131-1, “Indian School Dispute Erupts: Chiefs to Take Control; Anglican Church Objects,”
Prince Albert Daily Herald, 15 December 1972. [PAR-019356-0002]
504. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 672/25-1016, volume 1, “Brief provided to the Meeting of the Chiefs of the Federation of Saskatchewan
Indians,” The Diocese of Saskatchewan of the Anglican Church of Canada, 12 December 1972.
[PAR-000172-0001]
505. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 651/2513, part 2, “Gradual Takeover Seen for Student Residence,” Saskatchewan Indian, 25 January
1973. [PAR-019365-0001]
506. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, Prince Albert
Box 1, 1973–74, Prince Albert District Chiefs Conference, Resolution, Prince Albert Chiefs, 23
May 1973. [PAR-000303-0005]
507. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 672/2513-1, volume 1 (Ctrl #80-S-4), “Board of Directors, Prince Albert Indian Student Residence,”
5 April 1974, 3; [NCA-004562-0002] National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa,
file 601/25-1, volume 10, locator N334-305, “Briefing Notes – Saskatchewan Education
Problems,” 28 April 1974. [NCA-016052]

Notes • 607
508. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 672/6-1016, volume 18, G. K. Gooderham to Assistant Deputy Minister, Indian and Eskimo Affairs, 17
July 1973. [PAR-019403-0001]
509. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, RG10, Acc. 1996-97/499, file E421402285, volume 8, V. Unruh to Larry Goldade, 14 May 1985. [PAR-001441]
510. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E49742014, volume 2, P. E. Bisson to Milton Burns, 15 November 1985. [PAR-001654]
511. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E49741355, volume 5, “Prince Albert Indian Student Education Centre Operations Report,” 30
August 1988, revised September 1989, 7. [PAR-022067]
512. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files,
box C1, file 32, Serd Consultants Limited, “Indian Student Residence Resourcing Mechanism
Study, Final Report, Draft, April 1990,” 6–7. [GDC-068540]
513. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 601/25-131, volume 1, Onion Lake Band Council Resolution, 29 January 1974. [ORC-000367-0001]
514. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
G22, file 15, The Qu’Appelle Student Residence, 1973. [PLD-016338]
515. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E4965-1,
volume 1, “Prince Albert Indian Student Education Centre Mission Statement.” [PAR-0000430001]
516. Blue Quills First Nations College, Pimohteskanaw, 8.
517. Blue Quills First Nations College, Pimohteskanaw, 9–10.
518. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 371/251-019, volume 2, Right Rev. James A. Watton, B.A., D.D., Bishop of Moosonee, Schumacher,
ON to A. Gill, DIAND, Quebec, 7 September 1971. [FGA-000225-0001] For evidence of
appointment, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection –Ottawa, file 1/25-13, volume 20 (Ctrl #119-HQ-2), James Neacappo to Colin Wasacase, 2
October 1973. [NCA-011206-0000]
519. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives Ottawa, HR 9012.C73R 53, Yvon Levaque to Oblate Bishops
and Provincials, 21 July 1973. [OMI-030126]
520. TRC, NRA, “Historic Transfer of Authority,” Fraser Valley Record, 5 September 1973. [OMS000307]
521. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, RG10, FA 10-138, Acc. v85-86/353, file963/1-13, Perm. volume 6 [502372], part 1, Student Residence Establishment, 1969–78, NAC –Burnaby, A. H. Friesen to A. Noonan, 18 April 1973. [KAM-008144] For Matthew’s educational
background, see: TRC, NRA, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, The
Public Service Commission of Canada, Application for Employment, Matthew Nathan, 1January 1970. [AANDC-286031]
522. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 601/25-131, J. B. Freeman to James A. Roberts, 2 April 1973. [PAR-019374]
523. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E4974-2,
volume 2, “Prince Albert District Chiefs Meeting on the Prince Albert Student Residence,” 26
April 1973. [PAR-123592-0000]
524. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, Prince Albert
Box 1, 1973–74, Prince Albert District Chiefs Conference, Minutes Meeting, Prince Albert
Chiefs Conference, 9 November 1973. [PAR-004260]

608 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
525. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 1993-94/456, box 16, file 672/25-13-016,
volume 3, Barbara Sluchinski to Colin Wasacase [first name misspelled in letter], 1 October
1973. [PAR-019428]
526. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, NAC, RG22, volume 1209, file 982/2, part 1, Minutesof Special Meeting of the Advisory Boards of Indian Residences throughout British Columbia,
15 January 1971. [MIS-003460-0001]
527. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, file 951/6-1-030, volume 9, New Christie
Student Residence, 1974–1977, FA 10-138, Archival Acc. V1985-86/397, Archival box 2, R. C.
Telford to L. E. Wight, 6 May 1974; [CST-001710-0000] INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa
901/16-2, volume 5, Audit Reports – B.C. Regional Office, 07/1974–06/1978, locator #L362,
DIAND – Ottawa Central Registry, [illegible] for R. C. Pankhurst to Director, Finance andManagement, 29 January 1975. [CST-009455]
528. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, G. H. Aitchison to
Patrick W. Little, 1 August 19975. [AANDC-762139]
529. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, RG10, FA 10-138, Acc. v85-86/491, file981/25-13-1, Perm. volume 1 [500541], Transfer-Takeover-Closure Kamloops, 1977–78, NAC– Burnaby, J. McCallum to F. J. Walchli, 23 June 1978; [KAM-006989] Library and Archives
Canada, RG10, volume 85-86/491, file 981/25-13-1, V+Box 1, Dec. 77–Sept 78, A. H. Friesen to
W. Van Iterson, 27 July 1978; [KAM-001354] Anglican Church of Canada Archives, Kamloops,
BC, A. W. Harding to J. M. Neely, 18 September 1978. [GDC-070607]
530. TRC, NRA, INAC – BC Regional Records Office – Vancouver, BC-CR, V87-395, box 87-09D40/42-009, E4974-2031, volume 3, 04/83–07/84, C. E. Van Alstyne to J. Aleck, 25 June 1984.
[MIS-000494] For opening date, see: McNally, Lord’s Distant Vineyard, 66–67. For closing
date, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – BC Regional Records Office – Vancouver BC-CR, V87-395, box
87-09-D40/42-009, E4974-2031, volume 3, 04/83–07/84, C. E. Van Alstyne to J. Aleck, 25 June
1984. [MIS-000494]
531. See, for example: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, Perm. volume12018, file 1/25-13-2, part 4, Legal Status of Domestic Staffs – Crown Owned Residential
School – HQ January 1974–May 1976, FA 10-103, “Tender and Contract for Service or Worknot Exceeding $5,000,” Re: Anglican Church of Canada, 15 March 1976. [RCN-007098-0001]
532. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “St. Mary’s Closing Ends Era in
Native Education: Last B.C. Indian Residence,” Home Mission, John Tritschler, September
1985, 10–15. [OMS-000326]
533. TRC, NRA, St. Paul’s Archives, series 3, box 17, file 5, Province – History 1958–1988, “St. Paul’s
Province,” Thomas A. Lascelles, 17 February 1987, 3. [OMI-035053]
534. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
C8, file 20, George Axon to Herman Blind, 25 June 1991. [GDC-012763-0000]
535. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E4974-1,
volume 2, “CBC Afternoon Edition, Interview with Gerry Stonechild on Residential Schools,” 6
April 1990. [PAR-000041-0000]
536. Jules, “Eddy Jules,” 65. For Matthew’s being trained to become administrator, see: TRC, NRA,
Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby FA 10-138, Acc. V85-86/361, volume 1 [502365],
901/1-2-2-9-3, Miscellaneous Education Seminars and Conferences, part 2, 1973–78, “TheDepartment of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, 11th Annual Child Care Workshop,
August 22–28, 1973.” [125.03681] For Matthew as administrator, see: TRC, NRA, Library andArchives Canada – Burnaby RG10, FA 10-189, Acc. 96-97/816, file 25-1, box 30, part 5, IndianNotes • 609
Education–General, 1973, NAC – Burnaby, N. Matthew to Committee Member, 7 January
1974. [KAM-006673]
537. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E49741355, volume 5, Prince Albert Indian Student Education Centre Operation Report, 30 August
1988, revised September 1989, 12. [PAR-022067]
538. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, NAC, RG22, volume 1209, file 982/2, part 1,“Minutes,” Special Meeting of the Advisory Boards of Indian Residences throughout British
Columbia, 16 January 1971. [MIS-003460-0001]
539. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files,
box C1, file 32, “Indian Student Residence Resourcing Mechanism Study, Final Report, Draft,April 1990,” Serd Consultants Limited, 46–47. [GDC-068540]
540. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E49741355, volume 5, Prince Albert Indian Student Education Centre Operation Report, 30 August
1988, revised September 1989, 12. [PAR-022067]
541. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E49742015, volume 1, “Brief Presented to the Honourable B. McKnight Minister of Indian andNorthern Affairs,” Marieval Community Education Centre Board of Directors, 23 September
1986. [MRS-000636]
542. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E49741355, volume 5, Prince Albert Indian Student Education Centre Operation Report, 30 August
1988, revised September 1989, 14–15. [PAR-022067]
543. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, Acc. E1996-97/270, box 8, file 675/2513, volume 1, Andy Michel to Jim Freeman, 11 July 1979. [SMD-012142]
544. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
C1, file 32, “Indian Student Residence Resourcing Mechanism Study, Final Report, Draft,”Serd Consultants Limited, April 1990, 12. [GDC-068540]
545. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E49742, volume 2, “Special meeting of the Board of Directors of the Prince Albert Indian Student
Residence,” 6 September 1974. [PAR-123588-0000]
546. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 673/25-13,
volume 2, R. Martin to J. B. Freeman, 7 January 1976. [MRS-000033-0000]
547. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E4965-1,
volume 1, Reasons for Admission to P.A.I.S.E.C.: After Discharge – Summary – September 15,
1987. [PAR-000059-0001]
548. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E4965-1,
volume 1, “Prince Albert Indian Education Centre,” undated document. [PAR-000059-0002]
549. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E49741355, volume 5, Prince Albert Indian Student Education Centre Operation Report, 30 August
1988, revised September 1989, 3–9. [PAR-022067]
550. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1969–70, 128.
551. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E49742020, volume 3 (Ctrl #7-7), D. Wattie to G. P. Kerr, 17 March 1988. [NCA-007261-0000]
552. Blue Quills First Nations College, Pimohteskanaw, 14.
553. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E49742012, volume 3, Jack Bass to Brian White, 12 March 1987. [DRS-000168-0004]

610 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
554. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 377/2513-005, volume 1, Memorandum from Réjean Perron, to Aurelien Gill, 26 September 1978.
[BAX-000806]
555. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 377/2513-005, volume 1 (Ctrl #83-Q-10), Minutes of a meeting of the Conseil des Montagnais du
Lac St-Jean, Gaetane Courtois, 5 March 1979. [NCA-015459-0001] For the report, see: TRC,
NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 377/25-13-005,
volume 2, “Utilisation de la résidence de Pointe-Bleue,” Daniel Cloutier, 3 March 1979. [PTB001258-0000]
556. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 301/25-13,
volume 4, Report on Hostels and Student Residences, Marcel Martel, 8 December 1972, 7.
[FGA-000137-0001]
557. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E4974-076,
volume 3, André Côté to Germain Paul, 20 June 1991. [PTB-001189]
558. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, NAC, RG22, volume 1209, file 982/2, part 1, Minutesof Special Meeting of the Advisory Boards of Indian Residences throughout British Columbia,
16 January 1971, 6. [MIS-003460-0001]
559. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, NCR-E4974-1(Encl 1), volume 3 (Ctrl #446-19), “Saskatchewan Region, Student Residences: An Issue
Management Discussion Paper,” 8 February 1994. [NCA-016023-0002]
560. TRC, NRA, “Starr Admits to Sexual Assaults,” Trevor Sutter, Regina Leader-Post, 3 February
1993. [GDC-026641]
561. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, NCR-E4974-1(Encl 1), volume 3 (Ctrl #446-19), Saskatchewan Region, Student Residences: An Issue
Management Discussion Paper, 8 February 1994. [NCA-016023-0002]
562. For date of Starr’s resignation, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical
Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, Advisory Board Reports, 1984, Minutes Gordon Student
Residence Advisory Board Meeting, 11 December 1984. [GDC-000025]
563. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E49652013, volume 3, Beauval Residential School, box 1, file 1-5, Memorandum of Understanding
and Agreement Re: The Beauval Indian Education Centre, 6 June 1995. [BVL-001306]
564. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E497410474, volume 2, Ray Gamracy to Dana Commercial Credit Canada, 6 June 1996; [SMD000651-0000] Gordon’s School, Anglican Indian and Eskimo Residential Schools, Anglican
Church of Canada, www.anglican.ca/relationships/histories/gordons-school-punnichy(accessed 5 May 2014).
565. For Lestock, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection –Ottawa, Muskowekwan Residential School, box 67, file 1, Muskowekwan Education Centre
Board of Directors, Minutes 16 July 1997. [MDD-007310-0001] For Grayson, see: TRC, NRA,
INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E4971-361, volume 3,
Myler Savill to Lionel Sparvier, 21 July 1997. [MRS-000002-0001] For Prince Albert, see: TRC,
NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E4974-1355,
volume 8, “Education Centre Set to Re-open,” Prince Albert Herald, Carrie Hunter, 15 October
1997. [PAR-003103-0001]
566. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E49741355, volume 7, Julia Johnston to Henry Naytowhow, 3 November 1996. [PAR-003369]

Notes • 611
567. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E49741355, volume 8, Lac la Ronge, Band Council Resolution, 28 February 1997. [PAR-003110-0001]
568. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E49741355, volume 9, Merv Buckle to Jerry McLeod, 19 March 1997. [PAR-017790]
569. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E49741355, volume 8, “Education Centre Set to Re-open,” Carrie Hunter, Prince Albert Herald, 15
October 1997; [PAR-003103-0001] Pat Cook to Cathy Young, 16 December 1997. [PAR-0031020000]
570. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E4974-602017, Irvin Starblanket to Roy Bird, 1 October 1997. [PLD-009978-0002]
571. LaRose, “Wrecker’s Ball Claims White Calf Collegiate,” http://www.ammsa.com/publications/saskatchewan-sage/wreckers-ball-claims-white-calf-collegiate-0.

The educational record: 1940–2000
1. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Address Given by Miss Kay
Cronin to Oblate Principals, at Workshop Held in Ottawa, August 1964, 1–5. [UCB-005650]
For biographical information on Kay Cronin, see: ABC Bookworld, “Kay Cronin,” http://www.
abcbookworld.com/view_author.php?id=5600 (accessed 14 May 2014); “Oblate Cemetery,”Fraser River Heritage Park, http://www.heritagepark-mission.ca/omicemetery.html (accessed 14 May 2014).
2. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1959, 96.
3. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1960, 55; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1965, 73; Canada, Annual Report of the Department ofIndian Affairs, 1965–66, 124 (6,717 figure reached by subtracting 3,158 boarders attending
non-federal schools from total of 9,875).
4. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1968–69, 134.
5. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7194, file 511/25-1-015, O. B. Strapp
to P. Phelan, 27 September 1952. [BRS-000909]
6. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1965–66, 61.
7. TRC, NRA, National Archives of Canada – Burnaby, FA 10-138, 07/1956, Perm. volume 13528,
C. G. Brown, G. J. Buck, B. O. Filoteau, to J. W. Pickersgill, “Report of the Educational Survey
Commission on the Educational Facilities and Requirements of the Indians of Canada,” July
1956, 8–9. [AEMR-254362]
8. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, Acc. 71.220/9187/245, Handbook for Teachers inAlberta Indian Schools, Report of the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, 1954, 12.
[OMI-030957]
9. Canada, Statistical Report and Analysis of the Distribution, 76.
10. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1965–66, 60–61.
11. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1969–70, 130.
12. TRC, NRA, St. Paul’s Archives, series 4, box 10, file 6, G. F. Kelly to G. Voisin, 9 June 1967, 2.
[OMI-033794]
13. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 1/25-13-2,
volume 1, G. Caldwell to G. F. Kelly, 18 July 1967. [SRS-001146]

612 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
14. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1924, 15. For examples of other(nearly verbatim) commitments made in this period, see: Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1915, xxx; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of IndianAffairs, 1916, xxxv; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1917, 15;
Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1918, 23; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1919, 33; Canada, Annual Report of the Department ofIndian Affairs, 1920, 14; Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1921, 28;
Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1922, 18.
15. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives Ottawa, HR 8004.C73R 4, Minutes of the Committee of the
Indian Missions of the Oblate Fathers, 12 October 1939, page 5 of translated version. [OMI033064]
16. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1942, 135; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1944, 155.
17. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1947, 216.
18. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1948, 217.
19. TRC, NRA, Presbyterian Church of Canada, Residential Schools Name Index, 2009, file 19887004-12-1, N. M. Rusaw to F. Matthews, 1 August 1948. [BIR-002711]
20. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 4, J. Coleman toIndian Commissioner for British Columbia, 14 October 1947, 8. [MIK-002279-0002]
21. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, H. F. Dunlop to P. Phelan, 4November 1948. [SEC-000063]
22. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, A. Noonan to L. K. Poupore, 27
November 1960. [CIS-000553]
23. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Ottawa, HR 6741.C73R 14a,
Inspector of Separate Schools, Province of Ontario to Principal, Kenora Indian Residential
School, Kenora, Ontario, April 1949. [KNR-002581-0001]
24. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Ottawa, HR 6741.C73R 14a, B.
F. Neary to J. C. Plourde, 14 April 1949. [KNR-002581-0000]
25. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1955, 51.
26. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1955, 51.
27. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1961, 58.
28. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1942, 135.
29. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1953, 58.
30. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1958, 56.
31. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1961, 59.
32. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1965, 36.
33. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 1/25-1, volume 22, R. F. Davey to Bergevin, 15 September 1959, 3.
[AEMR-019616]
34. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 3, R. A. Hoey to
Dr. McGill, 9 November 1942. [MER-000498]
35. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 4, A. G. Hamilton to DIAND, 8 November 1944. [BRS-000507]
36. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 772/6-1-010, part 3, volume 8672, 1953–1957, NAC,
R. F. Davey to M. C. Macdonald, 9 August 1956. [MOR-005774]
37. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1956–57, 56.
38. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1958, 57.

Notes • 613
39. Canada, Special Joint Committee, Minutes of Evidence, D. F. Brown Presiding, 27 May 1974.
40. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8598, file 1/1-13-2, part 1, R. F. Daveyto G. Laviolette, 10 September 1953. [AEMR-120553]
41. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document source file, A. H. Fleury to Father, 10 July
1946. [OMS-000639]
42. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8452, file 774/23-5-016, part 1, Inspector of Schools [Illegible] to Indian Affairs Branch, 17 December 1945. [ERM-006169]
43. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8452, file 774/23-5-016, part 1, Inspector of Schools [Illegible] to Indian Affairs Branch, 18 December 1945. [ERM-006168]
44. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8452, file 774/23-5-016, part 1, Inspector of Schools [Illegible] to Indian Affairs Branch, 19 December 1945. [ERM-006167]
45. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B94 3972, Principal, Ermineskin Indian
Residential School to Indian Affairs Branch, “Principal’s Report for the Year ending 31 March
1948, School: Ermineskin Residential School,” March 1948. [OGP-032546]
46. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B92 3895, H. N. Woodsworth to Director, Indian Affairs Branch, 30 December 1948. [OGP-030575]
47. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, PAA 71.220 B92 3896, H. N. Woodsworth to Director,
Indian Affairs Branch, 22 December 1949. [OGP-030613]
48. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, PAA 71.220 B92 3898, H. N. Woodsworth to G. K.
Gooderham, 5 October 1950. [OGP-030675]
49. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 774/23-5-016,
1951–1966, volume 2, RCAP, O. Massing, High School Inspector, 30 October 1959. [ERM000008]
50. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file number, L. C. Hunter to E. Routhier, 30
March 1960. [GMA-001639]
51. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8599, file 1/1-13-2, part 3, R. F. Daveyto G. K. Gooderham, 15 February 1962, 3; [FAR-005389] Titley, “Industrious, but Formal andMechanical.”
52. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B161 2357, E. O. Drouin to Chief Shoton Both Sides and Blood Band Council, Indian Agency, Cardston, 27 December 1966. [OGP022362]
53. TRC, NRA, National Archives of Canada, Edmonton file 773(103)/6-2, volume 1, 07/1956–
04/1969, R. F. Battle to R. F. Davey, 29 November 1957. [AEMR-200985]
54. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, [205]701/1-13, volume III, 01/65–12/66, G. K. Gooderham to M. Brodhead, 22 April 1965. [RCA-001770]
55. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, RCAP, file772/25-1-001, volume 1, 05/37–12/72, M. McMahon to R. F. Davey, 3 November 1965. [CFT000244-0000]
56. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, box 306, file 701/1-13, part 2, 02/1966–
11/1967, G. K. Gooderham to L. G. P. Waller, 7 April 1966. [RCA-010614-0000]
57. Newman, Indians of the Saddle Lake Reserve, 84.
58. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, J. P. Mulvihill to L. K. Poupore, 6June 1956. [OKM-000554-0000]
59. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, L. K. Poupore to H. M. Jones, 31
October 1956. [OKM-000560]

614 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
60. TRC, NRA, St. Paul’s Archives, series 2, file 5, G. F. Kelly to M. Whitehead, 15 February 1989.
[OMI-034528] For the start of Kelly’s career, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada– Ottawa, RG10, volume 6452, file 884-1, part 3, 1935–1960, Kootenay Agency – Kootenay
Industrial School – General Administration, FA 10-17, Microfilm reel C-8774, NAC Ottawa, J.
Scannell to P. Phelan, 17 August 1945. [EGN-008389]
61. Cardinal, Unjust Society, 46. For the school that Cardinal attended, see: Titley, “Industrious,
but Formal and Mechanical,” 59.
62. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6015, file 1-1-6-Alta, part1, “Indian Education in Alberta,” undated report of meeting held on 22 August 1946. [RCA000036]
63. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 3, R. A. Hoey to
H. McGill, 9 December 1941. [GDC-017558] For details on Andrew Gordon, see: TRC, NRA,
Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 2, R. W. Frayling to DIAND,“Memorandum into the cause and circumstances of the death of Andrew Gordon,” 11 March
1939. [GDC-028479]
64. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, No document file source, G. M. Bushell, “Visit ofIndian Committee to Gordon’s Reserve, to confer with members of Gordon’s Indian Band,”July 12, 1944. [GDC-008720]
65. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 3, F. E. R. Badham to H. McGill, 2 September 1944. [GDC-017576]
66. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 3, E. H. Knowles
to T. H. Crerar, 21 October 1944. [GDC-011640-0001]
67. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 3, R. S. Davis to
DIAND, Department of Mines and Resources, 23 October 1944. [GDC-017580]
68. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 3, M. Christianson to R. A. Hoey, 8 December 1944. [GDC-017334]
69. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1921, 28.
70. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6014, file 1-1-6 MAN, part 1, D. C.
Scott to Meighen, 1 June 1920. [NCA-002403]
71. Canada, Special Joint Committee, Minutes of Evidence, D. F. Brown Presiding, 15 April 1947,
483–484.
72. Canada, Special Joint Committee, Minutes of Evidence, D. F. Brown Presiding, 17 April 1947,
505.
73. Canada, Special Joint Committee, Minutes of Evidence, D. F. Brown Presiding, 15 April 1947,
483–484.
74. Canada, Special Joint Committee, Minutes of Evidence, D. F. Brown Presiding, 17 April 1947,
505.
75. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1953, 58.
76. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 81/25-1, volume 1, R. F. Davey to Regional Supervisor, North Bay, 21
December 1959. [AEMR-019696]
77. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, box 362, Acc. 1999-01431-6, file 901/23-16,
part 1, W. S. Arneil to R. F. Davey, 28 January 1960. [NCA-006402]
78. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6469, file 890-4, part 1, Microfilm reel
C-8787, A. H. Fleury to D. M. MacKay, 12 November 1943. [MIS-003051]
79. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6256, file 576-4, part 1, M. E. McNeillto Neary, 2 December 1948. [BRS-000055]

Notes • 615
80. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2.15, box 27, file 2, J. W. House to L. A. Dixon, 10 January 1947, 7. [AAC-087429]
81. TRC, NRA, National Archives of Canada, RG10, volume 8760, file 901/25-1, part 2, R. F. Daveyto Director, 14 March 1956, 4. [AEMR-120651]
82. Linteau et al., Histoire de Québec contemporain, 660–662.
83. Quebec, Comité Catholique du Conseil de l’Instruction Publique, Programme d’Études desÉcoles Élémentaires, 481–482, quoted in Hodgetts, What Culture? What Heritage?, 31, 40.
84. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 1/25-1 (E.10), “Report on Textbooks,” 6–9. [AEMR-019193A] Sluman’sreport was published as Norma Sluman, “The Text Book Indian,” Toronto Education Quarterly
5, no. 3 (1967).
85. Manitoba, Indian and Métis Conference, Committee of the Community Welfare PlanningCouncil, “Survey of Canadian History Textbooks,” Manitoba Department of Education, 1964,
18, quoted in McDiarmid and Pratt, Teaching Prejudice, 23.
86. Commission Parent, Rapport de la Commission royale, vol. 3, part A, para. 210, http://classiques.uqac.ca/contemporains/quebec_commission_parent/rapport_parent_4/rapport_parent_vol_4.pdf.
87. Vanderburgh, Canadian Indian, 18.
88. For one example of such letters to provincial education ministers, see: TRC, NRA, Libraryand Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7187, file 301/25-1, part 1, G. F. Davidson to J. L. Page, 19
December 1960. [NCA-013226]
89. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 1/25-1 (E.10), “Report on Textbooks,” 1–6. [AEMR-019193A]
90. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 1/25-1 (E.10), R. F. Davey to All School Superintendents, 29 July 1968.
[AEMR-019193]
91. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 1/25-1, volume 22, R. F. Davey to Bergevin, 15 September 1969, 2.
[AEMR-019616]
92. McDiarmid and Pratt, Teaching Prejudice, vii–viii, 33.
93. McDiarmid and Pratt, Teaching Prejudice, 41.
94. McDiarmid and Pratt, Teaching Prejudice, 88–90.
95. McDiarmid and Pratt, Teaching Prejudice, 51.
96. McDiarmid and Pratt, Teaching Prejudice, 68.
97. Manitoba Indian Brotherhood, The Shocking Truth, iii.
98. Manitoba Indian Brotherhood, The Shocking Truth, Appendix IV, List of Most Frequently Used
Terms, 12.
99. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Tyler Bjornson File,‘Presbyterian Research,’ “Presbyterian Indian Residential School Staff Handbook,” 1. [IRC041206]
100. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Tyler Bjornson File,‘Presbyterian Research,’ “Presbyterian Indian Residential School Staff Handbook,” 2–3. [IRC041206]
101. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Tyler Bjornson File,‘Presbyterian Research,’ “Presbyterian Indian Residential School Staff Handbook,” 3–4. [IRC041206]
102. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Tyler Bjornson File,‘Presbyterian Research,’ “Presbyterian Indian Residential School Staff Handbook,” 4. [IRC041206]

616 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
103. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
16A, file 10, “Staff Manual: Gordon’s Indian Residential School, Anglican Church of Canada,”
undated, unpaginated, 6 of 17 pages. [GDC-043268]
104. TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Cariboo Archives Section #205, St. George Indian Residential
School, Card D.C. 2C11, Lytton-St.-George’s School, #88.44, A. W. Harding, Vice-Principal,“All Saints Indian Residential School Staff Manual 2nd Revision, 1967,” 5. [AEMR-177341]
105. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6160, file 577-1, part 2, Microfilm reel
C-8651, B. F. Neary to G. E. Trudeau, 10 May 1947. [120.00515]
106. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6160, file 577-1, part 2, G. E. Trudeau
to B. F. Neary, 9 June 1947. [CLD-001047]
107. Snow, These Mountains are our Sacred Places, 110.
108. Snow, These Mountains are our Sacred Places, 110.
109. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7936, file 32-104, J. W. House to Mr.
Gooderham, 26 January 1942. [OLD-004156-0001]
110. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7936, file 32-104, G. H. Gooderham to
C. P. Schmidt, 17 February 1942. [OLD-004156-0000]
111. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7936, file 32-104, J. Crowfoot to Department of Indian Affairs, 20 February 1942. [OLD-004154]
112. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7936, file 32-104, C. P. Schmidt toSecretary, Indian Affairs Branch, 5 August 1942. [OLD-004158]
113. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 875-1, part 4, volume 6426, 1937–1947, NAC, F. E.
Anfield to Ex-Pupils & Graduates of the Kwawkewlth Agency, 6 April 1943. [MIK-002742-0001]
114. Canadian Welfare Council, Indian Residential Schools, 97–98.
115. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7183, file 1/25-1-1-4, part 2, Panel on
Indian Research – Committee on Scientific Problems of Indian Affairs, 1952–1959, Microfilm
reel C-9695, FA 10-28, H. M. Jones to E. Bussiere, 13 September 1954. [AEMR-255680]
116. MacGregor, Chief, 23.
117. Willis, Geniesh, 45–46.
118. Knockwood, Out of the Depths, 28.
119. Canadien, From Lishamie, 56.
120. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E4974-2,
volume 2, “Prince Albert District Chiefs Meeting on the Prince Albert Student Residence, 16
April 1973,” 2. [PAR-123592-0000]
121. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
18, file 2, Kathleen [Stewart] to Frieda [Matthews], 25 June 1953. [CJC-007878]
122. Comeau, Elijah, 49.
123. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 81/25-1(Ctrl #240-13), R. Morris to Chiefs, Petahbun [Pehtabun] Area, 9 February 1979, 2–3. [NCA001721]
124. TRC, NRA, No document location, Soeurs Grises de Montreal, Prov. S. Albert Archives, Blue
Quills School, Eliza Marie Lagre, “Two New Teachers,” The Moccasin Telegram, Volume 8,
Number 1, September–October, 1950, 5 of 9-page portable document format. [GNA-000524]
For background of the program, see: Persson, Blue Quills, 130–132.
125. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “Rev. Jean Lessard Leaves Blue
Quills,” St. Paul Journal, 1 June 1951, 7 of 110-page portable document format file. [GNA000409]

Notes • 617
126. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “Education Week at Blue Quills:
Open House for Parents and Visitors,” St. Paul Journal, 18 May 1951, 5 of 110-page portable
document format. [GNA-000409]
127. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “Education Week at Blue Quills:
Open House for Parents and Visitors,” St. Paul Journal, 18 May 1951, 5 of 110-page portable
document format. [GNA-000409]
128. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives Alberta, PAA 71.220 B132 5770, Eva Cardinal, “On the Air,”
Moccasin Telegram, Volume 8, Number 1, 8 of 143-page portable document format. [OGP010021]
129. TRC, NRA, Soeurs Grises de Montreal, Prov. S. Albert Archives, Blue Quills School, Edna
Minoose, “Girl’s [sic] Choir on the Air”; Eric Cardinal, “Junior Boys on the Air,” Moccasin Telegram, Volume 8, Number 3, January–February 1951, 3 of 10-page portable document format.
[GNA-000526]
130. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, PAA 71.220 B132 5770, “Recording Indian Songs,”
Romeo Paul, Moccasin Telegram, Volume 8, Number 1, September–October, 28 of 143-page
portable document format. [OGP-010021]
131. Persson, Blue Quills, 132.
132. TRC, NRA, No document source, no document location, “CCC Brief on Indian Welfare and
Education,” Indian Record, June 1960, 3. [BVT-001818]
133. Hawthorn, A Survey of the Contemporary Indians, 2:37.
134. Canadian Welfare Council, Indian Residential Schools, 100.
135. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B56 2429, J. Weitz, “Report on the useof the language, history and customs of the Blood Indians in the classes of Level I, during theschool year 1968–69,” 30 June 1969. [OGP-023347]
136. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1974–75, 32–33.
137. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1971–72, 29.
138. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/2513-1, volume 1, “Minutes Qu’Appelle Boarding Meeting Held at Lebret Student Residence,” 18
August 1972, 2. [PLD-007652]
139. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1974–75, 32–33.
140. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 1, 03/1948–
08/1948, Nutrition Division Department of National Health and Welfare, “Health Aspects in
Relation to Food Services: Indian Residential Schools,” November 1946, 1. [AEMR-170062A]
141. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, D. S. Pitts to
L. B. Pett, 2 April 1948. [CJC-002035]
142. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1942, 135.
143. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6033, file 150-61, part 1, R. A. Hoey to
McGill, 2 October 1944, 5. [NRD-001524-0000]
144. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6014, file 1-1-6 MAN, part 1, A. J.
Doucet to P. Phelan, 3 July 1946. [NCA-002446]
145. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2.15, box 27, file 2, J. W. House to L. A. Dixon, 10 January 1947. [AAC-087429]
146. Canada, Annual Report of the Department Indian Affairs, 1956–57, 59.
147. Canadian Welfare Council, Indian Residential Schools, 100.
148. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG22, volume 1209, file 979/1-1, v. 1, G. H. Barry to
D. M. MacKay, 8 January 1941, 6. [IRC-049021]

618 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
149. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6307, file 653-1, part 2, M. Christianson to F. Rhodes, 28 October 1940. [FHR-000237-0001]
150. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, NAC – Ottawa, 772/3-6, volume 1, 1940–1954, Minutes from the council meeting for the Stony Indian Agency, 15 October 1946, 3. [MOR-006118]
151. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6358, Microfilm reel C-8713, file 75710, part 2, 1943–1952, G. H. Gooderham to Indian Affairs Branch, Department of Mines andResources, 13 November 1946. [IRC-041316-0000]
152. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6210, file 468-10, part 4, L. Doxtator
to Department of Indian Affairs, 20 April 1943. [MER-003563-0002]
153. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6210, file 468-10, part 4, O. B. Strapp
to P. Phelan, 24 April 1943. [MER-003564-0000]
154. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6210, file 468-10, part 4, R. A. Hoey toO. B. Strapp, 28 April 1943. [MER-003566]
155. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 3, S. H. Soper to R. A. Hoey,
18 September 1944.
156. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 3, R. A. Hoey to S. H. Soper,
19 September 1944.
157. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 3, Report Re Survey of Indian Education on Reserves in Western Ontario, undated, 1944, 3.
158. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 6-21-1, volume 1, Indian Work Investigation Commission to General
Synod, Winnipeg, “Report to the General Synod,” 1946, 7. [AEMR-016149]
159. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 4, R. T. Chapin
to A. G. Hamilton, 10 September 1941. [BRS-000461-0001] For the boy’s age, see: TRC, NRA,
Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6258, file 576-10, part 8, “Application for Admission,” Kenneth Smith, 1 July 1938. [BRS-002184-0007]
160. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6054, file 265-1, part 2, R. A. Hoey toJ. P. Mackey, 18 May 1942. [SRS-000115]
161. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6054, file 265-1, part 2, J. P. Mackey to
Secretary, DIAND, 23 May 1942. [SRS-000116]
162. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6259, file 576-23, part 1, G. C. Elwyn
to RCMP, 20 April 1949. [BRS-000332]
163. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6259, file 576-10, part 16, T. R. L.
MacInnes to B. F. Neary, 11 May 1949. [BRS-000333]
164. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6251, file 575-1, part 3, R. A. Hoey to
A. G. Smith, 24 September 1942. [BIR-000272]
165. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6352, file 753-23, part 1, 1935–1944,
Microfilm reel C-8709, Acting Director to J. T. Faunt, 18 December 1944. [EDM-003369]
166. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11973, file 466/32-25-2, part 1, W. J.
Zimmerman to R. J. Stallwood, 4 December 1953. [TAY-001852-0001]
167. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/23-5065, volume 1, C. A. F. Clark to Superintendent of Education, 10 October 1949. [BRS-000556]
168. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7194, file 511/25-1-015, P. Phelan toO. B. Strapp, 10 June 1952. [BRS-000884]
169. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7194, file 511/25-1-015, O. B. Strapp
to P. Phelan, 27 September 1952. [BRS-000909]

Notes • 619
170. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 773/25-1-004, volume 1, 1936–1956, P. Phelan to L.
G. P. Waller, 4 March 1952. [IRC-048232]
171. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 773/25-1-004, volume 1, 1936–1956, L. G. P. Waller
to Superintendent of Education, Indian Affairs Branch, 8 April 1952. [IRC-048233]
172. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1067, volume 1, P. Phelan to R. S. Davis, 4 March 1952. [PLP-000051]
173. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/23-5076, volume 1, G. H. Marcoux to DIAND, “Report Concerning the Sandy Bay Indian Residential School,” 22 February 1952. [SBR-000453]
174. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 1/25-1-5-2,
volume 1, Superintendent General DIAND, “Regulations with respect to teaching, education,
inspection, and discipline for Indian Residential Schools, Made and Established by the Superintendent General of Indian Affairs Pursuant to Paragraph (a) of Section 114 of the Indian
Act,” 20 January 1953; [PAR-001203-0001] H. M. Jones to Deputy Minister. [PAR-001203-0000]
175. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6466, file 888-10, part 12, C. F. Hivesto Secretary, Indian Affairs Branch, 11 October 1948. [GRG-003692]
176. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG55, FA 55-22, Acc. 1980-81/069, Untitled,
1948–1965 (194 boxes), box 191, file 1703, part 2, Indian Act, Jan–Dec 1961, G. F. Davidson to
Secretary, Treasury Board, 7 June 1961. [AEMR-152038]
177. TRC, NRA, National Archives of Canada – Burnaby, FA 10-138, 07/1956, Perm. volume 13528,
C. G. Brown, G. J. Buck, B. O. Filoteau to DIAND, “Report of the Educational Survey Commission on the Educational Facilities and Requirements of the Indians of Canada,” 26 July 1956,
11. [AEMR-254362]
178. TRC, NRA, File location to be determined, no file source information available, K. Kingwell to
A. V. Parminter, 16 May 1958. [GRG-028080]
179. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 128/25-2575, volume 1, J. R. Bell to R. D. Ragan, 17 February 1959. [IRC-041312]
180. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 128/25-2575, volume 1, J. R. Bell to H. G. Sprott, 29 October 1959. [BIR-000397]
181. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/25-1015, volume 1, G. S. Lapp to Indian Affairs Branch, 13 December 1963. [KNR-000265]
182. TRC, NRA, INAC – BC Regional Records Office – Vancouver, 987/25-1, volume 6, 1974–
03/1975, BC – CR, A. J. Aleck to A. H. Friesen, 28 February 1975. [MIS-002867-0001]
183. Willis, Geniesh, 150.
184. Joe, Song of Rita Joe, 47.
185. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 774/25-1-016, part 1, 1938–1957, NAC, P. Phelan to
G. Labonté, 31 July 1945. [ERM-002063]
186. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B94 3972, Principal, Ermineskin
Residential School to Indian Affairs Branch, “Principal’s Report for the Year ending 31 March
1947,” 31 March 1947. [OGP-032545] For Labonté’s name, see: TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives– Alberta, PAA 71.220 B92 3894, G. Labonté to H. Moore, 31 March 1947. [OGP-030504]
187. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, PAA 71.220 B33 1341, D. Minde and others to Father,
Principal of the Oblate Fathers, 29 March 1947. [OGP-050216]
188. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8681, file 774/6-1-016, part 7, R. F.
Davey to G. K. Gooderham, 14 December 1964. [ERM-003450-0000]

620 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
189. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 774/25-1-016,
1950–1966, volume 2, RCAP, K. Gooderham to Director of Education Services, 15 January
1965, 1–2. [ERM-000077]
190. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 985/25-1, part 1, Indian Education – General,
1963–1964, FA 10-144, Acc. V1984-85, box 3 [500797], National Archives of Canada – Burnaby,
Promotion Sheet, June 1963, Sister Albertine-Marie, June 1964. [LEJ-009119-0006]
191. King, The School at Mopass, 78–83.
192. Cardinal, Unjust Society, 73.
193. Canadien, From Lishamie, 57.
194. Canadien, From Lishamie, 65.
195. Blondin-Perrin, My Heart Shook Like a Drum, 37–38.
196. Fontaine, Broken Circle, 132.
197. Fontaine, Broken Circle, 118.
198. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, RCAP, file772/25-1-001, volume 1, 05/37–12/72, G. H. Gooderham, 31 December 1945. [CFT-000351]
199. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/23-5075, volume 1, R. W. Dalton to Indian Affairs Branch, “Inspector’s Report,” 4 February 1949.
[PCR-000106-0000]
200. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 673/23-5038, volume 1, C. Thacker to Indian Affairs Branch, “Inspector’s Report,” 13 December 1956.
[MRS-000099]
201. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8451, file 772/23-5-001, O. P. Larson
to Indian Affairs Branch, “Inspector’s Report,” 27 April 1948. [NCA-003630]
202. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8451, file 772/23-5-001, O. P. Larson,
29 May 1951, 2. [NCA-002205]
203. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8451, file 772/23-5-001, L. G. P. Waller
to Director, Indian Affairs Branch, 14 April 1954. [NCA-003667]
204. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 951/235, volume 1, School Reports, Christie Students Residence, South Island District, British
Columbia, 1919–1964, locator 40-10, IRSRC – Historical Files, A. V. Parminter to Indian Affairs
Branch, “Inspector’s Report,” 7 and 8 April 1954. [CST-000333-0006] For Catholic views on
Parminter, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 976/2, Kamloops Indian Agency
BC – Schools File, 04/1939–12/1968, FA 22-2, Perm. volume 1209, J. P. Mulvihill to H. M.
Jones, 24 January 1956; [KAM-200818] TRC, NRA, No document location, no document filesource, “PS: to notes on meeting at Ahousat, B.C., April 6, 1954”; [BVT-001463] TRC, NRA,
No document location, no document file source, J. P. Mulvihill to L. K. Poupore, 9 June 1957.
[OKM-000580]
205. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Forbes to Very Reverend andFather Provincial, 16 December 1940, 2. [CIS-000175]
206. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, petition from parents to Crooked Lakes Agency, 25 July 1949. [IRC-041159]
207. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, J. P. B. Ostrander to
Indian Affairs Branch, Department of Mines and Resources, 12 August 1949. [RLS-0005120000]

Notes • 621
208. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, NAC – Ottawa, 772/3-6, volume 1, 1940–1954, J. N.
R. Iredale, Minutes from the council meeting for the Stony Indian Agency, 15 October 1946.
[MOR-006118]
209. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 773/25-1-003,
05/36–09/70, volume 1, RCAP, R. D. Ragan, “Extract from minutes of Blood Indian Council
Meeting March 15, 1948.” [MRY-000302] For Charron’s initials, see: TRC, NRA, National Archives of Canada RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, 02/1948–07/1949, B. F. Neary to P. A.
Charron, 21 July 1948. [120.03363]
210. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 773/3-6, part 1, 1942–53, NAC, “Minutes of meetingof Eaglechild Residence,” 3 April 1948. [BPD-001635]
211. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, School Files, volume 6352, file 753-10, part1, Microfilm reel C-8708, P. Phelan to J. F. Woodsworth, 22 January 1941; [EDM-003580] “The
Honourable R. G. Steinhauer, 1974–79,” Legislative Assembly of Alberta, http://www.assembly.ab.ca/lao/library/lt-gov/steinhau.htm (accessed 13 September 2013).
212. Meijer Drees, Healing Histories, 168–170.
213. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8756, file 673/25-1-003, 25 August
1949. [MRS-046113-0001]
214. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8756, file 673/25-1-003, J. P. B. Ostrander to Neary, 24 January 1950. [MRS-046113-0005]
215. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
3A, Pelly Agency, 56-64, Albert Fiddler to Mr. and Mrs. Allen Fiddler, 6 January 1956. [IRC041405]
216. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
3A, Pelly Agency, 56-64, A. Southard to Mr. Davis, 23 January 1956. [IRC-041406]

The schools as child-welfare institutions: 1940–2000
1. Johnston, Native Children, 57.
2. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1883, xi.
3. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6032, file 150-40A, part 1, Regulations
Relating to the Education of Indian Children, Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1894,
9–10. [AGA-001516-0000]
4. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B54 2274, Hugh F. Baker to the Reverend Principal, Roman Catholic School, Stand Off, Alberta, 15 January 1919. [OGP-020790]
5. For a discussion that places both child welfare and residential schools in the context of theongoing colonization of Aboriginal people, see: McKenzie and Hudson, “Native Children.”
6. Johnston, Indian School Days, 7.
7. Charland, “Courage to Change,” 29.
8. See, for example: Blondin-Perrin, My Heart Shook, 135; Bear, “Boarding School Life,” 44;
Dickson, Hey, Monias!, 93.
9. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6012, file 1-1-5A, part 2, Microfilm
reel C-8140, from R. A. Hoey to Dr. McGill, 31 May 1940. [AEMR-010817]
10. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 3, Report Re
Survey of Indian Education on Reserves in Western Ontario, n.d., 3 [1944]. [MER-0005250001]

622 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
11. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 3-3, box
70, “A Brief Submitted by the Church of England in Canada to the Special Joint Committee of
the Senate and House of Commons Appointed to Consider The Indian Act, 25 March 1947, 9.
[CRS-002139-0000]
12. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 160.
13. Buckley, From Wooden Ploughs, 67–69.
14. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 1999-01431-6, box 223, file 501/6-1-075,
part 7, Sandy Bay Reserve Residential School, 1963. [NCA-011434]
15. Buckley, From Wooden Ploughs, 72–73.
16. Hawthorn, Survey of the Contemporary Indians, 283.
17. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 1/252, volume 3, Admissions and Discharges – Student Residences – General Headquarters,
01/1959–01/1962, J. H. Gordon to E., 24 February 1959. [RCN-000639]
18. TRC, NRA, Manitoba Regional Service Centre – LAC – Winnipeg, Acc. W84-85/402, box 13623,
file 506/25-2-019, volume 3, G. T. Ross to Wilf Singh, 28 May 1969. [SBR-004513]
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. W84-85/402, box 13634, file 506/23-26,
volume 1, Quarterly Return – Government-Owned Residential Schools, Fort Alexander Student Residence, 31 December 1969. [FAR-006002-0001]
20. Hawthorn, Survey of the Contemporary Indians, 94.
21. Johnston, Native Children, 68–75; McKenzie and Hudson, “Native Children,” 131–133.
22. See, for example, John Tootoosis’s testimony to the Special Joint Committee of the House ofCommons: Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 968.
23. Iserhoff, “Excerpts from My Life,” 158.
24. Hawthorn, Survey of the Contemporary Indians, 326.
25. Bell, “Journeys,” 15.
26. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6445, file 881-10, part 5, “Agents
Report of Stikine Agency for January,” Harper Reed, 8 February 1940. [LEJ-002064]
27. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6475, file 918-1, part 1, R. A. Hoey toW. A. M. Truesdell, 17 December 1941. [FPU-000137]
28. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6210, file 468-10, part 4, F. W. Tuffnell
to Indian Affairs, 6 May 1943. [MER-003568]
29. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 971/25-2-2, part 1, Admissions and Discharges of
Pupils from Lejac, 1949–1952, FA 143, Acc. V1984-85/280, box 47[500621], National Archives
of Canada – Burnaby, J. V. Boys to Indian Affairs Branch, 26 October 1948. [LEJ-013540-0000]
30. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6220, file 472-5, part 4, C. Perrault to
G. Swartman, 2 August 1942; [MCI-005222-0001] Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume6221, file 472-10, part 4, P. Phelan to G. Swartman, 10 August 1943. [MCI-005223]
31. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6220, file 472-5, part 4, P. Phelan to C.
Perrault, 11 November 1943. [MCI-005235]
32. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, 971/25-2-2, part 1, Admissions and Discharges of Pupils from Lejac, 1949–1952, FA 143, Acc. V1984-85.280, box 47[500621], National
Archives of Canada – Burnaby, J. P. Mulvihill to J. V. Boys, 3 January 1949. [LEJ-008571-0000]
33. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 971/25-2-2, part 1, Admissions and Discharges of
Pupils from Lejac, 1949–1952, FA 143, Acc. V1984-85.280, box 47[500621] National Archives ofCanada – Burnaby, J. V. Boys to J. P. Mulvihill, 6 January 1949. [LEJ-008571-0000]

Notes • 623
34. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6307, file 653-1, part 2, M. Christianson to F. Rhodes, 28 October 1940. [FHR-000237-0001]
35. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6209, file 468-10, part 3, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, A. H. Langille, 17 March 1941. [MER-001087-0002]
36. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 772/25-1002, volume 1, 1950–1965, E. S. W. Cole to B. F. Neary, 21 February 1950. [IRC-041163]
37. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7190, file 492/25-1-009, W. Gowans
to Regional Supervisor, North Bay, 30 January 1961. [IRC-041233]
38. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7190, file 492/25-1-009, F. Matters toSuperintendent, 14 February 1961. [IRC-041234]
39. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, William
Gowans to Indian Affairs, 14 August 1961. [SJS-004009]
40. TRC, NRA, Document location to be determined, 23-9, 1948–1949, J. Camirand to W. S.
Arneil, 4 November 1948. [KUP-002091]
41. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 885-10, part 8, 1944–1949, Cowichan Agency –Kuper Island Industrial School – Admissions & Discharges FA 10-17, volume 6457; [Restricted
Portion] Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, R. H. Moore to Indian Affairs Branch, 19
October 1946. [KUP-064998] For British Columbia Boys Industrial School, see: British Columbia Government, Ministry of Justice, “Youth Corrections,” http://www.pssg.gov.bc.ca/corrections/histories/youth_justice/index.htm (accessed 10 June 2014).
42. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, FA 10-17, volume 6445, file 881-10,
part 8, 1946–1949, Microfilm reel C-8769, NAC – Ottawa, B. F. Neary to J. Mulvihill, 5 December 1947. [LEJ-008022]
43. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6481, file 940-10, part 6, R. J. Meek to
Indian Affairs, 20 June 1950. [NCA-010933-0000]
44. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6202, file 466-10, part 6, M. W. McCracken to Indian Affairs, 8 November 1950. [TAY-002392]
45. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6202, file 466-10, part 6, Philip Phelan
to M. W. McCracken, 13 November 1950. [TAY-002393]
46. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10386, file 506/25-2, part 2B, J. D.
Minnis to R. D. Ragan, 22 April 1958. [PLP-001798]
47. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, 971/25-2-881, Admissions and Discharges of Pupils – Lejac Residential School, 1959–1965, FA 10-143, Acc. V1984-85/280, box
45[500619], National Archives of Canada – Burnaby, A. H. Markuson to G. F. Kelly, 12 April
1960. [LEJ-008558]
48. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 777/25-2-009,
volume 2, Admission and Discharges Wabasca C. of E. Students Residence Lesser Slave Lake
Agency, Alberta, 04/10/1960 to 02/02/1966, Application for Admission to Residential School,
16 December 1963. [JON-071007-0001, JON-071007-0002]
49. TRC, NRA, HQ, file 1/25-2, volume 3, 01/1959–01/1962, André Renaud to R. F. Davey, 14 April
1960. [AEMR-016623]
50. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 701/25-2, volume 1, 12/58–02/69, J. D. Leask, to L.
C. Hunter, 19 August 1963. [MAR-071582]
51. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, [205] 701/25-2, volume 1, 12/58–02/69, G. Kent
Gooderham to Dr. McPherson, 29 November 1963. [MAR-071608-0000]

624 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
52. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 774/25-2-016,
09/64–09/66, volume 5, K. R. Brown to Indian Affairs Branch, 7 December 1964. [ERM072117]
53. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, Roy Phillips,
to Superintendent, Abitibi Indian Agency, 1 March 1960. [IRC-048268]
54. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 74/252-469, Roy Phillips to Regional Supervisor of Indian Agencies, North Bay, ON, 3 April 1960;[IRC-048270] C. Kuehner to F. M. Shaw, 11 March 1960; [IRC-048246-0002] F. Matters to Roy
Phillips, 30 March 1960. [SWK-001571-0000]
55. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 1984-85/112, box 78, file 487/25-2-016,
part 1, G. LeBleu to P. C. Larkin, 17 January 1968. [KNR-001449]
56. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 1984-85/112, box 78, file 487/25-2-016,
part 1, G. LeBleu to P. C. Larkin, 16 January 1968. [KNR-001448]
57. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, RG10, Acc. E1996-97/415, box 36, file25-2-029, Jan. 1967–Jan. 1969, E. Turenne to Walter Karawshowski, 6 May 1968.[SPR-003247]
58. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, PAA 71.220 B54 2297, J. R. Tully to J. E. Y. Levaque, 6March 1971. [OGP-021360]
59. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 157.
60. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6251, file 575-1, part 3, C. L. St. John
to Indian Affairs, 24 August 1942. [BIR-000269]
61. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6251, file 575-1, part 3, R. A. Hoey to
C. L. St. John, 28 August 1942. [AEMR-010830]
62. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, file 25-2, part 1, Admissions and Discharges – Residential Schools, 09/1951–09/1956, FA 10-138, Perm. volume 11498, 21 April
1952. [LOW-201864]
63. TRC, NRA, Canadian Welfare Council and Caldwell, 1967, 74. [AEMR-019759]
64. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6262, file 578-1, part 5, To the Superintendent of Reserves and Trusts, 31 January 1944. [ELK-000392-0000]
65. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6263, file 578-5, part 10, A. G. Hamilton to Indian Affairs Branch, Department of Mines and Resources, 8 January 1948. [ELK000082]
66. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6263, file 578-9, part 2, D. M. MacKay
to Deputy Minister, 8 August 1949. [ELK-000162]
67. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8954, file 55/25-2, part 1, E. J. Blakey
to J. W. Brown, 24 June 1947. [SRS-006641]
68. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6445, file 881-10, part 7, A. R. Simpson to R. Howe, 22 June 1945. [LEJ-001651]
69. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6445, file 881-10, part 7, P. Phelan toR. Howe, 12 July 1945. [LEJ-001655]
70. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 901/29-4, volume 2, 03/1961–05/1970, Report on Residential
School Analysis, 25 July 1961. [AEMR-121208A]
71. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, 103/29-4-2, 03/61–09/65, J. E. DeWolf
to K. R. Brown, 30 May 1962. [IRC-048179-0001]
72. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 709/25-1-001, 1951–1961, part 2, HQ, R. F. Battle toR. F. Davey, 5 July 1956. [EDM-000619]

Notes • 625
73. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, 971/25-2-881, Admissions and Discharges of Pupils – Lejac Residential School, 1959–1965, FA 10-143, Acc. V1984-85/280, box 45[500619], National Archives of Canada – Burnaby, Reverend J. F. Ryan to R. G. Cooper, 18 June
1964. [LEJ-008544]
74. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
6A, file 5, W. P. Starr to C. A. Artibise, 7 July 1970. [GDC-014572]
75. TRC, NRA, Canadian Welfare Council and Caldwell, 1967, 58. [AEMR-019759]
76. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 901/29-16, volume 1, 1957–1972, F. E. Anfield to Child Welfare Division, 5 January 1961. [AEMR-121112]
77. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 901/29-4, volume 2, 03/61–05/70, Table 4: Enrolment by Categories, Alberni Residential School, 31 March 1961. [AEMR-014110E]
78. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 901/29-4, volume 2, 03/1961–05/1970, Residential School Survey
Appendix A, Alberni, 31 March 1961. [AEMR-120089]
79. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 901/29-4, volume 2, 03/61–05/70, Table VII: Enrolment by Categories, St. Mary’s Residential School, 31 March 1961. [AEMR-014110I]
80. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 901/29-4, volume 2, 03/1961–05/1970, Residential School Survey
Appendix C, St. Mary’s, 31 March 1961. [AEMR-121152]
81. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 901/29-4, volume 2, 03/1961–05/1970, M. S. Payne, “Analysis of
Residential Schools – British Columbia, 8 December 1961. [AEMR-013502]
82. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 901/29-4, volume 2, 03/1961–05/1970, Report on Residential
School Analysis, 25 July 1961. [AEMR-121208A]
83. TRC, NRA, Canadian Welfare Council and Caldwell, 1967, 63–64. (Students with education-related needs: 660; students with welfare-related needs: 952.) [AEMR-019759]
84. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, R776-0-5 (RG55), volume 21178, T.B. #683443, Approval in Principle of a Five Year Training Program for childcare workers in Indian residential
schools, Treasury Board Secretariat, 3 October 1968. [NPC-523196]
85. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1968–69, 139.
86. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1968–69, 134.
87. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
8A, file 1, Harry Morrow, 14 June 1947. [GDC-014668]
88. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8613, file 773/1-13-004, part 1, Ralph
Ragan to Director Indian Affairs, Branch, 12 February 1954. [IRC-048236] For DeWolf’s first
name, see: TRC, NRA, Diocese of Calgary Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, Calgary, AB,
H. E. Cook to G. R. Calvert, 17 November 1952. [ELK-000608]
89. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 3-4, box
95, file 1 (1956–1960), Henry G. Cook, Report of Indian School Administration Superintendent
to M.S.C.C. Board of Management, 1956. [NCA-010349]
90. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
3A, file 27, John J. T. Johnstone to H. G. Cook, 25 February 1958. [GDC-040785]
91. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
13A, file 35, John J. T. Johnstone to H. G. Cook, 13 June 1958. [GDC-026886-0000]
92. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 74/252-469, Roy Phillips to Regional Supervisor of Indian Agencies, North Bay, ON, 3 April 1960.
[IRC-048270]
93. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 709/25-1-001, 1951–1961, part 2, HQ, R. F. Battle toR. F. Davey, 7 November 1956. [EDM-000629]

626 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
94. TRC, NRA, British Columbia Archives – Victoria [Care and Control: Oblates of Mary Immaculate, St. Paul’s Province], British Columbia Archives – Victoria, Call No. MS-1513, Microfilm
reel A00824, box 17, item 18, Lejac, Indian Residential School, J. P. Mulvihill to J. Birch, 18
September 1950. [LEJ-800008]
95. TRC, NRA, British Columbia Archives – Victoria [Care and Control: Oblates of Mary Immaculate, St. Paul’s Province], British Columbia Archives – Victoria, Call No. MS-1513, Microfilm
reel A00824, box 17, item 18, Lejac, Indian Residential School, J. P. Mulvihill to J. Birch, 28
September 1950. [LEJ-800010-0000]
96. TRC, NRA, British Columbia Archives – Victoria [Care and Control: Oblates of Mary Immaculate, St. Paul’s Province], British Columbia Archives – Victoria, Call No. MS-1513, Microfilm
reel A00824, box 17, item 18, Lejac, Indian Residential School, J. Mulvihill to J. R. Birch, 24
September 1950. [LEJ-800009]
97. TRC, NRA, British Columbia Archives – Victoria [Care and Control: Oblates of Mary Immaculate, St. Paul’s Province], British Columbia Archives – Victoria, Call No. MS-1513, Microfilm
reel A00824, box 17, item 18, Lejac, Indian Residential School, J. P. Mulvihill to J. Birch, 28
September 1950. [LEJ-800010-0000]
98. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, John Ryan to Father O’Grady, 24
August 1955. [OMS-000716]
99. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, L. K. Poupore to M. Kearney, 20
August 1956. [CIS-000025]
100. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Edward J. Clarke to Reverend
Father, 23 September 1961. [OMS-000786]
101. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, L. K. Poupore to E. J. Clarke, 26
September 1961. [OMS-000787]
102. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Oblate News, September 1962.
[OBG-004140]
103. TRC, NRA, no document location, No document file source, “Indian Children ‘Starved,’” New
Westminster British Columbian, 22 December 1955. [WLM-000346]
104. TRC, NRA, no document location, No document file source, W. Christie to British United
Press, 22 December 1955. [WLM-000349-0001]
105. TRC, NRA, no document location, No document file source, Raymond Argyle to William
Christie, 10 January 1955. [WLM-000328-0000]
106. TRC, NRA, no document location, No document file source, Leo Casey to Father, 29 December 1955; [WLM-000352] Fergus O’Grady to Leo Casey, 5 January 1956. [WLM-000357]
107. TRC, NRA, no document location, No document file source, William Christie to F. O’Grady, 7January 1956. [WLM-000358]
108. TRC, NRA, St. Paul’s Archives, Series [ ], box 26, folder 3, Cariboo Indian Residential School
Correspondence 1953–1956, L. K. Poupore to Paul Monahan, 22 January 1956. [OBG-003879]
109. TRC, NRA, no document location, No document file source, J. P. Mulvihill to F. O’Grady, 10
January 1956. [WLM-000359]
110. TRC, NRA, St. Paul’s Archives, Series [ ], box 26, folder 3, Cariboo Indian Residential School
Correspondence 1953–1956, L. K. Poupore to Paul Monahan, 22 January 1956. [OMI-034628]
111. TRC, NRA, no document location, No document file source, L. Poupore to Dennis Shea, 31
January 1956. [WLM-000373]

Notes • 627
112. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG55, FA 55-19, volume 20784, Treasury Board
Submission 559690, Req. Authority for the Recommendation and Establishment of Domestic
Staff, Laval Fortier, 22 January 1960. [120.04620]
113. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1963, 24.
114. TRC, NRA, INAC, file 1/25-20-1, Ahab Spence to L. Jampolsky, 29 December 1965. [IRC041368]
115. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 1/25-20-1, volume 1, 10/1965–03/1969, Clara Tizya to L. Jampolsky, 31 December 1965. [AEMR-011141A]
116. TRC, NRA, Canadian Welfare Council and Caldwell, 1967, 119. [AEMR-019759]
117. TRC, NRA, Canadian Welfare Council and Caldwell, 1967, 121. [AEMR-019759]
118. TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Cariboo Archives Section #205, St. George Indian Residential
School, Card D.C. 2C11, Lytton-St. George’s School, #88.44, “All Saints Indian Residential
School Staff Manual 2nd Revision, 1967,” A. W. Harding, Vice-Principal, 18. [AEMR-177341]
119. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, R776-0-5 (RG55), volume 21178, T.B. #683443, Approval in Principle of a Five Year Training Program for childcare workers in Indian residential
schools, Treasury Board Secretariat, 3 October 1968. [NPC-523196]
120. TRC, NRA, Indian Residential Schools Resolution Registry, file 1/25-20-1, 10/65–3/69, volume
1, D. Kogawa to Administrators of Student Residences, 10 October 1968. [AEMR-254416]
121. TRC, NRA, Indian Residential Schools Resolution Registry, file 1/25-20-1, 3/69–12/69, volume
2, “Training of Child Care Workers for Indian Student Residences,” D. Kogawa, Chief, Vocational Training & Special Services, 19 March 1969. [AEMR-254443]
122. TRC, NRA, Indian Residential Schools Resolution Registry, file 1/25-20-1, 10/70–5/72, volume
4, D. Kogawa, Head, Student Residences Services, Education Branch, to Colin Wasacase,Supervisor Student Residence, Dept. of Education, Government of the Northwest Territories,
Yellowknife, NWT, 25 January 1971. [AEMR-254440]
123. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 160.
124. Hawthorn, Survey of the Contemporary Indians, 326–327. Section 87 extended all provincial“laws of general application” to people with status under the Indian Act. See: An Act Respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1951, chapter 29, section 87, reproduced in Venne, IndianActs, 343.
125. Hawthorn, Survey of the Contemporary Indians, 327; Johnston, Native Children, 4–5.
126. Johnston, Native Children, 8, 23.
127. Hawthorn. Survey of the Contemporary Indians, 327.
128. Johnston, Native Children, 66–67.
129. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7182, file number not located, part
14, R. F. Davey to D. E. Woodsworth, 19 August 1965. [BVL-000104]
130. TRC, NRA, Canadian Welfare Council and Caldwell, 1967, 151. [AEMR-019759] For Caldwell’s
position, see: TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives Ottawa, HR 6138.C73R 10, George Caldwell to
G. F. Kelly, 18 July 1967. [OMI-034150]
131. TRC, NRA, Canadian Welfare Council and Caldwell, 1967, 65–68. [AEMR-019759]
132. TRC, NRA, Canadian Welfare Council and Caldwell, 1967, 86. [AEMR-019759]
133. TRC, NRA, Canadian Welfare Council and Caldwell, 1967, 89. [AEMR-019759]
134. TRC, NRA, Canadian Welfare Council and Caldwell, 1967, 92. [AEMR-019759]
135. TRC, NRA, Canadian Welfare Council and Caldwell, 1967, 77. [AEMR-019759]
136. TRC, NRA, INAC, file 1/25-20-1, Ahab Spence to L. Jampolsky, 29 December 1965. [IRC041368]

628 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
137. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 1/25-13-2,
volume 1, “Extract from minutes re: Caldwell Report on Residential School Survey.” [SRS001176-0002]
138. TRC, NRA, “School Principals Protest Report Recommendations,” Indian Record, November
1967. [IMR-000382]
139. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Allan F. Noonan to Guy Voisin, 19
June 1967. [OBG-004287]
140. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives Ottawa, HR 6138.C73R 10, George Caldwell to G. F. Kelly, 18
July 1967. [OMI-034150]
141. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6204, file 467-12, part 4, Philip Phelan
to J. S. Allan, 2 November 1951. [MFI-001672]
142. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6204, file 467-12, part 4, J. S. Allan toPhilip Phelan, 26 November 1951. [MFI-001673]
143. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 1/25-2,
volume 3 (Ctrl #119-HQ-7), G. K. Gooderham to L. Jampolsky, 23 November 1960. [NCA001932-0001]
144. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada [205] 701/25-2, volume 1, 12/58–02/69, NAC, L. C.
Hunter to Indian Affairs Branch, 25 November 1960. [ERM-004791-0000]
145. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 1/25-1, volume 19, 1968, J. A. MacDonald to the Minister, 9 October 1968. [AEMR-121636]
146. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 1/25-1, volume 22, R. F. Davey to Bergevin, 15 September 1969.
[AEMR-019616]
147. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, box 98, Acc., 1999-01431-6, file 274/25-1-010,
part 1, P. L. McGillvray to Indian Affairs Branch, 17 November 1964. [NCA-010544]
148. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 211/6-1010, volume 6, R. F. Davey to Michael Kearney, 12 June 1967. [SRS-000175]
149. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 1984-85/112, box 47, file 451/25-1,
Newspaper article, “Mohawk Institute may close after 139 years,” no date; [TAY-001133] TRC,
NRA, Diocese of Huron Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, Huron University College,
London, ON, Luxton Papers, box 27, Indian Reserves, Richard Isaac, Six Nations Council To
Whom It May Concern, 13 March 1970; [TAY-001432] TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector –IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 479/25-13-001, volume 3, G. D. Cromb to Deputy
Minister, 20 March 1970. [TAY-003053-0001]
150. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 671/6-2-025, volume
4, Onion Lake Band Council Resolution, 31 July 1974. [ORC-008733-0002]
151. McKenzie and Hudson, “Native Children,” 126.
152. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 987/25-2-017, volume 1, V1995-96/657, box 4, GARRD, J. C. Letcher to J. C. Lawrance, 28 July 1967. [SLT-002085]
153. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, RCAP [89-22],
file E4974-2031, St. Mary’s Student Residence, BC Region, part 1, 1981–1989,B, “Benefit toChildren,” undated notes from 1982. [MIS-008062-0001]
154. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, RCAP [89-22],
file E4974-2031, St. Mary’s Student Residence, BC Region, part 1, 1981–1989, “Social situation
overview,” undated summary 1982. [MIS-008062-0003]

Notes • 629

Building conditions: 1940–1969
1. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6012, file 1-1-5A, part 2, R. A. Hoey
to Dr. McGill, 31 May 1940. [BIR-000248] For closing of the Portage la Prairie school, see:
TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, Winnipeg, RG10, Acc. W86-87/083, box 001, file501/25-1, volume 2A, J. Malcolm to Friends, 25 May 1975. [PLP-100300] For closing of thePine Creek school, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/1-13-075, volume 2, D. W. Simpson to Regional Director, Manitoba,
30 October 1969. [PCR-006338] For closing date of Round Lake, see: TRC, NRA, Library andArchives Canada, RG10, volume 8757, file 673/25-1-010, part 1, George Dorey to B. F. Neary,
20 October 1950. [RLS-001094] For closing date of Thunderchild school, see: TRC, NRA,
Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8756, file 671/25-1-010, “The Fire at the Thunderchild Residential School,” J. B. Cabana, January 1948. [THR-000266-0003] For the transferof the Wabasca school, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, 777/36-4-009,
volume 1, 01/34–11/66, CR-HQ, Regional Director Indian Affairs – Alberta to Director Education Services, 12 August 1966. [JON-003322] For closing of Whitefish Lake, see: TRC, NRA,
Anglican Diocese of Athabasca Fonds, Provincial Archives of Alberta, file A320/576, Indian[School] Commission, [Official Correspondence of Bishop Sovereign], 1949–1952, Archival
Acc. PR1970.0387/1645, Archival box 41, A. H. Sovereign to Bernard F. Neary, 5 May 1950.
[WFL-800145] For closing of the Sturgeon Lake school, see: TRC, NRA, Headquarters, 1/25-2,
01/59–01/62, volume 3, HQ., L. C. Hunter to Department of Indian Affairs, 14 February 1961.
[JRD-001808] For the closing of the two Brocket schools (Sacred Heart and St. Cyprian), see:
TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 8758, file 773-25-1, part 3,
C. A. F. Clark to Chief Education Division, 2 June 1961. [CYP-004054] For the Kitamaat closing,see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, file 883-1, part 2, Bella Coola Agency –Kitamaat, Residential School – General Administration, 1933–1950, F.A. 10-17, Perm. volume6451, Microfilm reel C-8773, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, George Dorey to Harold
W. McGill, 21 April 1941. [KMT-095750] For Port Simpson closing, see: TRC, NRA, Libraryand Archives Canada, file 886-1, part 3, Skeena River Agency – Port Simpson Girls Residential
School, 1894–1950, F.A. 10-17, Perm. volume 6458, Eva Middleton to Superintendent Indian
Education, 27 September 1948. [PSM-200706] For Squamish closing, see: TRC, NRA, Libraryand Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, FA 10-379, 1999-01431-6, box 405, 987/25-1-013, part 1,
Indian Education – Fraser District – St. Paul’s School, 1959–1968, NAC Ottawa, W. S. Arneil to
R. F. Davey, 16 February 1959. [SQU-000672]
2. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1969–1970, 128.
3. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 3, R. A. Hoey to
Dr. McGill, 9 November 1942. [MER-000498]
4. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 1, M. Benson to
Deputy Superintendent General of Indian Affairs, 28 November 1902. [MER-000328]
5. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 3, R. A. Hoey to
Dr. McGill, 9 November 1942. [MER-000498]
6. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 3, R. A. Hoey toGeorge Dorey, 16 June 1944. [MER-000532]
7. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, file 468-1, volume 6205, part 3, R. A. Hoey toGeorge Dorey, 12 June 1943. [IRC-041082]
8. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, file 468-1, volume 6205, part 3, George Dorey
to R. A. Hoey, 10 June 1943. [MER-000505]

630 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
9. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6210, file 468-10, part 5, SamuelDevlin to Indian Affairs, 20 May 1946. [MER-003806-0001]
10. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1944, 155.
11. Finkel, Our Lives, 8–9.
12. Struthers, No Fault of Their Own, 82–83.
13. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6192, file 462-5, part 9, H. A. Alderwood to B. F. Neary, 9 July 1947. [CRS-001958]
14. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6189, file 461-5, part 12, W. M. Benidickson to W. E. Harris, 6 June 1950. [CJC-001327]
15. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1895, 203.
16. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 4, R. S. Davis to
Indian Affairs, 24 March 1949. [BRS-000551]
17. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6503, file Indian 13-1-85, Donald
Inspection, Limited Report of Inspection of Belcarres Indian Residential School, 29 August
1948. [FHR-000333]
18. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11091, Shannon File, 1948, Letters
to Indian Affairs Branch, J. L. Whitney to Philip Phelan, 21 July 1948; [CRS-002092] RG10,
volume 6307, file 653-1, part 2, Director [illegible] to Deputy Minister, 22 June 1949. [FHR000356]
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6349, file 752-5, part 5, 1937–1947,
Microfilm reel C-8706, G. H. Gooderham, to Indian Affairs, 29 August 1945. [CFT-0026230000]
20. TRC, NRA, INAC, Main Records Office, Ottawa, G. H. Gooderham to Mr. Hoey, 6 June 1946.
[RCA-000498-0001]
21. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3127, file 860-8-X400, part 1a, E. L.
Stone to Superintendent of Indian Health Services, 31 May 1946. [NPC-621076-01]
22. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6354, file 754-5, part 6, D., 1947–1950,
Microfilm reel 8710, L. C. Schmidt to H. N. Woodsworth, 18 October 1949. [ERM-001317]
23. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, RCAP, file
777/23-5-010, volume 1, 1931–1962, “Inspection Report Wabasca Catholic Residential
School,” 2–3 October 1951. [MAR-000938]
24. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, “Inspection
Report, Wabasca R.C. Residential School, December 2, 1952.” [MAR-000953]
25. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, RCAP, file
777/23-5-010, volume 1, 1931–1962, “Inspector’s Report, St. Martin’s (R.C.) Res. Indian
School,” 10 March 1953. [MAR-000962]
26. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Memorandum of interview withMajor MacKay, Indian Commissioner, Archdiocese of Vancouver, Archbishop’s Office, 25
October 1946. [ABV-001273]
27. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6438, file 878-5, part 6, NAC– Ottawa, J. Baptist to Mrs. L. S. St. Laurent, 3 December 1949. [JOE-027396]
28. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6438, file 878-5, part 6, NAC– Ottawa, C. Gibson to J. Baptist, 20 December 1949. [JOE-027403]
29. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 4, J. Coleman toIndian Commissioner for British Columbia, 14 October 1947. [MIK-002279-0002]

Notes • 631
30. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, L. K. Poupore to Colonel H. M.
Jones, 31 October 1956. [OKM-000560]
31. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6344, file 750-5, part 5, H. Routhier toHarold McGill, 21 January 1941. [MRY-009874]
32. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6253, file 575-5, part 6, A. G. Smith to
The Secretary, Indian Affairs, 30 November 1940. [BIR-000253]
33. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8625, file 511/6-1-014, part 1, M. M.
Rusaw to Department of Mines and Resources, Indian Affairs Branch, 22 January 1950. [BIR000345]
34. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8625, file 511/6-1-014, part 3, Department of National Health and Welfare Canada, Bacteriological Report, Birtle Indian Residential School, Manitoba, 30 October 1957. [BIR-000385-0002]
35. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6496, file IND 13-1-15, part 1, J. P. B.
Ostrander to the Director, Surveys and Engineering Branch, 8 September 1945. [GDC-0080560001]
36. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6312, file 654-5, part 11, J. P. B. Ostrander to Indian Affairs, Ottawa, 18 November 1946. [GDC-007097]
37. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 2-15, box
21, file 5, “Memorandum Re: Indian Affairs Branch and C. of E. Residential School (Buildings)
1950,” 2. [GDC-008660]
38. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6199, file 465-5, part 10, Report:
Ontario Department of Health, Sanitary Engineering Division, A. E. Barry, 16 February 1946.
[KNR-000555]
39. NRS, TRC, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8268, file 487/6-1-015, part 9, Frank
Gibson to Justice Thompson, 19 March 1959. [KNR-000939-0001]
40. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8266, file 487/6-1-015, part 2, L. M.
Stuart to N. Paterson, 15 September 1953. [KNR-000974]
41. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8268, file 487/6-1-015, part 9, Eric
Law to Colonel H. M. Jones, 26 January 1959; [KNR-000937] RG10, volume 8268, file 487/6-1015, part 9, R. D. P. Easton to Eric Law, 21 August 1959. [KNR-000945-0001]
42. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8269, file 487/6-1-015, part 11, C. J.
Crapper, memorandum, 26 September 1962. [KNR-000732]
43. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1019, volume 1, G. H. Marcoux to R. S. Davis, 21 October 1953. [FAR-000063]
44. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10361, file 506/6-1-019, part 1,
Department of National Health and Welfare, Bacteriological Report, 6 December 1954. [FAR000045-0003]
45. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10361, file 506/6-1-019, part 1, Dr. J. J.
Pragg to R. S. Davis, 7 February 1955. [FAR-000049]
46. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10361, file 506/6-1-019, part 2, O. J.
Storsater to Indian Affairs, 8 May 1957; [FAR-000042-000] RG10, volume 10361, file 506/6-1019, part 2, Bacteriological Report, 8 May 1957. [FAR-000042-0004]
47. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8635, file 511/6-1-026, part 5, Roland
Chaput to R. D. Ragan, 1 September 1958. [SBR-000493]
48. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8634, file 511/6-1-025, part 5, Father
F. Gelinas to R. F. Davey, 5 September 1959. [PCR-010503]

632 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
49. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 777[131]6-1767, volume 4, 12/08/58–12/28/62, IRSRHFC, Eric Barrington to Superintendent, Lesser Slave
Lake Indian Agency, 8 September 1961. [JON-002946]
50. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “Pollution Threatens Closure of
School,” Vancouver Sun, 11 June 1965. [WLM-000553] For comments about the school’S outliving its usefulness, see: TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Memorandum of interview with Major MacKay, Indian Commissioner, Archdiocese of Vancouver,Archbishop’s Office, 25 October 1946. [ABV-001273]
51. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, FA 10-379, Acc. 1999-01431-6, box
368, 962/6-1, School Buildings – Caribou Students’ Residence, part 12, 1965–1966, NAC –Ottawa, “Treasury Board Minute, Authorization to Enter into a Lease,” 25 November 1965.
[JOE-063038]
52. TRC, NRA, Agness, Jack, “New Use for St. Joseph’s Mission: Now Adult Education Centre,”
Williams Lake Tribune, 10 September 1981. [WLM-000627]
53. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, [110]774/6-1-753, volume 2, 1/54–12/57, NAC, W. E.
Frame to R. F. Battle, 14 November 1957. [EDM-004986]
54. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8257, file 485/6-1-001, part 3, H. M.
Jones to Deputy Minister, 6 May 1958. [FFR-000359-0000]
55. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8626, file 511/6-1-014, part 6, J. H.
Boulter to Chief, Engineering and Construction Division, 20 October 1960. [BIR-002497]
56. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8631, file 511/6-1-017, part 10, J. O.
Harris to R. F. Davey, 14 February 1961. [PLP-000733]
57. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8279, file 494/6-1-015, part 8, Father
J. Lamire to G. Swartman, 22 October 1961. [MCI-001570-0001]
58. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8279, file 494/6-1-015, part 8, Father
J. Lamire to G. Swartman, 14 April 1962. [MCI-001564]
59. City of Winnipeg, Historical Buildings Committees, “611 Academy—Former Julia Clark
School,” August 1997, 1–3, 9–10; TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files
Collection – Ottawa, file 6-21-7, volume 1 (Ctrl #25-7), H. M. Jones to Deputy Minister, 4 July
1958. [NCA-011600-0000]
60. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Winnipeg, RG10, Acc. W86-87/083, box 024, file 501/23-5081, volume 1, “Residences and School Environmental Report of Assiniboia School, February
11, 1965,” 1–4, 8–13. [ARS-006124-0002]
61. TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, CR-HQ, file 772/6-1-001, volume 9, 04/62–
03/66, R. Ragan to Director, Education Services, 17 March 1965. [CFT-001998]
62. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, NAC, file 772/6-1-001, 01/67–10/69, Cluny Indian
School Closing, by Don Peacock, [Calgary Albertan] 20 December 1969. [CFT-002237]
63. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Excerpt from report of Principalof St. Mary’s School, from internal evidence 1967, the document itself is undated but it speaksof the forty-two years that have passed since the school was built in 1925. [OGP-140149]
64. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, 4700-10-435, volume 1, 9/87–12/88,
NAC Edmonton, Sheila Carr-Stewart to Jim Twigg, 14 January 1988. [MRY-008208]
65. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1965, 34–36.
66. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, box 2, Acc. 1999-01431-6, file 1/1-2-2-21, part2, Comments Regarding Specific Complaints in Brief Presented by Father Levaque, 12 January
1968. [NCA-003015-0003]

Notes • 633
67. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 6-21-1,
volume 4, Control 25-2, The National Association of Principals and Administrators of Indian
Residences Brief Presented to the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development
as requested by Mr. E. A. Cote, Deputy Minister, prepared in 1967, presented 15 January 1968.
[NCA-011495] For date of the La Tuque school opening, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution
Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 21/6-1-355, volume 1, Memorandum
from R. F. Davey, Chief, Education Division, DIAND to the Regional Supervisor, Quebec and
A. J. Doucet, 18 June 1959. [LTR-000826]
68. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 13033, file 401/25-13, volume 1, R. F.
Davey to H. B. Rodine, 5 February 1968. [AEMR-014634]
69. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 6-21-1,
volume 4, Control 25-2, Comments Regarding Specific Complaints in Brief Presented by
Father Levaque, undated. [NCA-011489-0002]
70. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, box 2, Acc. 1999-01431-6, file 1/1-2-2-21,
part 2, Comments Regarding Specific Complaints in Brief Presented by Father Levaque, 12January 1968; [NCA-003015-0003] Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs,
1969–1970, 128.
71. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/1-18,
volume 1, G. LeBleu to H. B. Rodine, 15 October 1971. [KNR-000148]
72. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/1-18,
volume 1, W. McKim to A. Lacerte, 22, undated. [KNR-000214]
73. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Ottawa, Deschatelets Archives, OMI, volume 1, section C-D, binder 4, “Memo: re Authorized Pupilage – Actual Attendance – and Loss to the Churches, in connection with Indian Residential Schools,” undated.
[BVL-001174] The figure of fifty-one is the sum of the number of schools with students listed
in column five of table in the document.
74. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8795, file 1/25-13, part 2, “Re: Further
supplementary estimates, per capita grant vote,” no date. [AEMR-120598]
75. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, A. H. Fleury to Reverend Father,
13 May 1944. [OMS-000619]
76. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6487, file 42104-3, part 1, Quarterly
Report Ending March 1945 on Blackfoot Indian Agency, G. H. Gooderham. [BSS-000654]
77. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 673/25-1038, volume 1, Philip Phelan to Reverend J. Lemire, 31 July 1945. [MRS-000621]
78. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 673/25-1038, volume 1, Reverend J. Lemire to Philip Phelan, 5 August 1945. [MRS-000622]
79. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 673/25-1038, volume 1, Bernard F. Neary to W. J. D. Kerley, 8 April 1949. [MRS-000623]
80. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 673/25-1038, volume 1, Bernard F. Neary to W. J. D. Kerley, 28 April 1949. [MRS-000625]
81. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Ottawa, HR 8005.C73R 3,
Indian Residential School Administration Handbook, 1956. [SRS-000370]
82. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6320, file 658-1, part 2, J. P. B. Ostrander to Indian Affairs, 30 April 1946. [PAR-000905]
83. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6320, file 658-1, part 2, H. A. Alderwood to B. F. Neary, 1 October 1947. [PAR-000350]

634 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
84. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6189, file 461-5, part 12, W. M. Benidickson to W. E. Harris, 6 June 1950. [CJC-001327]
85. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 773/6-1 [103],
volume 1, 1948–1966, RCAP, G. H. Gooderham to B. F. Neary, 23 March 1950. [EDH-000117]
86. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 8674, file 773/6-1-003, part1, Microfilm reel C-14196, Francis P. Carroll to L. Fortier, 25 May 1053. [MRY-005673]
87. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8611, file 658/1-13, part 1, Philip
Phelan to M. Landry, 24 December 1952. [BVL-000551]
88. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8659, file 658/6-1, part 2, J. R. Bell to
E. S. Jones, 28 January 1956. [BVL-000661]
89. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 775/3–8,
volume 1, 04/1953–09/1966, RCAP, E. A. Robertson to G. H. Gooderham, 22 January 1953.
[FTV-006251-0002]
90. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1067, volume 1, G. H. Marcoux to All Principals, 1 March 1956. [PLP-000062-0001]
91. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 985/25-2, part 1, 1958–1964, V1984-85/333, box 3[500797], FA 10-144, NAC Burnaby/GRB, W. E. Grant to Regional Office, 13 May 1959. [LEJ007595-0000]
92. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 129/25-1016, volume 1, R. F. Davey to Regional Supervisor, 3 December 1958. [KNR-000247]
93. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/251-015, volume 1, Acting Director, Indian Affairs to Deputy Minister, Indian Affairs, 13 August
1959; [KNR-000275] R. F. Davey to M. St. Jacques, 18 August 1959. [KNR-000283]
94. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/25-1015, volume 1, W. N. Benidickson to R. F. Davey, 2 November 1959. [KNR-000271]
95. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8269, file 487/6-1-015, part 10, Father
G. LeBleu to Eric Law, 20 September 1960. [KNR-000759
96. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 775[706]/6-1-020, volume 1, 04/65–11/67, NAC,
Inspection of Assumption Residential School, (Indian) Assumption, Alberta, 4 April 1961.
[AMP-008395]
97. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 8675, file 773/6-1-003, part12, Microfilm reel C-14197, Re: Special Investigations and Planning Proposals for the Crowfoot and Blood Indian Residential Schools, Alberta, 29 October 1964. [MRY-006916-0001]
98. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/25-11236, volume 1, Edward Rooney to L. G. Waller, 24 February 1965. [KNR-001503-0000]
99. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, GARDD 901/25-13, box 13470, volume 3, 1947–
1961, P. Deziel to Regional Superintendent of Schools, 31 May 1967. [SLT-002719]
100. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, volume 12 ,file 1/25-13, 03/16/66–12/18/67, RCAP Archives, R. M. Hall to Director, Education Services,
Indian Affairs Branch, 13 June 1967. [JOE-001986]
101. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, 972/25-2-Sechelt, 07/63–02/73, F.A.
10-137, V1984-85/353, box 11490, GARDD, J. C. Lawrance to W. B. Bailey, 1 August 1967. [SLT001253]
102. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 6-21-1,
volume 4, Control 25-2, The National Association of Principals and Administrators of Indian
Residences Brief Presented to the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development

Notes • 635
as requested by Mr. E. A. Cote, Deputy Minister, undated, internal evidence indicates 1967,
14. [NCA-011495]
103. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG22, volume 1204, file 487/1, part 2, Edward
Stricker to Mr. Justice Morand, 23 April 1968. [KNR-000827-0001]

Health: 1940–2000
1. Grygier, Long Way from Home, 64.
2. Statistics Canada, reproduced in Grygier, Long Way from Home, 84.
3. For 1943 figure, see: TRC, NRA, No document file location, no document file sources, The Department of Health and National Welfare Annual Report for the Fiscal Year Ended March 31,
1955, 83. [AEMR-251213] For 1957 figure, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29,
volume 3132, file 861-2-1, part 1, section B: Special Tuberculosis Statistics. [NPC-625218i]
4. Moore, “No Longer Captain,” 1012.
5. Statistics Canada, reproduced in Grygier, Long Way from Home, 84.
6. Wherrett, Miracle of the Empty Beds, 252.
7. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B54 2279, Harold McGill to All Indian
Agents, 14 January 1937. [OGP-020890]
8. Lux, Medicine that Walks, 220.
9. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1940, 185–186.
10. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1941, 165.
11. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1943, 148.
12. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1944, 153.
13. Waldram, Herring, and Young, Aboriginal Health in Canada, 191, 194.
14. Nixon, “Percy Elmer Moore,” 166.
15. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1946, 4.
16. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1946, 202.
17. Waldram, Herring, and Young, Aboriginal Health in Canada, 197–198.
18. Nixon, “Percy Elmer Moore,” 167.
19. Waldram, Herring, and Young, Aboriginal Health in Canada, 194.
20. Bynum, Spitting Blood, 146–147, 173–174; McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 23–24.
21. Lux, Medicine that Walks, 202–203.
22. Elwood and FitzGerald, “Bacille Calmette-Guérin,” 349–350.
23. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3124, file 860-8-X200, part 1a, “Memorandum on Tuberculosis Control,” 28 October 1949. [NPC-625046]
24. Bynum, Spitting Blood, 189–200; McCuaig, Weariness, Fever, and Fret, 197; Grygier, Long Wayfrom Home, 11.
25. Wherrett, Miracle of the Empty Beds, 255–256.
26. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 1224, file 311-T7-7, part 2, W. J. Wood,“Report of the Regional Superintendent, Indian Health Services,” in Tuberculosis Control in
Manitoba, 1957: Annual Report of the Sanatorium Board of Manitoba, 34. [NPC-604086]
27. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, Acc. 1985-86/235, box 3, file 615-6-9, “Reporton Attendance at Annual Meeting of Canadian Tuberculosis Association,” Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2–5 June 1959. [NPC-622096a]

636 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
28. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2869, file 851-1-4, part 4, “Foothills
Region Control Program for Eradication of Tuberculosis,” September 1952, 1, 3–4. [NPC601818-01] For details on geographic reach of the Foothills Region, see: TRC, NRA, Libraryand Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2869, file 851-1-4, part 4, “Foothills Region Control
Program for Eradication of Tuberculosis,” September 1952, 8. [NPC-601818-01]
29. Grygier, Long Way from Home, 66.
30. Waldram, Herring, and Young, Aboriginal Health in Canada, 198–199, 201; Grygier, Long Wayfrom Home, 195–197.
31. Waldram, Herring, and Young, Aboriginal Health in Canada, 198–199, 202–203.
32. Grygier, Long Way from Home, xxi–xxii.
33. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2608, file 800-1-X328, T. J. Orford to
Director of Medical Services, Ottawa, 20 April 1965. [MDD-001032]
34. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, file A-633/153-1, part 1, School
Statistics – Eskimo Point, N.W.T., 1959–1966, Archival box 253-5, Archival Acc. G-1979-003,
Promotion Form, Eskimo Point Junior Class, Beryl M. Davies, 10 July 1963 (eleven of twenty-three students at Clearwater); [EPS-000070] Promotion Form, Eskimo Point Junior Class,
Beryl M. Davies, 10 July 1963 (seventeen of thirty-three students at Clearwater); [EPS-000071]
Promotion Form, Eskimo Point Senior Class, David M. Davies, 10 July 1963 (five of twenty-eight students at Clearwater). [EPS-000072]
35. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG85, box 15, Acc. 1985-86/220, file
A1000/153, part 2, Settlements and Area – Eskimo Point, February 1967–October 1969, FA 8515, Report on Situation at Eskimo Point, 10 March 1967. [EPS-000402-0001]
36. Waldram, Herring, and Young, Aboriginal Health in Canada, 86.
37. Phypers et al., “Epidemiology of Tuberculosis,” 3–4.
38. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2912, file 851-1-501, part 1, Agent’s
Report for Month of April 1940, 2 May 1940; [NPC-606119] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada, RG29, volume 2912, file 851-1-501, part 1, R. T. Chapin to P. G. Lazenby, 2 July 1940.
[NPC-606114a]
39. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B92 3889, Ed. Rheaume to AlphonseDoucet, 3 May 1943. [OGP-030392]
40. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, file 55, Surveys for Tuberculosis – Stoneys – Morley,
1943–1948, Archival Acc. GR 1973.0315, Archival box 3, 9 March 1943. [MOR-800006] For Baker’s name, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2920, file 851-1-A774,
part 1, C. P. Schmidt to A. H. Baker, 22 November 1944. [120.14052]
41. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, file 55, Surveys for Tuberculosis – Stoneys – Morley,
1943–1948, Archival Acc. GR 1973.0315, Archival box 3, Medical Superintendent and Director,
Division of Tuberculosis Control, C. P. Schmidt, 4 June 1943, 7. [MOR-800010]
42. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1945, 167; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1946, 204.
43. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 1221, file 311-T7-1, part 3, Divisionof Tuberculosis Prevention, “Annual Report 1942,” Ontario Provincial Department of Health,
6–7. [NPC-620600]
44. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1944, 153.
45. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2905, file 851-1-A485, part 1, K. M.
Shorey to P. E. Moore, 30 January 1940. [NPC-604111]

Notes • 637
46. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2909, file 851-1-A487, part 1, K. M.
Shorey to P. E. Moore, 15 February 1940; [NPC-605227] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada, RG29, volume 2909, file 851-1-A487, part 1, K. M. Shorey to P. E. Moore, 16 February
1940. [NPC-605226]
47. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2899, file 851-1-A411, part 1b, K. M.
Shorey to P. E. Moore, 21 March 1940. [NPC-601995]
48. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2905, file 851-1-A485, part 1, K. M.
Shorey to P. E. Moore, 10 June 1940. [NPC-604103]
49. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2910, file 851-1-A492, part 1, K. M.
Shorey to P. E. Moore, 24 February 1941. [NPC-602681]
50. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2899, file 851-1-A411, part 1b, K. M.
Shorey to P. E. Moore, 23 April 1941. [CRS-003037]
51. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2911, file 851-1-A494, part 1, K. M.
Shorey to P. E. Moore, 3 November 1941. [PLK-001089]
52. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2911, file 851-1-A494, part 1, K. M.
Shorey to P. E. Moore, 26 November 1941. [NPC-605107]
53. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2913, file 851-1-A501, part 2, A. G.
Hamilton to P. E. Moore, 17 December 1941. [NPC-621766]
54. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6443, file 881-1, part 2, “Lejac Indian
Residential School, General Report for quarter ending December 31, 1941,” Alex R. Simpson.
[LEJ-000806]
55. For examples, see the following. For Spanish, Ontario, 1942 and 1943: TRC, NRA, Library andArchives Canada, RG29, volume 2899, file 851-1-A411, part 2, K. M. Shorey to P. E. Moore, 3
February 1942; [NPC-601967] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2899,
file 851-1-A411, part 2, K. M. Shorey to P. E. Moore, 26 January 1943. [NPC-601949] For Sioux
Lookout, Ontario, 1942: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2911, file851-1-A494, part 1, K. M. Shorey to P. E. Moore, 10 February 1942. [NPC-605104] For Kenora,
Ontario, 1942 and 1943: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2909, file851-1-A487, part 1, K. M. Shorey to P. E. Moore, 20 February 1942; [NPC-605203] TRC, NRA,
Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2909, file 851-1-A487, part 1, K. M. Shorey to P. E.
Moore, 22 February 1943. [ NPC-605200] For Fort William, Ontario, 1943: TRC, NRA, Libraryand Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2910, file 851-1-A492, part 1, K. M. Shorey to P. E. Moore,
27 February 1943. [NPC-602669]
56. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2920, file 851-1-A774, part 1, A. H.
Baker, October 1944. [120.14049A]
57. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2920, file 851-1-A774, part 1, A. G. B.
Lewis to C. P. Schmidt, 20 November 1944. [120.14052A]
58. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, Bernard Neary to L. B. Pett, 21 April 1947. [AEMR-172667]
59. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2920, file 851-1-A774, part 1, “TheSixth Annual Tuberculosis Survey of the Edmonton Indian School, January 1943.” [NPC605042a]
60. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2920, file 851-1-A774, part 2, J. T.
Faunt to Indian Affairs Branch, 30 December 1945. [NPC-620624]

638 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
61. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6446, file 881-13, part 2, Extract from
General Report of Rev. Alex. R. Simpson, O.M.I. Principal, Lejac Indian Residential School, for
Quarter ended March 31, 1946. [LEJ-005148]
62. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2910, file 851-1-A497, part 2, W. L.
Falconer to K. M. Shorey, 12 November 1946. [NPC-602729]
63. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2910, file 851-1-A497, part 2, K. M.
Shorey to W. L. Falconer, 13 November 1946. [NPC-602728]
64. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2910, file 851-1-A492, part 1, D. C.
Marlatt to G. C. Brink, 14 June 1947. [NPC-602653]
65. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 1135, [no file number], [Illegible] for
the Commissioner, to Principals, 26 May 1896. [EDH-002544-0000]
66. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6113, file 350-23, part 1, H. A. Alderwood to Percy Moore, 25 January 1946. [FGA-001121]
67. TRC, NRA, No document location, no file source, 988/23-9, p. 2, 1947–48, R. H. Moore to
Indian Affairs Branch, 30 June 1948. [KUP-001240]
68. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6279, file 584-10, part 4, R. S. Davies
to Indian Affairs, 3 October 1951. [SBR-004545-0000]
69. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6445, file 881-10, part 5, P. E. Moore
to Superintendent, Welfare and Training Division, 23 December 1940. [LEJ-002117]
70. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 901/29-4, volume 2, 03/1961–05/1970, Report on Residential
School Analysis, 3, 25 July 1961. [AEMR-121208A]
71. TRC, NRA, DIAND PARC, file 201/25-2, volume 1, R. F. Davey to Indian Commissioner, Regional Supervisors of Indian Agencies, Indian Superintendents, 15 September 1953. [AEMR014494]
72. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2909, file 851-1-A487, part 1. G. L.
Bell to G. Swartman, 10 April 1943. [NPC-605199]
73. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2920, file 851-1-A774, part 1, W. L.
Falconer to C. P. Schmidt, 15 December 1943. [120.13959A]
74. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2920, file 851-1-A774, part 1, G. B.
Lewis to C. P. Schmidt, 29 December 1943; [120.13963A] C. P. Schmidt to A. H. Baker, 22 November 1944. [120.14052]
75. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2920, file 851-1-A774, part 1, “TheSeventh Annual Tuberculosis Survey of the Youville Indian School,” November 1943, G. R.
Davidson. [NPC-605028]
76. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2920, file 851-1-A774, part 1, C. Pant.
Schmidt to G. C. Laight, 4 January 1944. [NPC-605027]
77. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2920, file 851-1-A774, part 1, Rose
Vincent to C. P. Schmidt, 21 December 1943. [NPC-605027b]
78. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2920, file 851-1-A774, part 1, G. C.
Laight to C. P. Schmidt, 13 January 1944. [NPC-605021]
79. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2909, file 851-1-A487, part 1, F. J.
Milner to P. E. Moore, 29 February 1940. [CJC-003295] Milner’s letter does not mention thestudents’ tubercular condition, but it is mentioned in Moore’s response: TRC, NRA, Libraryand Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2909, file 851-1-A487, part 1, P. E. Moore to F. J. Milner, 6March 1940. [CJC-003296]

Notes • 639
80. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B54 2281, “Suggestions for Care of
Observation Cases in Indian Residential Schools of Alberta,” A. H. Baker, 27 December 1940.
[OGP-020962]
81. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B54 2283, “Care of T.B. Observation
Cases in Indian Residential School,” C. Pant. Schmidt, 19 May 1942. [OGP-020989]
82. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2911, file 851-1-A494, part 1, Gordon
L. Bell to P. E. Moore, 22 January 1943. [PLK-001149]
83. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2912, file 851-1-A501, part 2, P. E.
Moore to B. S. C. Corrigan, 27 March 1943. [CLD-000820]
84. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6160, file 577-1, part 2, Cameron
Corrigan to P. E. Moore, 6 July 1943. [CLD-001029-0001]
85. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6160, file 577-1, part 2, G. E. Trudeau
to R. A. Hoey, 13 August 1943. [CLD-001031]
86. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2920, file 851-1-A774, part 2, W. L.
Falconer to H. N. Woodsworth, 17 July 1950. [120.14976]
87. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2920, file 851-1-A774, part 2, W. L.
Falconer to H. N. Woodsworth, 29 November 1950. [120.15019]
88. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 774/25-1-016, part 1, 1938–1957, NAC, B. F. Neary to
H. N. Woodsworth, 27 December 1950. [ERM-002153]
89. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2947, file 851-2-2, volume 1, W. L.
Falconer to Director Indian Health Services, 21 July 1955. [NPC-622936a]
90. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2910, file 851-1-A489, part 1, J. V.
Riches to P. E. Moore, 24 February 1943. [NPC-602686]
91. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2938, file 851-1-X500, part 1, “TheOccurrence of Tuberculosis in BCG Vaccinated Indian Children,” 4 November 1955. [NPC621717b]
92. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1088, volume 1, Robert Yule to Director, Indian Health Services, 10 September 1949. [GUY000133-0002]
93. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2868, file 851-1-4, volume 2, “B.C.G.
Testing and Vaccination,” 1, 2. [NPC-601798a]
94. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, file [103]/17-14-1, volume 2, TB Surveys, 06/1956–09/1959, Archival Acc. E1994-95/653, Archival box 1, “Summary, Blood Indian
Agency, R.C. Indian Residential School, September 17, 1957.” [MRY-200480]
95. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2916, file 851-1-A671, part 3a, F. J.
Porth to Regional Superintendent, Regina, 17 March 1964. [NPC-603000]
96. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3125, file 860-8-X200, part 4, “Narrative Report,” Medical Services, Southern Manitoba Zone HQ – IHS, February 1964. [ARS000217]
97. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, RG10, Acc. E1997-98/318, box 8 of 15,
file 675/17-14-2, E. D. Ring to M. P. D. Waldron, 19 February 1970. [PLD-012164]
98. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, Federal Records Centre – National Capital Region,
file DM6-2-3, volume 5, locator N346-2, J. H. Wiebe to R. F. Battle, 3 March 1970. [AEMR254862]
99. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
22, file 17, Frank Froh to W. P. Starr, 22 November 1972. [GDC-015234-0000]

640 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
100. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3132, file 861-2-1, part 1, “Tuberculosis Statistics, Indian/Eskimo Population 1973,” Medical Services Branch. [NPC-625216g]
101. Hawthorn, Survey of the Contemporary Indians, 45–53; Robertson, Reservations Are for Indians, 27–28.
102. Robertson, Reservations Are for Indians, 193.
103. Robertson, Reservations Are for Indians, 195.
104. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 492/25-13009, volume 2, M. R. Warren to W. H. Bury, 9 October 1959. [SJS-000447-0001]
105. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 492/25-13009, volume 2, Paul Deziel to Mr. Davey, 19 November 1959. [SJS-000459]
106. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 492/25-13009, volume 2, R. F. Davey to Sister M. St. Alban, 27 November 1959. [SJS-000460] For the $375
figure, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file492/25-13-009, volume 2, H. M. Jones to Deputy Minister responsible for Indian Affairs, 19
November 1959. [SJS-000458]
107. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6446, file 881-13, part 2, “Extract from
General Report of Rev. Alex. R. Simpson, O.M.I. Principal, Lejac Indian Residential School, for
Quarter ended March 31, 1946.” [LEJ-005148]
108. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2970, file 851-4-096, part 3, M. Savoie
to Director General, Medical Services, 1 February 1968. [NPC-605437]
109. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2918, 851-1-A675, part 2, Medical
Superintendent, Qu’Appelle Indian Health Unit, to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 20 June 1940.
[NPC-602779]
110. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2920, file 851-1-A774, part 1, A. G. B.
Lewis to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 31 January 1941; [NPC-605055] RG29, volume 2918, 851-1A675, part 2, J. W. Waddy to Secretary, Indian Affairs Branch, 3 February 1941. [NPC-602774]
111. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
18, file 1, P. F. Playfair to Chas. Ross, 27 April 1950. [CJC-007886-0001]
112. For Inuvik, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 1245, file 312-2-13,
volume 1, Urgent Report, 10 March 1961. [120.16489A] For Shubenacadie, see: TRC, NRA,
Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8954, file 55/25-2, part 3, P. J. Collins to J. H. Sheane, 31 January 1962. [SRS-004712] For Lytton, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada,
RG29, volume 1245, file 312-2-13, volume 2, Urgent Report, Infectious Hepatitis, St. George’s
Indian Residential School, Lytton, British Columbia, 26 October 1962. [NPC-600583] For Fraser Lake, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3417, file 851-1-A975,
part 2, Urgent Report, Infectious Hepatitis, Lejac Residential School, Lejac, British Columbia,
4 October 1062. [NPC-620665] For Mission, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada,
RG29, volume 2925, file 851-1-A987, part 3, Urgent Report, Infectious Hepatitis, Matsqui
Indian Reserve, Mission Residential School, 16 October 1962. [NPC-608050] For Hobbema,see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 1245, file 312-2-13, volume 2,
Urgent Report, Infectious Hepatitis, Hobbema, Alberta, 26 October 1962. [NPC-600579] For
Portage la Prairie, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2969, file851-4-092, part 1, Urgent Report for Residential (Boarding Only), School, Portage, 4 May 1964.
[120.17117A] For Prince Albert, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume2917, file 851-1-A672, part 2, Urgent Report, Infectious Hepatitis, Prince Albert Indian Residential School, 7 May 1964; [NPC- 605404] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29,

Notes • 641
volume 2969, file 851-4-092, part 1, Urgent Report, Infectious Hepatitis and Mumps, All Saints
Indian Residential School, Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, 4 December 1967. [NPC-622252a]
For Brandon, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 1245, file 312-2-13,
volume 2, Urgent Report, Infectious Hepatitis, Brandon Indian Residential School, 2 October
1964. [120.17173] For Dauphin, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume2969, file 851-4-092, part 1, Urgent Report, Indian and Northern Health Services, Infectious
Hepatitis, Dauphin Indian Residential School, 16 September 1964. [NPC-622260b] For DuckLake, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2918, file 851-1-A674, part3, Urgent Report, Indian and Northern Health Services, Infectious Hepatitis, Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, 14 April 1966; [120.17306] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume2969, file 851-4-092, part 1, Urgent Report, Infectious Hepatitis, St. Michael’s Indian Residential School, Duck Lake, Saskatchewan, 19 December 1967. [NPC-622253] For La Tuque, see:
TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2987, file 851-6-A371, part 9, Urgent
Report Indian and Northern Health Services, La Tuque, Quebec, 4 March 1970. [120.17613]
113. For details, see previous documents cited above and the undated newspaper article, likely
from the Brandon Sun, “Care Taken to Check Hepatitis,” TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2969, file 851-4-092, part 1. [NPC-622259a] For quarantine example, see:
TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8954, file 55/25-2, part 3, P. J. Collins
to J. H. Sheane, 31 January 1962. [SRS-004712]
114. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2966, file 851-4-040, D. Kelly to T. J.
Orford, 25 January 1956. [120.15655]
115. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2910, file 851-1-A487, part 2, R. F.
Hardman to P. Moore, 30 January 1958. [120.15976]
116. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2910, file 851-1-A487, part 2, Dr.
Playfair to Indian Health Services, 4 May 1950. [KNR-001541]
117. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2974, file 851-4-340, part 1, Department of National Health and Welfare, Urgent Report, Outbreak of Meningitis Mistassini Lakeand La Tuque Indian Residential School, 28 April 1969; [120.17559B] TRC, NRA, Library andArchives Canada, RG29, volume 2898, file 851-1-A377, part 2, Memorandum for File, J. H.
Wiebe, 16 April 1969. [120.17547]
118. TRC, CAR, Women’s Missionary Society (Western Division), Kathleen Stewart, “Educating
Indians,” A Term Paper for English 20, University of Western Ontario, March 1954, 10–11.
[13c-c000245-d0009-001]
119. Rutty, “Middle-Class Plague,” 278, 284.
120. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6016, file 1-1-13, part 1, from P. E.
Moore to O. Davison, 26 August 1941. [AEMR-400172]
121. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6016, file 1-1-13, part 1, R. A. Hoey to
C. P. Schmidt, 29 August 1941. [AEMR-400174]
122. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6016, file 1-1-13, part 1, from M.
Christianson to Indian Agents, 29 August 1941. [AEMR-400173]
123. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG85, Perm. volume 421, file 555/119, part
1, Medical Health Officer – Aklavik, 1928–1952, FA 85-1, W. G. Brown to G. E. B. Sinclair, 11
September 1951. [AKU-001315]
124. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/25-1015, volume 1, Norman Paterson to Education Division, 22 October 1953. [KNR-000316]

642 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
125. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
15, file 5, Eric Barrington to Frieda Matthews, 21 October 1953. [RCO-002028]
126. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2968, file 851-4-080, Dr. J. Millar,“Report on Poliomyelitis Outbreak, September–October 1953.” [120.15325]
127. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG85, Perm. volume 392, file 552-5, part
1, Poliomyelitis – NWT, November 1947–December 1955, FA 85-1, R. A. Bishop to F. Fraser, 6
May 1955. [RCN-012540-0000]
128. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2969, file 851-4-092, part 1, Urgent
Report, Infectious Hepatitis and Mumps, All Saints Indian Residential School, Prince Albert,
Saskatchewan, 4 December 1967. [NPC-622252a]
129. TRC, NRA, Government of Nunavut, School – CB – Correspondence Kitikmeot Region [Kugluktuk] – box 5, CGS Records Warehouse, Iqaluit, Susan Schulz to Ms. Wilson, 18 January
1990. [CBS-000916]
130. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6329, file 660-5, part 7, R. A. Hoey to
M. de Bretagne, 31 December 1941. [PLD-008554]
131. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6329, file 660-5, part 7, M. de
Bretagne to R. A. Hoey, 9 January 1942. [PLD-008552]
132. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6262, file 578-1, part 5, A. B. Simes toHarold W. McGill, 19 October 1944. [ELK-000399-0000]
133. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6263, file 578-9, part 2, D. M. MacKay
to Deputy Minister, 9 August 1949. [ELK-000162]
134. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8259, file 486/6-1-001, part 1, D. M.
MacKay to Deputy Minister, 12 October 1950. [MFI-000375]
135. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2906, file 851-1-A486, part 5, B. H.
Harper to P. E. Moore, 11 December 1950. [NPC-603181a]
136. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7187, file 371/25-1-011, P. E. Moore to
H. M. Jones, Ottawa, 1 May 1962. [FGA-001131]
137. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, file 985/6-1-012, part 5, School Buildings– Lejac Indian Residential School, 1966–1967, FA 10-144, Acc. V1984-85/334, box 14 [500824],
National Archives of Canada – Burnaby, T. J. Tevendale to W. G. Robinson, 26 July 1966. [LEJ010280-0000]
138. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 775[706]/6-1-020, volume 1, 04/65–11/67, NAC,
“Sewage Disposal From Residential School at Assumption,” M. A. Butler to Area Director, 30
August 1966. [AMP-008403-0001]
139. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, file 501/6-1-088, part 14, R. F. Davey to Paul
Dumouchel, 14 July 1966. [GUY-051423]
140. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 6-1-015, P.
F. Playfair to J. McGilp, 10 July 1968, [MCI-001381-0001]
141. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, F. N. Gibson to
L. Whiteman, 15 June 1979. [MRS-001225]
142. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E49740963, volume 3, “Foodborne Illness Investigation,” Alan Sales, undated document. [SMD000207]
143. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2905, file 851-1-A486, part 1, P. E.
Moore to B. T. McGhie, 19 February 1942. [NPC-620532]

Notes • 643
144. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 8697, file 957/6-1, part 3, P.
E. Moore to H. M. Jones, 22 July 1960. [MIS-000240]
145. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8797, file 1/25-13, part 10, André
Renaud to R. F. Davey, 10 August 1959, [NRD-300276]
146. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2915, file 851-1-A578, part 3, P. E.
Moore to Regional Superintendent, Central Region, INHS, 15 May 1961. [NPC-602638]
147. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 2000-01063-6, box 8, file 377/17-1, part
1, R. F. Davey to P. E. Moore, 1965. [LTR-000633]
148. TRC, NRA, Quebec Regional Service Centre – LAC – Quebec City, Acc. 81-116, box 303441, file377/17-1, J. E. DeWolf to R. L. Boulanger, 21 January 1965. [LTR-001513-0005]
149. TRC, NRA, Quebec Regional Service Centre – LAC – Quebec City, Acc. 81-116, box 303441, file377/17-1, J. E. DeWolf to Dr. M. Savoie, 24 February 1965. [LTR-001513-0003]
150. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, PAA 71.220 B161 2419, J. E. Y. Levaque to Mr. Tully,
19 November 1967. [OGP-023087]
151. For speech and language, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box 16, file 10, Karen Gess, 12 January 1988. [GDC-048377-0001]
For dental care, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection– Ottawa, GRS Files, box L3, Children’s Dental Program referral form, 10 September 1987.
[GDC-055838] For immunization, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical
Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box 130, file 11, “Consent form for required immunization,” 7 January 1988. [GDC-006001-0015] For vision screening, see: TRC, NRA, INAC –Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box 16, file 10, “Vision
Screening Program Referral,” 18 November 1987. [GDC-048381-0001]
152. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories – Education, Culture and Employment, Staff
Meetings, 1991–1993, Transfer No. 1419, box 10, Minutes of Staff Meeting, 7 February 1992, 5.
[AHU-005121]
153. Collier, “Art of Otology.” For concern in a Canadian setting, see: Francis, “Recurrent Otitis
Media,” 1121–1122. (Chronic ear disease in this discussion includes chronic suppurative otitis
media and mastoiditis.)154. Thomson, “Otitis Media.”155. Ogilvy, “Displacement Therapy,” 549.
156. Francis, “Recurrent Otitis Media,” 1121.
157. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2910, file 851-1-A487, part 2, Cecilia
Jeffrey, Indian Residential School, Kenora, Ontario, Record of ear infection treatments and investigation: September 1953 to April 1954, Report by Kathleen Stewart. [CJC-007582-0001] For
Dr. Ling’s full name, see: TRC, CAR, Kay Blake, “Remembering Cecilia Jeffrey,” Glad Tidings,
Volume 61, Number 6, June/July 1985, 10–14. [13c-c001295-d0001-001]
158. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2910, file 851-1-A487, part 2, Ivan B.
Robson to H. G. Mingay, 4 October 1954. [CJC-003284-0001] For notes, see: TRC, NRA, Libraryand Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2910, file 851-1-A487, part 2, “Details concerning the tencases of active ear disease remaining at the end of the 1953–54 term at The Cecilia Jeffrey Indian School”; [CJC-007582-0004] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2910,
file 851-1-A487, part 2, Cecilia Jeffrey, Indian Residential School, Kenora, Ontario, Record of
ear infection treatments and investigation: September 1953 to April 1954, Report by Kathleen
Stewart. [CJC-007582-0001]

644 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
159. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2910, file 851-1-A487, part 2, Cecilia
Jeffrey, Indian Residential School, Kenora, Ontario, Record of ear infection treatments andinvestigation: September 1953 to April 1954, Report by Kathleen Stewart. [CJC-007582-0001]
160. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2910, file 851-1-A487, part 2, Cecilia
Jeffrey, Indian Residential School, Kenora, Ontario, Record of ear infection treatments andinvestigation: September 1953 to April 1954, Report by Kathleen Stewart. [CJC-007582-0001]
161. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2910, file 851-1-A487, part 2, W. J.
Wood to Director, Indian Health Services, 30 November 1954. [CJC-003297]
162. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
18, file 3, Kathleen Stewart to Frieda, 3 June 1954. [CJC-007871]
163. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2910, file 851-1-A487, part 2, Cecilia
Jeffrey, Indian Residential School, Kenora, Ontario, Record of ear infection treatments andinvestigation: September 1953 to April 1954, Report by Kathleen Stewart. [CJC-007582-0001]
164. Geier, Sykes, and Geier, “Review of Thimerosal.”165. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2910, file 851-1-A487, part 2, Cecilia
Jeffrey, Indian Residential School, Kenora, Ontario, Record of ear infection treatments andinvestigation: September 1953 to April 1954, Report by Kathleen Stewart. [CJC-007582-0001]
For ephedrine as a decongestant, see: The Merck Manual, Home Health Handbook, Patients& Caregivers, Ear, Nose, and Throat Disorders, http://www.merckmanuals.com/home/ear_
nose_and_throat_disorders/middle_ear_disorders/otitis_media_secretory.html (accessed 31
May 2014).
166. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
18, file 3, Kathleen Stewart to Frieda, 3 June 1954; [CJC-007871] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2910, file 851-1-A487, part 2, Ivan B. Robson to H. G. Mingay, 4October 1954. [CJC-003284-0001]
167. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2910, file 851-1-A487, part 2, P.
E. Moore to Dr. J. Wood, 9 November 1954. [CJC-003284-0000] For the delay in providing
medical equipment, see: TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto,
ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box 18, file 3, Kathleen Stewart to Miss Matthews, 18 January 1955. [CJC007867]
168. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
18, file 3, Kathleen Stewart to Miss Matthews, 18 January 1955. [CJC-007867]
169. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2910, file 851-1-A487, part 2, “2ndreport Experimentation and treatment of ear disease among 165 pupils,” Kathleen Stewart, 25
June 1954. [CJC-007582-0002]
170. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
18, file 3, Kathleen Stewart to Miss Matthews, 18 January 1955. [CJC-007867]
171. World Health Organization, Chronic Suppurative Otitis Media, 2.
172. Gullett, History of Dentistry, 223.
173. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2873, file 851-1-9, part 1, Dental Care
Program, 1931–1959, L. V. Janes to P. E. Moore, 21 February 1946. [AEMR-173980]
174. Gullett, History of Dentistry, 237–238.
175. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, J. W. Brown to The Secretary, Indian Affairs Branch, 22
March 1946. [AEMR-174377]

Notes • 645
176. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, C. E. Cameron to Philip Phelan, 20 February 1943.
[AEMR-171990]
177. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, P. E. Moore to R. Chas, 25 February 1943. [AEMR171989]
178. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, W. L. Falconer to Norman Paterson, 22 January 1947.
[AEMR-171986]
179. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, N. Paterson to Indian Affairs Branch, 18 February 1947.
[AEMR-171984]
180. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, Caldwell to Indian Commissioner for British Columbia,
3 June 1946; [AEMR-174364A] W. L. Falconer to D. M. MacKay, 15 June 1946. [AEMR-174363]
181. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, W. L. Falconer to N. W. Paterson, 8 May 1946. [AEMR174372]
182. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, Norman Paterson to Indian Affairs Branch, 14 May
1946; [AEMR-174370] A. Keane for G. Swartman to Department of National Health and Welfare, 29 May 1946. [AEMR-174367]
183. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, W. L. Falconer to W. P. B. Pugh, 15 March 1946. [AEMR174378]
184. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, J. R. Oliver to F. A. Donnelly, 10 May 1946. [AEMR-174371A]
185. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, W. L. Falconer to R. P. G. Laurence, 30 April 1945.
[AEMR-174390]
186. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, Indian Agent, Portage la Prairie to Indian Affairs
Branch, 7 November 1945. [AEMR-174383]
187. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, Donald W. Cameron to Indian Affairs, 6 April 1945.
[AEMR-174392]
188. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG85, Perm. volume 892, file 9453A, part
1, Dental Clinic – Anglican Church Mission at Aklavik 1938–1949, FA 85-44, “Report for 1945,
All Saints Hospital Dental Clinic,” Charlotte Wesier. [AKU-001572-0001]
189. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, “Indian Health Services Dental Report,” H. M. McCaffery, 4 October 1947. [AEMR-174337]
190. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, “Indian Health Services Dental Report,” H. M. McCaffery, 25 October 1947. [AEMR-174334]

646 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
191. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, “Indian Health Services Dental Report,” H. M. McCaffery, 19 November 1947. [AEMR-174332]
192. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, O. G. Shepherd, 20 January 1949. [AEMR-174287]
193. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2900, file 851-1-A411, part 4b, C. W.
Weir to R. N. Simpson, 20 December 1949; [NPC-602354] Library and Archives Canada, RG29,
volume 2753, file 822-1-A191, part 2a, W. L. Falconer to Director, Indian Health Services, 15
November 1949. [NPC-622202]
194. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, W. Ewart to P. S. Tennant, 6 May 1948. [AEMR-174298]
195. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, P. S. Tennant to A. E. Caldwell, 9 June 1949. [AEMR174272]
196. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, P. S. Tennant to Principal Sheehan, 9 June 1949. [AEMR174273]
197. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, Fred Mayo to Bernard Neary, 10 February 1949. [AEMR174279]
198. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, W. Barr Murray to E. L. Stone, 17 January 1950. [AEMR174269]
199. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, H. G. Cook to P. E. Moore, 28 July 1950. [AEMR-174265]
200. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, PAA 71.220 B92 3897, G. M. Latour to H. N. Woodsworth, 2 June 1950. [OGP-030642]
201. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, J. R. Oliver to R. P. G. Laurence, 18 October 1949; [AEMR-174271A] R. N. Simpson to R. P. G. Laurence, 26 October 1949. [AEMR-174270]
202. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, O. Leroux to B. H. Neary, 11 May 1950. [AEMR-174267]
203. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, B. F. Neary to O. Leroux, 18 May 1950. [AEMR-174266]
204. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, 23-9, 04/49–06/62, NAC – Edmonton,
A. Jean Burgess, “Narrative Report Blood Indian Agency,” 1952, 2. [MRY-008359]
205. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG85, Perm. volume 892, file 9453A, part
1, Dental Clinic – Anglican Church Mission at Aklavik, 1938–1949, FA 85-44, “Report of Dental
Work Completed at Aklavik during the summer 1949, as submitted to the Diocese of The
Arctic by Dr. St. Clair Wilson,” 30 September 1949. [AKU-001593-0002]
206. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2764, file 822-1-A801, part 1, R. J.
Meek to E. L. Stone, 20 October 1949. [NPC-602178]
207. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2764, file 822-1-A801, part 1, E. L.
Stone to Superintendent, Yukon Indian Agency, 20 December 1949. [NPC-602176]
208. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2753, file 822-1-A191, part 2a, W. L.
Falconer to Director, Indian Health Services, 15 November 1949. [NPC-622202]

Notes • 647
209. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2776, file 822-1-X300, part 1a, J. P.
Harvey to The Director, Indian Health Services, 28 May 1952. [NPC-602874]
210. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2775, file 822-1-X200, part 3, Otto
Rath, Public Health Practice Among the Indian Population, 13 October 1965, 7. [NPC602294a]
211. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2761, file 822-1-A501, volume 4, Dr.
W. G. Hetherington to Honourable Mr. Lang, 8 December 1966. [NPC-601223]
212. TRC, NRA, Headquarters, 772/25-1-010, 06/61–07/68, volume 2 HQ., The Albertan, “The Frustrating Indian School at Cluny,” by Sandy Cameron, 14 June 1966. [MOR-000897-0001]
213. For dental care, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection– Ottawa, GRS Files, box L3, Children’s Dental Program referral form, 10 September 1987.
[GDC-055838]
214. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Winnipeg, RG10, Acc. W84-85/402, box 13670, file511/25-2, volume 5, Area Director, Southern Manitoba Area, Medical Services to Ford Bond,
24 May 1966. [BRS-103051]
215. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8332, file 88/25-2, part 2, P. J. Collins
to Paul McGillvray, 21 January 1963. [SRS-006687]
216. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 116/25-2-759,
03/47–09/58 – RCAP, John Bower to H. N. Woodsworth, 7 January 1958. [SAC-071771-0001]
217. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, RG10, Acc. E1996-97/415, box 35 of 56,
file 673/25-2-06, volume 1, Witold Zaleski to Miss Docherty, 13 June 1968. [PAR-127318] The
facility was referred to in the letter as a “Brown Camp.” It was one of a series of such facilities
established by John Brown, a social worker. See: Jennissen and Lundy, One Hundred Years ofSocial Work, 258, 264.
218. TRC, NRA, INAC – BC Regional Records Office – Vancouver, Kamloops Student Records, Acc.
V79-076, box 108669 [Name redacted], D. R. Hunter to G. R. B. Smillie, 10 May 1976. [KAM204776]
219. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, file 985/25-8, Educational Assistance,
11/1972–1974, FA 10-144, Archival Acc. V1984-85/333, Archival box 5, G. Graham Ellis to D.
A. Dolden, 16 April 1973; [GRG-200290] A. W. Harding to District Supervisor, 19 April 1973;[GRG-200292] A. W. Harding to A/Regional Superintendent of Education, 13 August 1973.
[GRG-200291-0001]
220. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 9080, file 125/25-8, part 2, Psychiatric
Report, G. M. Stephens, 4 November 1959. [CLD-000864-0002]
221. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 9080, file 125/25-8, part 2, W. J. Wood
to A. G. Leslie, 28 January 1960. [CLD-000864-0000]
222. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 22/25-2,
volume 1, E. D. Zarfas to C. L. Rogers, 27 September 1962. [TAY-050104-0001]
223. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, Student Record Cards – Vancouver Island
Schools, Archival Acc. V1997-98/056, Archival box 5, FA 10-225, W. P. Kyne to J. F. Janzen, 9
December 1974. [LEJ-200215-0001]
224. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, FA 10-144, V 1994-95/558, box 2, file 985/258, Educational Assistance, 1975–1976, NAC, Burnaby, untitled document, 1976, 2. [JOE202432-0000]
225. TRC, NRA, Prairies – Northwest Regional Service Centre – LAC – Edmonton, file 111/25-2, M.
Demay to D. A. Green, 17 August 1959. [SMD-005351]

648 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
226. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, RG10, Acc. E1998-00764-3, box 20, file_/29-17-2, volume 1, J. A. Dolan to C. N. Smith, 10 November 1969. [PLD-013404]
227. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8334, file 88/25-12, J. P. Mackey toFred Perser, 17 February 1955. [SRS-000346-0001]
228. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8332, file 88/25-2, part 3, J. P. Mackey
to F. B. McKinnon, 28 February 1955.[SRS-004571]
229. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG85, Perm. volume 1336, file 560-3, part
1, Care of Children – N.W.T., 1954–July 1960, FA 85-4, C. L. Merrill to Dr. Matas, 14 April 1959.
[RCN-008441]
230. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 974/18-2, 1965–1968, volume 1, D., NAC, Police
Report, H. P. Costello, 15 June 1966. [KUP-004731-0000]
231. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, 974/18-2, volume 1, 1965–1968, Accident,
Drowning, Etc., J. A. Andrews, J. V. Boys, 30 May 1969. [ABR-002330-0001]
232. TRC, NRA, Document location/file source to be determined, no file identification information available, Coroner’s report into the death of [name redacted], 26 May 1969. [ABR-001984]
233. TRC, NRA, Manitoba Regional Service Centre – LAC – Winnipeg, RG10, Acc. W86-87/083,
box 026, file 501/18-28, volume 2, E. J. Coptuik to Assistant Agent, Dauphin, 29 October 1968.
[SBR-004308]
234. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories – Education, Culture and Employment,
Akaitcho Hall, 1977–1982, Transfer No. 0342, box 1, Marvin Marykuca, 7 December 1977.
[AHU-004173-0001]
235. TRC, ASAGR, DIAND, Residential Schools Records Office, file E4974-2018, volume I, H. S.
Lammer to G. W. Sinclair, 22 June 1981. [AANDC-089544]
236. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
37, file 42, H. S. Lammer to Marlene Schact, 9 December 1981. [GDC-017004]
237. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
37, file 42, H. S. Lammer to M. Schact, 18 December 1981. [GDC-017003]
238. TRC, NRA, Beaufort-Delta Education Council Warehouse, Inuvik, NWT, [Grollier Hall] Student Files: 1989–1993, A-I, ½, Marilyn Beaton to Cecile, 19 June 1991. [GHU-000318-0003]
239. See, for example: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, RG10, Acc. E-199801236-0, box 58, file E6575-1, part 1, Selwyn Leeks, 21 April 1983. [PLD-104011-0001]
240. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, AGCA-927114_0001, “A
Troubled School: Suicide Attempts at Indian Facility,” by Trevor Sutter, Regina Leader Post,
n.d.; [AANDC-927114] AGCA-927115_0001, “New Policy Developed: Suspend Students Who
Try Suicide,” by Trevor Sutter, Regina Leader Post, n.d. [AANDC-927115]
241. Faden, Beauchamp, and King, History and Theory of Informed Consent, 60–166.
242. In 1913, for example, Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs Duncan Campbell Scott wrote, “Theprincipal of a boarding school remains the guardian of a pupil while on vacation, and he may
recall a pupil should he deem it necessary for good and sufficient cause.” See: TRC, NRA,
Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6039, file 160-1, part 1, Duncan C. Scott to Glen
Campbell, 26 November 1913. [AEMR-120221]
243. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6272, file 582-10, part 2, “Application
for Admission,” 31 August 1940. [PCR-101331-0007]
244. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11287, series B-3-f, file 51/25-2-010,
part 3, “Application for Admission,” 14 February 1963. [SRS-005921] For change of ministry, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, FA 10-17, volume 6435, Microfilm

Notes • 649
reel C-8762, file 877-10, part 8, 1950–1952, West Coast Agency – Alberni Residential School– Admissions and Discharges, NAC, Ottawa, “Application for Admission,” 11 July 1951; [ABR095147] TRC, NRA, RG10, volume 6352, file 753-10, part 4, Microfilm reel C-8709, “Application
for Admission,” 9 August 1951. [EDM-071623-0013]
245. For an example, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6058, file 26513, part 4, T. R. L. MacInnes to John S. Rob, 1 May 1940; [SRS-001722] RG29, volume 2899, file851-1-A411, part 1b, T. R. L. MacInnes to F. Matters, 29 March 1941. [NPC-601972]
246. For an example, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2920, file 851-1A774, part 1, G. C. Laight to C. P. Schmidt, 13 January 1944. [NPC-605021]
247. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2905, file 851-1-A485, part 1, J. F.
Lockhart to Secretary, Indian Affairs Branch, 2 July 1940. [NPC-604100]
248. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2921, file 851-1-A777, part 1, P. E.
Moore to E. L. Stone, 12 March 1946. [NPC-622853]
249. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2921, file 851-1-A777, part 1, E. L.
Stone to Indian Agent, Lesser Slave Lake Indian Agency, AB, 19 March 1946. [NPC-622852]
250. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2899, file 851-1-A411, part 2, S.
Smoke to Provincial Health Board, 13 March 1942. [NPC-601960b]
251. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2899, file 851-1-A411, part 2, K. M.
Shorey to Steve Smoke, 19 March 1942. [CRS-002123-0001]
252. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2921, file 851-1-A779, part 1, W. P. E.
Pugh to Secretary, Indian Affairs Branch, 3 June 1942. [NPC-602979]
253. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2920, file 851-1-A774, part 2, W. L.
Falconer to J. T. Faunt, 3 April 1945; [NPC-620627] J. T. Faunt to Indian Affairs Branch, 26
March 1945. [120.14129]
254. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11325, file 6-39-3, W. L. Falconer to R.
P. G. Laurence, 25 March 1946. [AGA-000330]
255. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2923, file 851-1-A974, part 1, M.
Leighton to Mr. Moore, 24 August 1945. [NPC-602567a]
256. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2868, file 851-1-4, part 1a, W. S. Barclay to P. E. Moore, 2 December 1947. [NPC-601794]
257. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG85, Perm. volume 392, file 552-5, part
1, Poliomyelitis – NWT, November 1947–December 1955, FA 85-1, F. J. G. Cunningham to Mr.
Hunt, 13 May 1955. [RCN-012541-0000]
258. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
2A, file 29, Henry G. Cook to All I.S.A. – I.A.B. Principals, 2 March 1962. [GDC-005384]
259. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, Acc. 1999-01431-6, box 360, file 901/17-1,
part 1, Health Services – General – BC and Yukon Regional Office, 09/1944–11/1969, FA 10379, Access Code 32, Henry G. Cook to H. M. Jones, 26 February 1962. [AEMR-255070]
260. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 1/25-2,
volume 4, R. E. Williams to Director, Indian Affairs Branch, 25 October 1961. [BRS-000624]
261. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, file 801/25-2-892, volume 4, Admission
and Discharge – Lower Post IRS, 04/1963–03/1965, FA 10-151, V1989-90/101, Archival box 38,“Application for Admission,” 24 May 1963. [LOW-200619]
262. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 9028, file 51/17-1, “Consent for
Treatment, Circular No. 335,” H. M. Jones, 18 December 1961. [SRS-001633] For short form,
see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, file 989/25-2-2028, volume 2,

650 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
Indian Education – Admission and Discharge of Pupils – Cariboo Indian Residential School,
05/1962–05/1964, FA 10-147, V1985-86/476, Archival box 15, Consent Form – Medical and
Dental Treatment, undated. [JOE-201441]
263. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, Acc. 1999-01431-6, box 360, file 901/17-1,
part 1, Health Services – General – BC and Yukon Regional Office, 09/1944–11/1969, FA 10379, Access code 32, Henry G. Cook to H. M. Jones, 26 February 1962. [AEMR-255070]
264. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, series C-V-4, volume 11357, file 493/25-1,
part 3, A. R. Aquin to Indian Affairs, 7 February 1962. [SWK-000700]
265. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10667, file 416/25-2, R. F. Davey toSuperintendent Sault Ste. Marie, 6 May 1962. [SWK-002253-0001]
266. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 988/25-2-008, 1961–1963, volume 3, D., NAC, H.
Dunlop to R. S. Sampson, 6 November 1962. [KUP-004641]
267. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, 988/25-2-890, part 2, Acc# V1984-85/316,
1963–1965, volume 50 [500348], NAC BBY, M. E. Gordon for J. D. Galbraith to J. V. Boys, 15
November 1963. [MIS-008659-0001]
268. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 962/25-2,
volume 5, Admissions and discharges – Cariboo Student Residence, 01/64–03/68, [60-6],
IRSRCHFC, “Application for Admission to Pupil Residence,” 15 November 1967. [JOE-067848]
269. The “Application for Admission to Residential School” was renamed the “Application for
Admission to Student Residence” in the fall of 1968 in keeping with the Indian Affairs policyof reclassifying its residential schools as residences. The new application form required theparent to acknowledge that the child was to remain at the residence “under the guardianshipof the administrator for such term as the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development may deem proper” and to “give the administrator express permission to authorize such
medical and dental treatment as he in his discretion deems necessary.” During this period,
it appears, Indian Affairs was requiring parents to fill out both an “Application for Admission
for Student Residence” and an “Application for Admission to Pupil Residence,” one of whichtransferred guardianship to the Crown and gave specific consent to “medical professionals,”and one of which transferred guardianship to the administrator. See, for example, application forms from the Anglican school at Dauphin, Manitoba, in 1968: TRC, NRA, Library andArchives Canada, RG10, volume 10392, file 511/25-2, part 18B, “Application for Admission
to Pupil Residence,” 17 June 1968; [DRS-121020-0002] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada – Winnipeg, RG10, Acc. W84-85/402, box 13641, file 506/25-2, volume 1, 1968–1969,“Application for Admission to Residential School,” 18 June 1968. [DRS-121605-0002] See, forexample, application forms from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, school in 1976: TRC, NRA,
INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E-4974-2, volume 9,“Application for Admission to Pupil Residence,” 10 February 1976; [PAR-012797] “Application
for Admission to Pupil Residence,” 15 February 1976. [PAR-005981]
270. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E4974-2,
volume 11, “Application for Admission to Student Residence/Group Home,” 17 May 1977.
[PAR-030062]
271. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 1988 – 89/057, box 39, file 372/25-2-020,
part 7, “Application for Admission to Student Residence/Group Home,” 18 July 1977. [FTG001335]
272. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
22, file 17, Frank Froh to W. P. Starr, 22 November 1972. [GDC-015234-0000]

Notes • 651
273. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
L34A, R. B. Laschuk to D. W. Carnduff, 9 July 1981; [GDC-044355-0005] INAC – Resolution
Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box K1, file 2, D. W. Carnduff to E.
V. Belt, 17 July 1981. [GDC-019555-0001]
274. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
8A, file 15, L. M. McCaslin to H. Kolakowski, 18 March 1982. [RCS-000146]
275. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
L34A, R. J. MacDonald to G. W. Sinclair, 4 November 1981. [GDC-044355-0002]
276. An Act respecting Indians, Revised Statutes of Canada 1952, chapter 149, section 52, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 376.
277. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
K1, file 2, H. Kolakowski to Residence Administrators, 25 November 1981. [RCS-000048]
278. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
8A, file 15, D. Seesequasis to H. Kolakowski, 3 February 1982. [GDC-014654-0004]
279. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E4974-2,“Application Form,” 20 June 1983. [SMD-007461-0002]
280. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E4974-2,
Student Residence Admission and Discharge, Sask. Region, “Application for Admission toStudent Residence/Group Home,” 12 August 1983. [SMD-154280-0001]
281. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
C11, “Gordon Student Residence, Application for Admission,” 31 August 1994. [GDC-0549100001]
282. For one example, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection– Ottawa, GRS Files, box 15, file 12, E. A. Baer to Starr, 4 February 1970. [GDC-016526] Other
examples are given in the following endnotes.
283. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
L3, Consent form for fluoride mouth rinse treatment, 4 November 1987. [GDC-025716]
284. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
7A, file 8, P. Longman to Donna Prosper, 21 November 1989; [GDC-032404] GRS Files, box K2,
P. Longman to Joanne Walters, 24 March 1993. [GDC-087810-0000]
285. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
C5, file 21, Gerry Worth to Cathy Miller, 31 October 1986. [GDC-104049]
286. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, School Files, volume 6476, file 918-10, part 3,
1938–1947, “Application for Admission,” 8 October 1941. [FPU-070570]
287. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG85, volume 1505, file 600-1-1, part 1,
N.W.T. – General Policy File – Education and Schools, 1905–1944, “Application for Admission
to Residential School,” 21 April 1925; [HRU-000192-0001] RG85, Perm. volume 1879, file630/109-2, part 3A, Hay River Anglican Residential School, 1935–1937, FA 85-8, “Application
for Admission to Residential School,” 26 April 1935. [FRU-000233]
288. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, INAC –Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 600-1-6, volume 3, Hostel
Management – N.W.T. [General and Policy], Jan. 1961–Oct. 1961, “Application for Admission
to Students’ Residential School,” 4 September 1960. [GHU-000245-0001]
289. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories – Education, Culture and Employment,
Pupil Residence Admission Applications, 1971–1972, Transfer No. 0330, box 3-1, 29 June 1971.
[GHU-000269]

652 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
290. TRC, NRA, Beaufort-Delta Education Council Warehouse, Inuvik, NWT, [Grollier Hall] Student Files, 1992–1995: F-T, “Application for Admission to Student Residence,” 3 February 1993.
[GHU-000354-0015]
291. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, file 801/25-2-892, volume 4, Admission
and Discharge – Lower Post IRS, 04/1963–03/1965, FA 10-151, V1989-90/101, Archival box 38,“Application for Admission,” 24 May 1963. [LOW-200619]
292. Foster, “ESP Tests,” 94–103.
293. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, file 630-110/32-2, Reports Breynat
Hall, Fort Smith, 1957–1959, Archival box 223-1, Archival Acc. G-1979-003, Regional Director
to B. Thorsteinsson, 4 May 1966. [BTU-001220-0001]
294. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 600-1-6,
volume 9, Hostel Management – N.W.T. [General and Policy], June 1966–July 1967, A. Hodginson to D. Simpson, 30 September 1966. [RCN-001009]
295. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG85, Perm. volume 1930, file A140-6, part
11, Rations for Departmental Staff, October 1966–May 1967, FA 85-8, K. Ann Feyrer to G. C.
Butler, 13 February 1967. [BTU-001496-0002]
296. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG85, box 56, Acc. 1995-96/310, file 2521-2, part 5, Nutrition Studies for Eskimo [Incl. Bannock Mix, Powdered Eggs, etc.], October
1966–February 1971, FA 85-48, K. Ann Feyrer to G. C. Butler, 10 May 1967. [BTU-000306]
297. TRC, NRA, National Archives of Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851/6-4, part 4, Jan/62–
Oct/69, H. R. Brett to D. W. Simpson, 15 May 1967. [120.05350]
298. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3126, file 860-8-X300, part 3a, Narrative Report Medical Services, Department of National Health and Welfare, Saskatchewan
Region, May through August 1964, T. J. Orford, 4; [120.17160] Public Health Agency of Canada,
Notifiable diseases on-line, “Amoebiasis,” http://dsol-smed.phac-aspc.gc.ca/dsol-smed/ndis/
diseases/amoe-eng.php (accessed 29 May 2014).
299. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2967, file 851-4-046, part 1, T. J. Orford to R. D. P. Eaton, 7 July 1965. [120.12420A]
300. Griffin, “Diloxanide Furoate.”
301. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2967, file 851-4-046, part 1, R. D. P.
Eaton to Zone Superintendent, Fort Qu’Appelle Indian Hospital, 2 July 1965. [NPC-605506]
302. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2869, file 851-1-4, part 4, C. Corrigan
to Regional Superintendent, Foothills Region, Edmonton, 8 August 1962. [NPC-601823a] For
details on geographic reach of the Foothills Region, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada, RG29, volume 2869, file 851-1-4, part 4, “Foothills Region Control Program for
Eradication of Tuberculosis,” September 1962, 8. [NPC-601818-01] For information on the useof isoniazid (INH) to treat inactive (latent) tuberculosis, see: Centers for Disease Control andPrevention, Tuberculosis (TB), Treatment for Latent TB Infection, http://www.cdc.gov/tb/
topic/treatment/ltbi.htm (accessed 8 June 2014).
303. Cobelens et al., “Research on Implementation,” 11.
304. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2869, file 851-1-4, part 4, C. Corrigan
to Regional Superintendent, Foothills Region, Edmonton, 8 August 1962. [NPC-601823a] For
details on geographic reach of the Foothills Region, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada, RG29, volume 2869, file 851-1-4, part 4, “Foothills Region Control Program for Eradication of Tuberculosis,” September 1962, 8. [NPC-601818-01]

Notes • 653
305. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives. file 630-100/10-1, part 3, General– Joseph Burr Tyrrell, Fort Smith, 1960–1961, Archival box 219-4, Archival Acc. G-1979-003,
Parental Consent Form, 2 November 1960. [FSU-001342]
306. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2869, file 851-1-4, part 4, C. Corrigan
to Regional Superintendent, Foothills Region, Edmonton, 8 August 1962. [NPC-601823a] For
details on geographic reach of the Foothills Region, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada, RG29, volume 2869, file 851-1-4, part 4, “Foothills Region Control Program for Eradication of Tuberculosis,” September 1962, 8. [NPC-601818-01]
307. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files
Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box 16A, file 29, F. Vella to N. Goater, 20 March 1967; [GDC036712] RG29, volume 2986, file 851-6-1, part 3, F. Vella to Peter Guzak, 28 February 1967.
[NPC-605392]
308. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
16A, file 29, Noel Goater to F. Vella, 23 March 1967. [GDC-036711]
309. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
16A, file 29, F. Vella to Noel Goater, 8 May 1967. [GDC-036709]
310. Vella and Guzak, “Haemoglobin Variants.”
311. Esperanca and Gerrard, “Nocturnal Enuresis,” 324–327.
312. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, file 150-3-10, volume 2, Medical Liaison– Outside Doctors, 04/1968–12/1969, RG29, Archival Acc. V1992-93/204, Archival box 11,
R. B. Lowry to J. J. Warner, 31 May 1968; [MIK-250035] R. B. Lowry to Sweeney, 3 June 1968;[LEJ-201089] R. B. Lowry to Noonan, 3 June 1968; [KAM-204195] R. B. Lowry to John W. Hennessey, 3 June 1968. [JOE-202320]
313. See, for example: Rajangam and Janakiram, “Dermatoglyphics.”
314. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, file 150-3-10, volume 2, Medical Liaison– Outside Doctors, 04/1968–12/1969, RG29, Archival Acc. V1992-93/204, Archival box 11,
R. B. Lowry to J. J. Warner, 31 May 1968; [MIK-250035] R. B. Lowry to Sweeney, 3 June 1968;[LEJ-201089] R. B. Lowry to Noonan, 3 June 1968; [KAM-204195] R. B. Lowry to John W. Hennessey, 3 June 1968.[JOE-202320]
315. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, file 150-3-10, volume 2, Medical Liaison– Outside Doctors, 04/1968–12/1969, RG29, Archival Acc. V1992-93/204, Archival box 11, R. B.
Lowry to J. A. Massel, 31 May 1968. [KUP-201227]
316. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, file 150-3-10, volume 2, Medical Liaison– Outside Doctors, 04/1968–12/1969, RG29, Archival Acc. V1992-93/204, Archival box 11, R. B.
Lowry to John W. Hennessey, 15 January 1969. [JOE-202340]
317. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6214, file 469-23, part 1, Report ofaccidental drowning of Dudley Shilling, Age 16 Years, 19 August 1940, Charles Hives. [SWK001473]
318. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6059, file 265-23, part 1, J. P. Mackey
to Secretary Indian Affairs, 14 August 1943. [SRS-004209]
319. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
8A, file 1, Accident, July 14, 1947, at Gordon’s Indian Residential School, Punnichy, Saskatchewan, S. Golfman; [GDC-014669] Statement of D. C. Wickenden, 14 June 1947; [GDC-014671]
Statement of William Favel, 15 June 1947. [GDC-014674]
320. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, 988/18-2, 5[500303] V84-85/316, 1950–
1960, NAC BBY, M. D. Kearny to N. W. Garrard, 27 June 1955. [CST-015863]

654 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
321. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, Confidential, Hostels, 1971–1974,
Archival box 8-24, Archival Acc. G1995-004, Leonard P. Holman to J. Coady, 19 June 1972.
[SHU-000488]
322. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 777/4-2-010,
03/1968–09/1974, DRSRO, W. A. Grant to E. J. Dosdall, 28 May 1973; [MAR-200008-0000] TRC,
NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, file 777/18-2, volume 1, Accidents, Drownings, Etc., 05/1960–06/1973, BAN No. 1998-00781-2 FRC Acc. No. 85-351 EFRC, Archival box
40, Glen Johnson to E. J. Dosdall, 12 June 1973. [MAR-002971]
323. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 486/18-2, volume
2, box V-24-83, 06/26/1946–09/23/1975, M. J. Pierce to Indian Affairs, 23 October 1974; [FTA001096] Peter Edwards, “This Is about Reuniting a Family, Even in Death,” Toronto Star, 4
March 2011, http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2011/03/04/this_is_about_reuniting_a_family_even_in_death.html; Peter Edwards, “Star Gets Action: Charlie Hunter Headed Home,”
Toronto Star, 24 March 2011, http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2011/03/24/star_gets_action_charlie_hunter_headed_home.html.
324. See, for example: TRC, NRA, Beaufort-Delta Education Council Warehouse, Inuvik, NWT,
Grollier Hall, 1965–66 [Box 12], E. Duggan to unknown, 4 April 1966; [GHU-001279-0001]
TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, RG10, Acc. 312, box 72, file 24-11-48, J.
G. Smith to Dr. Waldron, 1 May 1969; [PAR-127389] TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS
Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box 10A, file 15, “Accident and Safety Report:
re Students,” 9 February 1971.[GDC-041237-0001]
325. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6352, file 753-23, part 1, 1935–1944,
Microfilm reel C-8709, “Indian Agent’s Report for the Month of January 1942,” G. C. Laight.
[EDM-003368]
326. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6352, file 753-23, part 1, 1935–1944,
Microfilm reel C-8709, R. A. Hoey to J. F. Woodsworth, 4 February 1942. [EDM-003363-0001]
327. TRC, NRA, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, F Division, Prince Albert Sub-Division,
Ile a la Crosse Detachment, 6 July 1942. [BVL-000431-0001]
328. TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Yukon Fonds, Yukon Archives, COR 266, f. 9, Sunday School
Caravan, 1949–1960, 1966, 1967, Anglican Church, Diocese of Yukon, Bishop to Miss Hassell,
10 November 1960; [DYK-010193] TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Yukon Fonds, Yukon Archives COR 301, file 6, Carcross, “Crash Kills Two From Carcross School,” Whitehorse Star, 10
November 1960. [CDH-090071]
329. TRC, NRA, Headquarters, file 772/18-2, volume 3, 1965–1972, A. H. Murray to Director of
Education Services, 5 April 1965. [CFT-003051]
330. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories, file 630-100/12-1, part 1, General Breynat
Hall – Fort Smith, 1957–1962, Archival box 222-3, Archival Acc. G-1979-003, Administrator of
the Mackenzie to the Director, 22 June 1960. [BTU-001298]
331. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG22, Perm. volume 893, file 250-8-1, part
1, Fort Smith – General, October 1957–December 1960, FA 22-1, Paul Piché to R. G. Robertson, 13 December 1960. [BTU-001595]
332. “Mauled by Polar Bear, Youth Dies,” Winnipeg Free Press, 18 November 1968.
333. “Traffic Injuries Fatal,” Winnipeg Free Press, 22 March 1971.
334. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6455, file 884-23, part 1,
1935–1950, Kootenay Agency – Kootenay Residential School – Death of Pupils, FA 10-17, Microfilm reel C-8777, NAC, Ottawa, [unknown] to W. S. Arneil, 3 February 1950. [EGN-008344]

Notes • 655
335. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6455, file 884-23, part 1, 1935–1950,
Kootenay Agency – Kootenay Residential School – Death of Pupils, FA 10-17, Microfilm reel
C-8777, NAC, Ottawa, “Inquiry into re Mary Antoinette Pascal – January 21, 1950,” T. J. Sullivan, 2 February 1950. [EGN-008341]

Diet and nutrition: 1940–2000
1. See “‘Food and diet at residential schools: 1867–1939” in Part I of this volume.
2. Mosby, “Making and Breaking Canada’s Food Rules,” 418–419.
3. Mosby, “Making and Breaking Canada’s Food Rules,” 410, 418.
4. During the First World War, British authorities were concerned over the implications of general wartime food shortages, and the United States government officials sought to determine
the food needs of Allied troops. Stiebeling, Food Budgets, 4, 12; Ostry, Shannon, Dubois, andNathoo, “Origins of Dietary Standard,” 62–63.
5. Ostry, Shannon, Dubois, and Nathoo, “Origins of Dietary Standard,” 62–63.
6. T. K. Murray, “Canadian Dietary Standards” (Prevention Preview, 1983), quoted in Health
Canada, Food and Nutrition, Canada’s Food Guides from 1942 to 1992, http://www.hc-sc.
gc.ca/fn-an/food-guide-aliment/context/fg_history-histoire_ga-eng.php#fnb9 (accessed 14
December 2013).
7. Mosby, “Making and Breaking Canada’s Food Rules,” 410–412.
8. E. W. McHenry, “Determinants of Nutritional Status” (Canadian Public Health Journal, 1941),
quoted in Ostry, Shannon, Dubois, and Nathoo, “Origins of Dietary Standard,” 60.
9. Ostry, Shannon, Dubois, and Nathoo, “Origins of Dietary Standard,” 63–65.
10. Mosby, “Making and Breaking Canada’s Food Rules,” 414–417.
11. Health Canada, Food and Nutrition, Canada’s Food Guides from 1942 to 1992, http://www.
hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/food-guide-aliment/context/fg_history-histoire_ga-eng.php#fnb9 (accessed 14 December 2013).
12. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6209, file 468-10, part 3, Don Robertson to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 13 September 1931. [MER-001114]
13. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6262, file 578-1, part 5, R. A. Hoey to
Canon L. A. Dixon, 27 October 1944. [ELK-000400]
14. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6262, file 578-1, part 5, Mrs. W. Sinclair to Dr. Alderwood, 5 January 1945. [ELK-000406-0001]
15. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Winnipeg, RG29, Acc. W84-85/482, box 005, file 115-14, volume 1[b.2], “Department of Mines and Resources – Indian Affairs Branch, The Indian
Residential School, Elkhorn, Manitoba, Discharges, June 1949,” 3. [ELK-000634]
16. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2913, file 851-1-A501, part 2, Cameron Corrigan to P. E. Moore, 9 October 1941. [NPC-621771]
17. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, B. Thorsteinsson to Vera Simons; Inspection Report, 25
November 1944. [AEMR-172705C]
18. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3222, file 540514, part 2, R. A. Hoey to
L. A. Dixon, 31 October 1944. [TAY-000204]
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11091, Shannon File, 1944–1945,
Letters from Department, G. E. Young to Dr. Moore, 28 December 1945. [CRS-002081-0001]

656 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
20. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10752, Shannon File, 1944, Misc. Outgoing Correspondence, F. Matters to Indian Affairs, Ottawa, 7 January 1945. [CRS-001636]
21. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6033, file 150-44, part 2, “Report ofFood Survey, Indian Residential School, Spanish, Ontario, March 11–15, 1945.” [AGA-0003120001]
22. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 1, 03/1948–
08/1948, “Summary of Reports, The Canadian Red Cross Society – Dietary Surveys Shingwauk
Residential School, Sault Ste. Marie, March 21–24, 1946,” 16 July 1946. [AEMR-170089]
23. TRC. NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 3, R. S. Davis to
Indian Affairs, 17 October 1945. [GDC-017606]
24. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6445, file 881-10, part 7, A. R. Simpson to R. Howe, 22 June 1945. [LEJ-001651]
25. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6056, file 265-5, part 6, J. P. Mackey toBernard F. Neary, 25 November 1948. [SRS-001313]
26. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, “Extract from letter from Inspector Hamilton,” 16 February 1945. [AEMR-172699] Although the document referenced does not identify the school,
it does refer to the school principal, Mr. Cheales. For evidence that Cheales was principal of
the Sioux Lookout school in March 1945, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10,
volume 6214, file 470-2, part 1, “Indian Residential School Quarterly Report,” Sioux Lookout
Indian Residential School for the Quarter Ended March 31, 1945, signed A. B. Cheales. [PLK000660]
27. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, A. B. Cheales to Secretary, Indian Res. School Comm.
Winnipeg, 1 April 1946. [AEMR-172697A] For authorized pupilage, see: TRC, NRA, Anglican
Church of Canada, General Synod Archives ACC–MSCC–GS 75-103, series 2:15, box 27, file 3,
untitled financial document, page 8 of 22-page portable document format file. [ANG-083405]
28. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, H. A. Alderwood to A. B. Cheales, 12 April 1946. [AEMR172697]
29. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 975, file 388-6-18, “Report on Inspection of Food Services at Portage la Prairie Residential School,” 18 October 1946. [120.14302]
30. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, Report on Inspection of Food Service at Portage la Prairie
Indian Residential school, 8 October 1947. [120.03241A]
31. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 2-15, box
20, Minutes of Meeting of the Indian & Eskimo Residential School Commission, MSCC, 23
January 1945. [CRS-002146]
32. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6445, file 881-10, part 7, R. Howe to
Indian Affairs, 26 June 1945; [LEJ-001652] P. Phelan to R. Howe, 12 July 1945. [LEJ-001655]
33. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 6-21-1, volume 1, Indian Work Investigation Commission: Report to
the General Synod, Winnipeg, 1946, 7. [AEMR-016149]
34. For the Anglican position, see: TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 3-3, box 70, “A Brief Submitted by the Church of England in Canada
to the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and House of Commons Appointed to Consider

Notes • 657
The Indian Act,” 25 March 1947, 9. [CRS-002139-0000] For United Church, see: Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1499.
35. Canada, Special Joint Committee, 1946, 805.
36. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, P. E. Moore to Hamilton, 22 February 1945. [AEMR172698]
37. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 1, 03/1948–
08/1948, P. E. Moore to L. B. Pett, 1 March 1945. [AEMR-170107]
38. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file, 388-6-1, part 1, 03/1948–
08/1948, L. B. Pett to P. E. Moore, 12 March 1945. [AEMR-170106]
39. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file, 388-6-1, part 1, 03/1948–
08/1948, L. B. Pett to P. E. Moore, 1 March 1946. [AEMR-170104]
40. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 1, 03/1948–
08/1948, P. E. Moore to L. B. Pett, 5 March 1946. [AEMR-170103]
41. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 1, 03/1948–
08/1948, Director to H. A. Alderwood, 26 August 1946. [AEMR-170100]
42. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 1, 03/1948–
08/1948, “Health Aspects in Relation to Food Services: Indian Residential Schools,” Nutrition
Division Department of National Health and Welfare, November 1946. [AEMR-170062A]
43. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 975, file 388-6-13, “Report on Inspection of Food Service, Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School, Kenora, Ontario, Sept. 17 to 20,
1946.” [CJC-001927-0000]
44. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 1, 03/1948–
08/1948, “Food Service in Indian Residential Schools for Dominion Provincial Nutritioncommittee,” 6 December 1946. [AEMR-170024]
45. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 1, 03/1948–
08/1948, “Food Service in Indian Residential Schools for Dominion Provincial Nutritioncommittee,” 6 December 1946. [AEMR-170024]
46. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-3, L. B. Pett to B. F.
Neary, 22 August 1947. [NPC-600969]
47. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, ”Report on inspection of food service, Mohawk Institute, Brantford, Ontario,” 10January 1947. [AEMR-172692]
48. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 1, Henry Cook
to G. R. Turner, 20 November 1947. [120.00521]
49. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 1, 03/1948–
08/1948, L. B. Pett to G. R. Turner, 28 November 1947. [AEMR-170140]
50. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 975, file 388-6-39, “Report and Recommendations on Food Service at Thunderchild School,” 20 May 1947. [120.14503]
51. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-3, E. L. Stone to Director, Indian Health Services, 3 March 1947. [120.14442]
52. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, “Report on Inspection of Food Service, Morley IRS,” 28
February 1947. [120.03087A]
53. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, Ermineskin, 22 February 1947. [120.03083]

658 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
54. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 4, M. S. Todd to
Indian Affairs Branch, 11 October 1947. [MIK-002278]
55. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 4, J. Coleman toIndian Commissioner for British Columbia, 14 October 1947. [MIK-002279-0002]
56. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 5, W. J. Zimmerman to B. F. Neary, 6 December 1947. [IRC-042002]
57. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 1, “Report on
Visits to Indian Residential Schools – Autumn, 1947. Alice McCready,” 1947. [AEMR-010868]
58. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-3, L. B. Pett to B. F.
Neary, 22 August 1947. [NPC-600969]
59. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 1, “Report on
Visits to Indian Residential Schools – Autumn, 1947. Alice McCready,” 1947. [AEMR-010868]
60. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-3, E. L. Stone to
Director, Indian Health Services, Department of National Health and Welfare, 3 March 1947.
[NPC-601017]
61. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 1, 03/1948–
08/1948, L. B. Pett to B. F. Neary, 9 July 1947. [AEMR-174127]
62. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 975, file 388-6-24, 1947, “Nutrition
Publications,” May 1946. [AEMR-170360F]
63. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 1, 03/1948–
08/1948, L. B. Pett to B. F. Neary, 11 December 1946. [AEMR-170057]
64. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 1, 03/1948–
08/1948, P. E. Moore to principals and teachers, 2 December 1946. [AEMR-170061]
65. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6306, file 652-5, part 6, L. B. Pett to P.
E. Moore, 8 December 1947. [SMD-001897-0000]
66. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, “Nutrition
Study in Indian Residential Schools: Outline proposed in April, 1948, by Dr. L. B. Pett, Chief ofNutrition Division, Department of National Health and Welfare Canada.” [CJC-002006-0001]
These studies were first brought to wider public attention by journalist David Napier in 2000
in an article in the Anglican Journal. See: Napier, “Ottawa Experimented on Native Kids,” Anglican Journal (May 1, 2000), http://www.napierink.ca/articles_ottawa-experimented-on-native-kids.html. Ian Mosby has also addressed the studies in an article in the journal Histoire
Sociale/Social History in 2013. See: Mosby, “Administering Colonial Science,” 145–172.
67. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, 02/1948–
07/1949, “Outline of Nutrition Study in Indian Residential Schools,” April 1948. [AEMR171753]
68. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, FA 29-143, file 851-6-4, part 1,
11/1944–01/1956, L. B. Pett to G. D. W. Cameron, 18 October 1948. [AEMR-174077]
69. Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. “Sir Norman Haworth,” http://www.britannica.com/
EBchecked/topic/257576/Sir-Norman-Haworth (accessed 13 December 2013).
70. Nathoo, Holmes, and Ostry, “Analysis of the Development of Canadian Food Fortification,”
376; Committee on Cereals, Cereal Enrichment, 1.
71. Nathoo, Holmes, and Ostry, “Analysis of the Development of Canadian Food Fortification,”
376. For definition of Vitamin B complex, see: Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. “Vitamin B Complex,” http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/630998/vitamin-B-complex(accessed 16 December 2013).

Notes • 659
72. Nathoo, Holmes, and Ostry, “Analysis of the Development of Canadian Food Fortification,”
376.
73. Nathoo, Holmes, and Ostry, “Analysis of the Development of Canadian Food Fortification,”
376.
74. Nathoo, Holmes, and Ostry, “Analysis of the Development of Canadian Food Fortification,”
376.
75. Britnell and Fowke, Canadian Agriculture, 151–152,
76. Committee on Cereals, Cereal Enrichment, 1–2.
77. Committee on Cereals, Cereal Enrichment, 14–15.
78. Nathoo, Holmes, and Ostry, “Analysis of the Development of Canadian Food Fortification,”
376–377.
79. Adamson, Jolliffe, Kruse et al., “Medical Survey of Nutrition,” 249. For the date of the survey,
see: Aykroyd, Jolliffe, Lowry, et al., “Medical Resurvey of Nutrition,” 27, 3.
80. Committee on Cereals, Cereal Enrichment, 16; Nathoo, Holmes, and Ostry, “Analysis of theDevelopment of Canadian Food Fortification,” 377.
81. Aykroyd, Jolliffe, Lowry et al., “Medical Resurvey of Nutrition,” 27.
82. Goldsmith, Darby, Steinkamp et al., “Resurvey of Nutritional Status,” 64–65.
83. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2913, file 851-1-A501, part 2, Cameron Corrigan to P. E. Moore, 9 October 1941. [NPC-621771]
84. Moore, Kruse, Tisdall, and Corrigan, “Medical Survey,” 226–233.
85. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8585, file 1/1-2-17, House of Commons Special Committee on Postwar Reconstruction and Re-Establishment of Indian Population, Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence, May 24, 1944, 315–316.
86. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, 02/1948–
07/1949, A. E. Caldwell to R. A. Hoey, 8 May 1948. [AEMR-171818A]
87. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6306, file 652-5, part 6, L. B. Pett to P.
E. Moore, 8 December 1947. [SMD-001897-0000]
88. Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8585, file 1/1-2-17, House of Commons Special
Committee on Postwar Reconstruction and Re-Establishment of Indian Population, Minutesof Proceedings and Evidence, May 24, 1944, 317.
89. Vivian, McMillan, Moore et al., “Nutrition and Health of the James Bay Indian,” 517–518.
90. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 923, file 385-7-2, part 1, Mar/46–
Jan/52, L. B. Pett to R. P. Vivian, 17 February 1949. [AEMR-170910]
91. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 923, file 385-7-2, part 1, Mar/46–
Jan/52, Percy Vivian to L. B. Pett, 21 February 1949. [AEMR-170909]
92. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, 02/1948–
07/1949, Dr. L. B. Pett to H. C. Rice, 5 May 1948; [AEMR-171824] RG29, volume 975, file388-6-13, 10/1943–01/1951, L. B. Pett to N. Patterson, 11 May 1948; [AEMR-173929] RG29,
volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, 02/1948–07/1949, L. B. Pett to N. W. Garrard, 13 May 1948;[AEMR-171821] RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, 02/1948–07/1949, L. B. Pett to B. F.
Neary, 3 August 1948. [AEMR-171781] For the use of the term “dietary survey” to describe
these reports, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4,
part 4, 1951–1955. [AEMR-172556]
93. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, L. B. Pett to
R. S. MacCallum, 10 September 1951. [CJC-002039]

660 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
94. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, “Report on Inspection of Food Services, Shubenacadie
Indian Residential School, Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, visited May 18 to 19, 1948.” [AEMR-170493A]
95. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 975, file 388-6-45, 1948–1953, “Reporton Inspection of Food Service, Alberni Indian Residential School, Port Alberni, British Columbia, 17 and 18 June 1948.” [AEMR-170399]
96. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 975, file 388-6-45, 1948–1953, “Reporton Inspection of Food Service, Alberni Indian Residential School, Port Alberni, British Columbia, 17 and 18 June 1948.” [AEMR-170399]
97. For the report on the Roman Catholic school at Kenora, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–Jan/5, Nutrition in Indian Schools,“Report on the Inspection of Food Service, St. Mary’s Indian Residential School, Kenora, Ontario, Revisited June 2 to 3, 1948.” [AEMR-170503A] For the report on the Presbyterian schoolat Kenora, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part
1, Nov/44–Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, “Report on Inspection of Food Service, Cecilia
Jeffrey Indian Residential School, Kenora, Ontario, Revisited May 31 to June 2nd, 1948.” [AEMR-170495A]
98. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, “Report on
Inspection of Food Service, St. Alban’s Indian Residential School, Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, 7 June 1948.” [PAR-003800-0002]
99. For the Shubenacadie report, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, “Report on Inspectionof Food Services, Shubenacadie Indian Residential School, Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, visited May 18 to 19, 1948.” [AEMR-170493A]
100. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, “Report on
Inspection of Food Service, Edmonton Indian Residential School, Edmonton, Alberta, 10 June
1948.” [AEMR-170501A]
101. For examples of concerns over the high turnover among kitchen staff at Alberni, see: TRC,
NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 975, file 388-6-45, 1948–1953, “Report on
Inspection of Food Service, Alberni Indian Residential School, Port Alberni, British Columbia, 17 and 18 June 1948.” [AEMR-170399] For examples of concerns over kitchen staff andfacilities at the Presbyterian school in Kenora, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada,
RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, “Reporton Inspection of Food Service, Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School, Kenora, Ontario,
Revisited May 31 to June 2nd, 1948.” [AEMR-170495A]
102. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, “Report on Inspection of Food Service, Cecilia Jeffrey
Indian Residential School, Kenora, Ontario, Revisited May 31 to June 2nd, 1948.” [AEMR-170495A]
103. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, P. Phelan
to E. S. Jones, 5 October 1948; [PAR-003800-0000] P. Phelan to N. W. Garrard, 5 October 1948;[AEMR-170497] P. Phelan to George Dorey, 5 October 1948; [AEMR-170499] P. Phelan toJ. P. Mackey, 5 October 1948; [AEMR-170493] P. Phelan to Frieda Matthews, 5 October 1948;[AEMR-170495] P. Phelan to J. O. Plourde, 5 October 1948. [AEMR-170502]

Notes • 661
104. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6199, file 465-5, part 11, J. O. Plourde
to P. Phelan, 15 October 1948. [KNR-000532.]
105. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, “Report on
Inspection of Food Service, St. Alban’s Indian Residential School, Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, 7 June 1948.” [PAR-003800-0002]
106. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives of Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, 02/1948–
07/1949, L. B. Pett to E. J. Staley, 27 July 1948. [AEMR-171800]
107. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, Director to S. Middleton, 19 July 1948; [AEMR-170507]
Director to P. A. Charron, 19 July 1948. [AEMR-170506]
108. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, B. F. Neary to G. R. Turner, 20 January 1948. [AEMR-171317]
109. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, 02/1948–
07/1949, “Outline of Nutrition Study in Indian Residential Schools,” April 1948. [AEMR171753]
110. Ogilvie and Pett, “A Long Term Study,” 192.
111. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, 02/1948–
07/1949, L. B. Pett to J. W. Brown, 3 September 1948. [AEMR-171775]
112. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 923, file 385-7-2, part 1, Mar/46–
Jan/52, L. B. Pett to Mrs. H. S. Hughes-Caley, 24 November 1948. [AEMR-170960]
113. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, FA 29-143, file 851-6-4, part 1,
11/1944–01/1956, L. B. Pett to G. D. W. Cameron, 18 October 1948. [AEMR-174077]
114. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-604, part 1, 02/1948–
07/1949, L. B. Pett to B. F. Neary, 17 January 1949. [AEMR-171712]
115. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, FA 29-143, file 851-6-4, part 1,
11/1944–01/1956, L. B. Pett to G. D. W. Cameron, 18 October 1948. [AEMR-174077]
116. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 2, 08/1949–
11/1949, Tables of statistics on nutrition and health status of IRS children in study – resultsfrom St. Paul’s IRS, 13, 14, 16. [AEMR-170342A]
117. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 2, 08/1949–
11/1949, Charts regarding nutritional and health information for Blood IRS, 10, 13, 14, 16.
[AEMR-170345]
118. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 2, 08/1949–
11/1949, Summary of food records for St. Mary’s IRS, Kenora, 13, 14, 16. [AEMR-170347]
119. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 2, 08/1949–
11/1949, Tables of statistics on nutrition and health status of IRS children in study – resultsfrom Cecilia Jeffrey IRS, 13, 14, 16. [AEMR-170349]
120. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 2, 08/1949–
11/1949, Tables of statistics on nutrition and health status of IRS children in study – resultsfrom Shubenacadie IRS, 13, 14, 16. [AEMR-170351]
121. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 2, 08/1949–
11/1949, Charts detailing information from nutritional study, Alberni, 13, 14, 16. [AEMR-170341A]
122. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives of Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, 02/1948–
07/1949, Dr. L. B. Pett to B. F. Neary, 22 June 1949. [AEMR-171672]

662 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
123. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, “Indian Residential Schools Project Diet Changes to be
Started in September 1949.” [AEMR-170485A]
124. For milk as a source of riboflavin, see: Powers, “Riboflavin (Vitamin B-2) and Health,” 1352.
125. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 3, 10/1949–
11/1951, L. B. Pett to A. E. Caldwell, 25 April 1950. [120.03736]
126. For 100-milligram dosage at Shubenacadie, see: Ogilvie and Pett, “A Long Term Study,” 191.
127. For studies on airmen, see: Linghorne, McIntosh, Tice et al., “Relation of Ascorbic Acid
Intake,” 118.
128. For bread baking at the Kenora schools, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29,
volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, 02/1948–07/1949. [AEMR-171662] For information on millingof Newfoundland flour in Kenora, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29,
volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, 02/1948–07/1949, L. B. Pett to C. A. Morrell, 29 June 1949.
[AEMR-171664]
129. For rationale of selection of the Anglican school at Cardston as the control, see: TRC, NRA,
Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, 02/1948–07/1949, L. B.
Pett to S. H. Middleton, 29 July 1949. [AEMR-171654]
130. Pett, “Values from Tripling the Milk,” 426.
131. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, L. BradleyPett, “Development of Anemia on Newfoundland Enriched Flour,” for presentation to theAmerican Institute of Nutrition, New York City, April 1952. [CJC-002052-0000]
132. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8796, file 1/25-13, part 4, L. B. Pett to
H. M. Jones, 21 March 1958. [NPC-400776]
133. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, 02/1948–
07/1949, L. B. Pett to B. F. Neary, 22 June 1949. [AEMR-171672]
134. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, 02/1948–07/1949, L. B. Pett to Father St. Jacques, 29 July 1949; [AEMR-171651] L. B. Pett to A. E. Caldwell, 29 July 1949 [120.03595]
135. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 3, 10/1949–
11/1951, A. E. Caldwell to L. B. Pett, 15 March 1950. [AEMR-170245]
136. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, 02/1948–
07/1949, L. B. Pett to C. A. Morrell, 29 June 1949; [AEMR-171664] A. Papineau-Couture to L. B.
Pett, 4 July 1949. [AEMR-171663]
137. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, 02/1948–
07/1949, “Outline of Nutrition Study in Indian Residential Schools,” April 1948. [AEMR171753]
138. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, 02/1948–
07/1949, “Outline of Nutrition Study in Indian Residential Schools,” April 1948. [AEMR171753]
139. In early 1949, the inspector of Indian schools in British Columbia did administer the California Test of Mental Maturity to seventy Grade Two and Grade Three pupils at the Alberni
school and at an Indian Affairs day school. The results led him to conclude that “group intelligence tests are of little value in determining the mental ability of Indian children in British
Columbia.” The test results did, for him, confirm the “importance of the Language factor.”
The test had two components, one in which language played a greater role than in the other.
In all but a few cases, the students scored much better on the “non-Language” section. TRC,

Notes • 663
NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6036, file 150-44, part 1, Panel on Indian
Research School Administration, 1949–1951, FA 10-17, Extract from Inspector Indian Schools
in British Columbia Dated March 3, 1949. [AEMR-255545a]
140. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 2, 08/1949–
11/1949, L. B. Pett to H. K. Brown, 22 August 1949. [AEMR-170337]
141. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 3, List, 15 October 1949. [CJC-001991-0006]
142. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 3, 10/1949–
11/1951, ”Three Little Fruit Songs,” 27 October 1949. [CJC-006215-0001]
143. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 3, List, 15 October 1949. [CJC-001991-0006] See also: National Archives of Canada, RG29, volume 974, file388-6-4, part 3, 10/1949–11/1951, Health Improvement Program at Cecilia Jeffrey, 3 October
1949. [AEMR-170279]
144. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 3, Catherine M.
Ross to Miss Burns, 3 November 1949. [CJC-001994]
145. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, L. B. Pett to
R. S. MacCallum, 10 September 1951. [CJC-002039]
146. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 975, file 388-6-46, L. B. Pett to B. F.
Neary, 23 September 1948. [AEMR-170409]
147. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 2, 09/1948–
1958, Bernard Neary to L. B. Pett, 27 October 1948; [AEMR-174248] RG29, volume 975, file388-6-14, 1946–1949, L. B. Pett to B. F. Neary, 9 November 1948. [AEMR-173935]
148. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, 764-5, part 8, NAC, R. D. Ragan to the
Department of Indian Affairs, 12 March 1948; [PUL-005803-0000] R. D. Ragan to B. F. Neary,
15 March 1948. [PUL-005804-0001] See also: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, 764-5, part 8, NAC, Requisition by B. F. Neary, 23 March 1948; [PUL-005805] TRC, NRA,
Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, 764-5, volume 6373, part 9, 1949 NAC, Superintendent
to B. F. Neary, 16 July 1949. [PUL-004781]
149. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, 764-5, volume 6373, part 9, 1949 NAC, R.
D. Ragan to Indian Affairs, 20 June 1949. [PUL-004767-0000]
150. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, 764-5, volume 6373, part 9, 1949 NAC, R.
D. Ragan to Indian Affairs, 2 October 1949. [PUL-004805]
151. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, 764-5, volume 6373, part 9, 1949 NAC, B. F.
Neary to H. G. Cook, 6 October 1949. [PUL-004808]
152. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, 103/6-1-750, volume 2, 09/44–05/56,
NAC – Edmonton, R. D. Ragan to G. H. Gooderham, 3 October 1950. [MRY-004275-0001]
153. TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, 773/1-13-003, volume 1, 1950–1972, CRHQ, R. D. Ragan to Indian Affairs, Ottawa, 29 November 1950. [MRY-005476]
154. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, 02/1948–
07/1949, L. B. Pett to B. F. Neary, 6 November 1948. [AEMR-171730]
155. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, “Report on Inspection of Food Service, Cecilia Jeffrey
Indian Residential School, Kenora, Ontario, Revisited May 31 to June 2nd, 1948.” [AEMR-170495A]
156. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 3, T. C. Ross to
L. B. Pett, 27 January 1950. [CJC-001990]

664 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
157. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 3, 10/1949–
11/1951, Mary Macbeth to T. C. Ross, 1 May 1950. [AEMR-170218]
158. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
14, file 9, T. C. Ross to Frieda Matthews, 3 March 1950. [NCA-009102]
159. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 3, Catherine
Ross to Burns, 9 May 1950. [CJC-001999-0000]
160. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
14, file 9, T. C. Ross to Frieda Matthews, 6 June 1950. [CJC-007787]
161. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Acc. 1988-7004, box 14, file 9, T. C.
Ross to Frieda Matthews, 25 August 1950. [CJC-007776]
162. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
14, file 9, T. C. Ross to Frieda Matthews, 7 December 1950. [CJC-007765]
163. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
14, file 10, T. C. Ross to Frieda Matthews, 1 May 1951. [CJC-007759]
164. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
14, file 10, T. C. Ross to Frieda Matthews, 2 June 1951. [NCA-009114]
165. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955, R.
S. MacCallum to L. B. Pett, 31 October 1951. [AEMR-172581]
166. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, Report by A.
Burns and S. Saint-Hilaire, January 1952. [CJC-002042]
167. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
14, file 7, D. S. Pitts to F. E. Matthews, 31 July 1948. [CJC-007796]
168. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
14, file 7, T. C. Ross to Frieda Matthews, 14 September 1948. [CJC-007797]
169. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
14, file 10, T. C. Ross to Frieda Matthews, 2 June 1951. [NCA-009114]
170. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955, R.
S. MacCallum to L. B. Pett, 5 September 1951. [AEMR-172588]
171. TRC, NRA, Ontario Regional Service Centre – LAC – Toronto, file 129/23-4, volume 1, Kenora
Indian Agency Quarterly Report, 6. [CJC-001713-0001]
172. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955,
L. B. Pett to J. E. Andrews, 9 October 1952; [AEMR-172480] INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS
Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/25-1-014, R. F. Davey, Memorandum to File, 13
October 1953. [CJC-000541]
173. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, L. B. Pett to
R. S. MacCallum, 19 December 1951. [CJC-002032]
174. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, L. B. Pett to
R. S. MacCallum, 21 April 1952. [CJC-002041]
175. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 975, file 388-6-29, 1947–1949, L. B.
Pett to S. H. Middleton, 4 January 1949. [AEMR-171722]
176. TRC, NRA, Manitoba Regional Service Centre – LAC – Winnipeg, NAC Personnel File, James
Edward DeWolf, Call No. 01-36769, R. D. Ragan to Indian Affairs, 24 November 1948. [PUL009181]
177. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, 02/1948–
07/1949, S. H. Middleton to L. B. Pett, 8 January 1949. [AEMR-171722]

Notes • 665
178. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 773/25-1-004, 1936–1956, volume 1, NAC, Bernard
F. Neary to R. D. Ragan, 22 June 1949. [PUL-001193]
179. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, 103/6-1-764, volume 1, 09/44–12/54, C.
A. F. Clark to Superintendent of Education, 9 November 1949. [IRC-048180]
180. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 773/25-1003, volume 1, 10/36–09/70, “Minutes of the Blood Band Council Held in The Indian Agency
Office, 22 November 1949,” annotated by C. A. F. Clark. [IRC-041373]
181. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 773/25-1-004, 1936–1956, volume 1, NAC, Minutes– Extract, 3 November 1950. [PUL-001163] See also: Library and Archives Canada, 773/25-1004, 1936–1956, volume 1, NAC, Minutes – Extract, 28 November 1950. [PUL-001162]
182. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 773/25-1-004, volume 1, 1936–1956, H. G. Cook to
G. H. Gooderham, 20 August 1952. [IRC-048234]
183. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, 02/1948–
07/1949, Mary E. Macbeth to A. E. Caldwell, 5 April 1949, [AEMR-171701]
184. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955, L.
B. Pett to Father St. Jacques, 5 February 1952. [AEMR-172566]
185. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955,
L. B. Pett to A. Lacelle, 25 January 1954; [AEMR-172414] L. B. Pett to C. M. Carroll, 8 February
1954. [AEMR-172412]
186. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 5, 04/1955, L. B.
Pett to A. Lacelle, 19 April 1955. [AEMR-172616]
187. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955, L.
B. Pett to J. P. Mackey, 23 May 1952. [AEMR-172518]
188. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, L. B. Pett to P. E. Moore, 21 April 1952. [AEMR-170456]
189. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955, L.
B. Pett to J. P. Mackey, 17 July 1952. [AEMR-172486]
190. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955, L.
B. Pett to J. E. Andrews, 30 January 1953. [AEMR-172468]
191. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, J. E. Andrews
to L. B. Pett, 18 April 1953. [CJC-002024-0000]
192. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 2, “Confidential: Indian Residential School Nutrition Project,” undated. [CJC-001930-0000]
193. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955, L.
B. Pett to V. H. Harper, 27 April 1953. [AEMR-172452]
194. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, FA 29-143, file 851-6-4, part 1,
11/1944–01/1956, M. J. LaFrance to L. B. Pett, 27 September 1951. [AEMR-174064]
195. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955, L.
B. Pett to A. E. Caldwell, 19 December 1951. [AEMR-172571]
196. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 3, L. B. Pett to
H. C. Ross, 15 January 1951. [CJC-001997]
197. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/25-1014, R. V. Simpson to Davey, 7 October 1953. [CJC-000550-0000]
198. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 2,
09/1948–1958, Henry G. Cook to L. B. Pett, 27 May 1952. [AEMR-174213]

666 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
199. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 2, L. B. Pett toHenry Cook, 20 June 1952. [PAR-000570]
200. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, D. S. Pitts to
Dr. L. B. Pett, 2 April 1948. [CJC-002035]
201. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, FA 29-143, file 851-6-4, part 1,
11/1944–01/1956, A. E. Caldwell to L. B. Pett, 17 April 1951. [AEMR-174073]
202. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955, A.
E. Caldwell to L. B. Pett, 25 November 1952. [AEMR-172476]
203. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives of Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955,
Dr. L. B. Pett to Miss Macbeth, Miss Lock, and Miss Sinclair, 29 August 1951. [AEMR-172595]
204. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, L. B. Pett to
R. S. MacCallum, 21 April 1952. [CJC-002041]
205. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955, L.
B. Pett to Father St. Jacques, 22 April 1952. [AEMR-172537]
206. According to the Bank of Canada inflation calculator, $548.27 in 1953 was the equivalent of$470.50 in 1948. Inflation Calculator, Bank of Canada http://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/
related/inflation-calculator/ (accessed 29 April 2014).
207. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, George Dorey to B. F. Neary, 31 January 1948. [AEMR170519]
208. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, L. B. Pett to P. E. Moore, 11 June 1951. [AEMR-170466A]
209. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, H. G. Cook
to P. E. Moore, 21 June 1951. [PLK-000803]
210. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 2, 09/1948–
1958, L. B. Pett to P. E. Moore, 9 August 1951. [AEMR-174223]
211. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, Henry G. Cook to P. E. Moore, 22 August 1951. [AEMR170459]
212. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 5, W. L. Falconer
to B. F. Neary, 2 June 1948. [TAY-000355]
213. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, H. I. Palmer to Philip Phelan, 22 June 1951. [AEMR170464]
214. Ogilvie and Pett, “A Long Term Study,” 195; Pett, “Values from Tripling the Milk”; TRC,
NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, “Developmentof Anemia on Newfoundland Enriched Flour,” for presentation to the American Institute of
Nutrition, L. Bradley Pett, New York City, April 1952. [CJC-002052-0000]
215. Pett, “Values from Tripling the Milk,” 426.
216. Ogilvie and Pett, “A Long Term Study,” 191–196.
217. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955, L.
B. Pett to H. K. Brown, 4 March 1954. [AEMR-172407]
218. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, “Development of Anemia on Newfoundland Enriched Flour,” L. Bradley Pett, Dept. National Healthand Welfare Canada, undated. [CJC-002052-0003]

Notes • 667
219. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955, L.
B. Pett to G. D. W. Cameron, 25 March 1953. [AEMR-172458]
220. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, “Development of Anemia on Newfoundland Enriched Flour,” L. Bradley Pett, Dept. National Healthand Welfare Canada, undated. [CJC-002052-0003]
221. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, L. BradleyPett, “Development of Anemia on Newfoundland Enriched Flour,” for presentation to theAmerican Institute of Nutrition, New York City, April 1952. [CJC-002052-0000]
222. TRC, NRA, No document file location, no document file sources, The Department of National
Health and Welfare Annual Report for the Fiscal Year Ended March 31 1955, 49. [AEMR251213]
223. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 1, “Nutrition
Study in Indian Residential Schools: Outline proposed in April, 1948, by Dr. L. B. Pett, Chief ofNutrition Division, Department of National Health and Welfare Canada.” [CJC-002006-0001]
224. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955,“Paper on Anemia to American Institute of Nutrition,” L. B. Pett to H. A. Ansley and G. D. W.
Cameron, 19 April 1952. [AEMR-172540]
225. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955,
Grace Goldsmith to L. B. Pett, 30 June 1952. [AEMR-172489]
226. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955,
Dr. L. B. Pett to Grace Goldsmith, 13 June 1952. [AEMR-172490]
227. Chapman and Campbell, “Effect of Bone Meal,” 133; Nathoo, Holmes, and Ostry, “Analysis of
the Development of Canadian Food Fortification Policies,” 378.
228. Aykroyd, Jolliffe, Lowry et al., “Medical Resurvey of Nutrition,” 11.
229. Chapman and Campbell, “Effect of Bone Meal,” 137.
230. See, for example: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1,
part 2, 09/1948–1958, H. G. Cook to L. B. Pett, 14 February 1955. [AEMR-174181]
231. See: Reddy and Cook, “Effect of Calcium Intake”; Minihane and Fairweather-Tait, “Effect ofCalcium Supplementation”; Lönnerdal, “Calcium and Iron Absorption.”232. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, L. B. Pett to
R. S. MacCallum, 21 April 1952. [CJC-002041]
233. TRC, NRA, National Archives of Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955,“Residential Schools Kenora Ontario,” no date. [AEMR-172543]
234. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955, L.
B. Pett to J. E. Andrews, 30 January 1953. [AEMR-172468]
235. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 2, 08/1949–
11/1949, Tables of statistics on nutrition and health status of IRS children in study – resultsfrom Cecilia Jeffrey IRS, 13. [AEMR-170349]
236. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 3, 10/1949–
11/1951, L. B. Pett to Maurice LaFrance, 29 August 1950. [AEMR-170194]
237. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 3, 10/1949–
11/1951, “Children with Deficiencies, Blood RC, Cardston, 3rd Clinic, May 1950.” [AEMR-170201c]
238. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 3, 10/1949–
11/1951, “Children with Deficiencies, St. Paul’s, Cardston, 3rd Clinic, May 1950.” [AEMR-170201d]

668 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
239. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955, L.
B. Pett to H. K. Brown, 30 January 1953. [AEMR-172470]
240. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 2, 09/1948–
1958, L. B. Pett to Henry G. Cook, 18 February 1955. [AEMR-174180]
241. TRC, NRA, National Archives of Canada, RG29, volume 923, file 385-7-2, part 1, Mar/46–
Jan/52, L. B. Pett to P. E. Moore, 18 December 1959. [AEMR-171025]
242. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, H. K. Brown to H. M. McCaffery, 7 April 1948. [AEMR170511]
243. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 2, 08/1949–
11/1949, L. B. Pett to Anna Burns, 26 September 1949. [AEMR-170319]
244. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 2, 08/1949–
11/1949, H. K. Brown to W. J. Wood, 24 September 1949. [AEMR-170314]
245. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, H. K. Brown to W. J. Wood, 26 September 1949. [AEMR170483]
246. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 3, 10/1949–
11/1951, L. B. Pett to J. P. Mackey, 19 March 1951. [120.03828]
247. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 2, 08/1949–
11/1949, H. K. Brown to P. S. Tennant, 3 October 1949. [AEMR-170311]
248. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, FA 29-143, file 851-6-4, part 1,
11/1944–01/1956, H. K. Brown to O. Leroux, 16 January 1950. [AEMR-174079]
249. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 2, 08/1949–
11/1949, L. B. Pett to J. P. Mackey, 25 August 1949. [120.03608]
250. Ogilvie and Pett, “A Long Term Study,” 192.
251. TRC, NRA, National Archives of Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 1, Nov/44–
Jan/56, Nutrition in Indian Schools, H. K. Brown to P. E. Moore, 9 March 1949. [AEMR-170487]
252. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, W. L. Falconer to Norman Paterson, 22 January 1947.
[AEMR-171986]
253. For example, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4530, part 1, Medical Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, “Indian Health Services Dental
Report,” H. M. McCaffery, 4 October 1947. [AEMR-174337]
254. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical
Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, W. Ewart to P. S. Tennant, 6 May 1948. [AEMR-174298]
255. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2938, file 851-1-X500, part 1, “Sodium
Fluoride Solutions: Technic [spelling correct] for Application to the Teeth,” John W. Knutson,
DDS, DPH, Washington D.C., from the Journal of the American Dental Association, Jan. 1948,
Vol. 36, No. 1. [NPC-621720a]
256. Dalgleish, “Approach to Present Day General Practice,” 3–8.
257. Gullett, “Fee Schedule,” 227–229.
258. Hine, “Prophylaxis.”259. For example, James Morse Dunning reports, “So successful was this technique at first thatfederal [US] funds were made available to local dental organizations for pilot programs.” Dunning, Principles of Dental Public Health, 251.

Notes • 669
260. Martin, “Dentistry in Canada’s National Health Program”; Martin, “Dental Care for Canada’sChildren,” 247–251; Brown, “Mass Control of Dental Caries,” 609–613; Author unknown, “Fluoride to Water Supplies,” 401.
261. Gullett, History of Dentistry, 242–243.
262. Quiñonez, “Dental Services in Residential Schools.”
263. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2873, file 851-1-9, part 1, P. S.
Tennant to P. E. Moore, 14 September 1951; [AEMR-171177A] H. K. Brown to P. E. Moore, 1
October 1951. [AEMR-171177]
264. Gullett, History of Dentistry, 241.
265. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2938, file 851-1-X500, part 1, W. S.
Barclay to P. E. Moore, 23 December 1954. [NPC-621722b]
266. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2938, file 851-1-X500, part 1, H. K.
Brown to W. S. Barclay, 14 January 1955. [NPC-621721]
267. Dunning, Principles of Dental Public Health, 251–252.
268. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2873, file 851-1-9, part 1, H. K. Brown
to W. S. Barclay, 9 April 1949. [AEMR-171199]
269. For a 1950 report of a school’s not seeing a dentist for years, see: TRC, NRA, Provincial
Archives – Alberta, PAA 71.220, b92 3897, G. M. Latour to H. N. Woodsworth, 2 June 1950.
[OGP-030642]
270. For two 1947 examples of a dentist visiting a school in Alberta and providing no prophylactic
treatment, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530,
part 1, Medical Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978, “Indian Health Services Dental Report,”
H. M. McCaffery, 19 November 1947; [AEMR-174332] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-4-530, part 1, Medical Services: Dental Diseases 1931–1978,“Indian Health Services Dental Report,” H. M. McCaffery, 25 October 1947. [AEMR-174334]
271. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955, J.
E. Andrews to L. B. Pett, 26 January 1953. [AEMR-172469]
272. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955, L.
B. Pett to J. E. Andrews, 30 January 1953. [AEMR-172468]
273. In 1947–48, there were seventy-three residential schools. See: Canada, Annual Report of the
Department of Indian Affairs, 1948, 234.
274. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 923, file 385-7-2, part 1, Mar/46–
Jan/52, L. B. Pett to R. P. Vivian, 17 February 1949. [AEMR-170910]
275. For examples, see: Pappworth, Human Guinea Pigs; Katz, Experimentation with Human
Beings.
276. Schafer, “On using Nazi Data,” 413–419. See also: Annas and Grodin, Nazi Doctors; Katz, “Human Sacrifice,” 401–418.
277. Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, 181–182, http://www.loc.
gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/NT_war-criminals_Vol-II.pdf (accessed 11 July 2014).
278. See, for example: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, file 150-3-10, volume 2,
Medical Liaison – Outside Doctors, 04/1968–12/1969, RG29, Archival Acc. V1992-93/204, Archival box 11, R. B. Lowry to J. J. Warner, 31 May 1968; [MIK-250035] R. B. Lowry to Sweeney, 3June 1968; [LEJ-201089] R. B. Lowry to Allan Noonan, 3 June1968; [KAM-204195] R. B. Lowry
to John W. Hennessy, 3 June 1968. [JOE-202320]
279. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6272, file 582-10, part 3, “Application
for Admission,” 11 January 1948. [PCR-002372-0003]

670 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
280. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 1/25-1-5-2,
volume 1, “Regulations With Respect to Teaching, Education, Inspection, and Discipline for
Indian Residential Schools, Made and Established for the Superintendent General of IndianAffairs Pursuant to Paragraph (a) of Section 114 of the Indian Act,” 20 January 1953. [PAR001203-0001]
281. See, for example: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6058, file 265-13,
part 4, T. R. L. MacInnes to John S. Robb, 1 May 1940. [SRS-001722]
282. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2921, file 851-1-A779, part 1, W. P. E.
Pugh to Secretary, Indian Affairs Branch, 3 June 1942. [NPC-602979]
283. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
16A, file 29, Noel Goater to F. Vella, 23 March 1967. [GDC-036711]
284. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955, L.
B. Pett to J. E. Andrews, 30 January 1953. [AEMR-172468]
285. Health Canada, Food and Nutrition, Canada’s Food Guides from 1942 to 1992, http://www.
hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/food-guide-aliment/context/fg_history-histoire_ga-eng.php#fnb9.
286. Chapman and Campbell, “Effect of Bone Meal,” 137.
287. Nathoo, Holmes, and Ostry, “Analysis of the Development of Canadian Food Fortification
Policies,” 377–378.
288. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 974, file 388-6-4, part 4, 1951–1955, L.
B. Pett to J. P. Mackey, 17 July 1952. [AEMR-172486]
289. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 2, 09/1948–
1958, Henry G. Cook to L. B. Pett, 16 April 1952; [AEMR-174217] Henry G. Cook to L. B. Pett,
16 April 1952. [AEMR-174217A] For Scrase’s full name, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada – Winnipeg, RG10, Acc. W84-85/402, box 13603, file 572/25-2-024, volume 4, A. J.
Scrase to Q. P. Jackson, 13 July 1967. [DRS-110147]
290. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 2, 09/1948–
1958, Henry G. Cook to L. B. Pett, 16 May 1952. [AEMR-174217D]
291. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 2, 09/1948–
1958, L. B. Pett to Canon Henry Cook, 20 June 1952. [AEMR-174215] See also: National
Archives of Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 2, 09/1948–1958, Canon Henry Cook
to L. B. Pett, 24 June 1952. [AEMR-174211]
292. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 2, 09/1948–
1958, Henry G. Cook to L. B. Pett, 11 August 1952. [AEMR-174209] See also: National Archives
of Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 2, 09/1948–1958, Mary E. Macbeth to Henry
G. Cook, 31 July 1952. [AEMR-174210, AEMR-174210A, AEMR-174210B]
293. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 2, 09/1948–
1958, H. M. Jones to L. B. Pett, 23 December 1953. [AEMR-174203]
294. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 1/25-1-4-1, volume 2, 10/1953–11/1971, L. B. Pett to H. M. Jones, 7January 1954. [AEMR-014480]
295. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 975, file 388-6-48, L. B. Pett to R. F.
Davey, 9 June 1954. [NPC-600824]
296. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 923, FA 29-12, file 385-7-2, part 2,
09/51–11/58, “Nutrition of Indians and Eskimos in Canada,” L. Bradley Pett, November 1954.
[AEMR-171951A]

Notes • 671
297. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 923, file 385-7-2, part 2, Sep/51–
Nov/58, Nutrition Services: Liaison with Dept. and INHS, “New Formula for VitaminizedBiscuits (Indian Schools),” Nutrition Division, D.N.H.&W, January 1954. [AEMR-172740A]
298. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851/6-4, part 4, Jan/62–
Oct/69, Medical Services: Nutrition in Indian Schools, J. H. Wiebe to Director of Medical
Services, 6 March 1962. [AEMR-171871]
299. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 923, FA 29-12, file 385-7-2, part 2,
09/51–11/58, L. Bradley Pett, “Nutrition of Indians and Eskimos in Canada,” November 1954;[AEMR-171951A] INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file
201/17-1, volume 2, Health Services, General, Apr/66–Mar/69, R. F. Davey to Regional Director of Indian Affairs, Amherst, N.S., 20 January 1967. [SRS-007776]
300. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 2, L. B. Pett toP. E. Moore, 19 July 1956. [NPC-620151a]
301. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada Archives, MSSC Indian School Administration, Visit
Reports, GS75-103, box 24, file 1, “Visit of Major-General G. R. Turner to Shingwauk School,
6th–9th February, 1954.” [13a-c000033-d0029-001]
302. See, for example: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7194, file 511/251-015, G. H. Marcoux to R. S. Davis, 12 October 1951 [BRS-000882]; G. H. Marcoux to Davis, 5
November 1953. [BRS-000966]
303. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7194, file 511/25-1-015, R. F. Davey to
Director, 12 December 1956. [IRC-041105]
304. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7194, file 511/25-1-015, R. D. Ragan
to R. F. Davey, 6 December 1956. [IRC-041104]
305. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8757, file 709/25-1-001, part 2, R. F.
Battle to R. F. Davey, 24 August 1956. [BRS-005020]
306. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. 83.050C, box 112,
file 16, Edmonton IRS – 1955–1957/UCC Docs Toronto, “Edmonton Indian Industrial School
Annual Report,” O. B. Strapp, 31 December 1955. [UCA-080323]
307. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8757, file 709/25-1-001, part 2, R. F.
Battle to R. F. Davey, 28 December 1956. [EDM-000164]
308. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. 83.050C, box 112,
file 17, Edmonton IRS – Correspondence 1958–60/UCC Docs Toronto, R. F. Davey to O. B.
Strapp, 10 August 1960. [UCA-080207]
309. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 709/25-13001, 03/57–03/68, volume 2, RCAP, O. B. Strapp to R. F. Davey, 31 August 1960. [EDM-0031690000]
310. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 956/1-13, volume 1, 01/51–05/67, “Complaints Regarding St. George’s Residential School at Lytton, B.C.,”
Betty-Marie Barber, 13 December 1957. [IRC-041212]
311. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8796, file 1/25-13, part 4, D. M. Watters to Laval Fortier, 25 October 1957. [NCA-013420]
312. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8796, file 1/25-13, part 4, D. M. Watters to Laval Fortier, 25 October 1957. [NCA-013420]
313. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8796, file 1/25-13, part 4, L. B. Pett to
H. M. Jones, 21 March 1958. [NPC-400776]

672 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
314. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 973, file 388-6-1, part 1, 03/1948–
08/1948, “Health Aspects in Relation to Food Services: Indian Residential Schools,” Nutrition
Division Department of National Health and Welfare, November 1946. [AEMR-170062A]
315. Bank of Canada, Inflation Calculator, http://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculator/ (accessed 22 December 2013).
316. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8796, file 1/25-13, part 4, L. B. Pett to
H. M. Jones, 21 March 1958. [NPC-400776]
317. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG55, FA 55-19, volume 20784, Treasury Board
Submission 559690, Req. Authority for the Recommendation and Establishment of Domestic
Staff, Laval Fortier to Secretary, Treasury Board, 22 January 1960. [120.04620]
318. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 600-1-6,
volume 3, Hostel Management – N.W.T. [General and Policy], Jan. 1961–Oct. 1961, R. A. Bishop for B. G. Sivertz to P. E. Moore, 25 May 1961. [RCN-000806]
319. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG55, FA 55-19, volume 20784, Treasury Board
Submission 559690, Req. Authority for the Recommendation and Establishment of Domestic
Staff, Laval Fortier to Secretary, Treasury Board, 22 January 1960; [120.04620] Library andArchives Canada, RG10, volume 8798, file 486/25-13-001, part 1, R. F. Davey to A. Wheatley,
12 April 1960. [MFI-000692]
320. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG55, FA 55-22, Acc. 1980-81/069, box 66, file701-42, part 2, Operation of Indian Residential Schools, 1958–1966, George F. Davidson to
Secretary Treasury Board, 7 November 1962. [120.04935A]
321. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, R776-0-5 (RG55), volume 20878, T.B. #593992-3,
Jan-17-1963, part 1, “Extract from the minutes of a meeting of the Honourable the Treasury
Board, held at Ottawa, on January 17, 1963.” [NPC-523236]
322. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG55, FA 55-22, Acc. 1980-81/069, box 66, file701-42, part 2, Operation of Indian Residential Schools, 1958–1966, George F. Davidson to
Secretary Treasury Board, 7 November 1962. [120.04935A]
323. TRC, NRA, United Church Archives, Accession 83.050C, box 141, file 6, United Church
Archives, R. F. Davey to Principals of Indian Residential Schools, 30 September 1966. [UCB005800]
324. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 1/25-13, volume 12, 03/1966–12/1967, T. E. Jones to R. F. Davey, 28
September 1966. [AEMR-013396]
325. TRC, NRA, Indian Residential Schools Resolution Registry, GRS Files, box 5A, file 25, Circularletter to Principals and Administrators of Residential Schools and Hostels, 30 April 1968.
[AEMR-254157]
326. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851/6-4, part 4, Jan/62–
Oct/69, “Alert Bay Student Residence, Report of Visit of Regional Nutritionist, April 21 and 22,
1969”; [AEMR-173158F] “St. George’s Student Residence, Report of Regional Nutritionist’s
Visit, April 30 and May 1, 1969”; [AEMR-173158B] DIAND, Residential Schools Records Office,file 1/25-1-4-1, volume 2 (9-1), Cariboo Student Residence, Report of Regional Nutritionist’s
Visit, June 11, 1969. [AEMR-171216A]
327. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 3b, K. Ann
Feyrer to Regional Superintendent, Indian and Northern Health Services, Foothills Region, 2
December 1959. [NPC-620161]
328. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 3b, K. A. Feyrer to Regional Superintendent, Foothills Region, 21 March 1960. [120.16281]

Notes • 673
329. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 129/25-1016, volume 1, “Inspection of Food Services – Indian Residential Schools, St. Mary’s School,
Kenora, Ontario,” 1961. [KNR-000251-0000]
330. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 3b, K. Ann
Feyrer, Foothills Region, Regional Superintendent, Foothills Region, Medical Services, 1March 1963. [120.16943]
331. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, L. K. Poupore to Alex Morris, 2August 1959. [OBG-004022] For Mulvihill’s position at the Kootenay school, see: TRC, NRA,
INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa 963/25-13, 03/52–02/70,
volume 1, RCAP, P. Deziel to J. P. Mulvihill, 27 July 1959. [EGN-000336]
332. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 2, “Norway
House Indian Residential School operated by the United Church of Canada,” 4 February 1960.
[NPC-620114]
333. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8798, file 371/25-13-019, part 2, R. F.
Davey to P. E. Moore, 27 July 1960. [FGA-001150]
334. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG55, FA 55-19, volume 20784, Treasury Board
Submission 559690, Req. Authority for the Recommendation and Establishment of Domestic
Staff, Laval Fortier, 22 January 1960. [120.04620]
335. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 2, “St. Paul’s
Indian Residential School, Cardston, January 1961.” [NPC-620101a]
336. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 2, “Morley Indian Residential School, Morley, Alberta,” 16 February 1961. [NPC-610006b]
337. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 3b, “Inspection of Food Services, Indian Residential Schools, Holy Angels Residence, September 27,
1961.” [NPC-620195]
338. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 3b, “Inspection of Food Services – Indian Residential Schools,” Crowfoot IRS, 15 December 1961.
[120.16669]
339. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 3b, K. Ann
Feyrer, 12 February 1962. [NPC-620192]
340. TRC, NRA, DIAND, Residential Schools Records Office, file 1/25-1-4-1, volume 2 (9-1), Food
Services – Crowfoot Residential School, Cluny, Alberta, February 9-10-1967, 21 February
1967; [120.05336B] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851/64, part 4, Jan/62–Oct/69, “Food Services, Crowfoot Residential School,” 3 May 1968. [AEMR-173164A]
341. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, PAA 71.220 B93 3949, H. M. Jones to James Mulvihill,
20 December 1962. [OGP-032327]
342. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851/6-4, part 4, Jan/62–
Oct/69, “Food Services at Ermineskin Residential School,” 10 January 1966, K. A. Feyrer, 13
January 1966. [120.05170A]
343. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 961/25-13,
volume 1, 12/52–12/67, Per Capita Grants – Kuper Island Students’ Res, H. Dunlop to R. F.
Davey, 27 January 1962. [KUP-000735]
344. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “Annual Meeting, Indian Residential School United Church Principals, United Church Committee for Residential Schools

674 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
Principals of Presbyterian Residential Schools, and Department,” 12–14 February 1964. [UCB005622]
345. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-13018, volume 1, Roland Chaput to R. F. Davey, 25 November 1966. [ARS-000148]
346. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 2, “Inspectionof Food Services, Indian Residential Schools, Onion Lake Indian Residential School,” October
1959, 8. [NPC-610017-01]
347. TRC, NRA, Headquarters, 701-25-1-41, 02/65–02/68, volume 1, HQ, H. A. Proctor to R. F.
Battle, 14 October 1966. [AMP-006743]
348. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, [205]701/1-18, volume 1, 07/65–12/68,
NAC, M. Matas to R. D. Ragan, 9 May 1966. [RCA-002189]
349. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851/6-4, part 4, Jan/62–
Oct/69, “Food Services, Crowfoot Residential School,” 3 May 1968. [AEMR-173164A]
350. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 3b, Inspection of Food Services – Indian Residential Schools,” Crowfoot IRS, 15 December 1961, 7.
[120.16669]
351. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 3b, K. Ann
Feyrer, to Regional Superintendent, Foothills Region, Medical Services, 1 March 1963.
[120.16943]
352. TRC, NRA, DIAND, Residential Schools Records Office, file 501/25-1-065, volume 2, “Inspection of Food Services – Indian Residential Schools,” 28 June 1961. [BRS-000620-0001]
353. For change of Food Rules name, see: Health Canada, Food and Nutrition, Canada’s Food
Guides from 1942 to 1992, http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/food-guide-aliment/context/fg_history-histoire_ga-eng.php#fnb9.
354. TRC, NRA, Headquarters, 1/25-1-4-1, Indian Education – Dietary Scale, Residential Schools,
K. A. Feyrer, G. C. Butler, 22 December 1966. [LOW-002326-0004]
355. TRC, NRA, Unknown document location, file 901/25-13, Gerald Michaud, 1 April 1969.
[120.08100C]
356. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851-6-4, part 5a, J. H. Wiebe
to J. B. Bergevin, 27 February 1970. [NPC-605555]
357. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851-6-4, part 5a, J. H. Wiebe
to J. H. Bergevin, 8 April 1970. [120.17618C]
358. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851-6-4, part 5a, “Alberni
Indian Student Residence Regional Nutritionist’s Visit – June 17 and 18, 1970.” [NPC-605546d]
359. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851-6-4, part 5a, L. Leclerc
to A/Regional Director, Manitoba Region, 26 November 1970. [NPC-605542]
360. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, file 72-001-800, volume 2, School
Programs – Frobisher Bay, 01/72–06/73, Archival box 267, Archival Acc. G1999-047, John
Parker to Director, Department of Education, 31 October 1972. [FBS-000426]
361. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851-6-4, part 5a, “FoodServices – St. Mary’s Residential School, Cardston, Alberta, January 16, 1970”; [NPC-605562]“Food Services – St. Paul’s Residence, Cardston, January 14, 1970”; [NPC-605560] J. H. Wiebe
to J. B. Bergevin, 2 February 1970. [NPC-605559]
362. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851-6-4, part 5a, J. H. Wiebe
to J. B. Bergevin, 2 February 1970. [NPC-605559]

Notes • 675
363. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851-6-4, part 5a, “FoodServices Visit, Sechelt Student Residence,” Agnes Campbell, 12 May 1970. [NPC-621169a]364. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851-6-4, part 5a, L. Leclerc
to A/Regional Director, Manitoba Region, 26 November 1970. [NPC-605542]
365. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851-6-4, part 5b, J. Kirkbrideto R. Martin, 3 July 1973. [NPC-605336g]
366. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851-6-4, part 5a, L. Leclerc
to A/Regional Director, Manitoba Region, 26 November 1970. [NPC-605542]
367. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Winnipeg, RG10, Acc. 2001-01035-4, box 015, file501/25-13-11-084G, volume 1, “Food Service, MacKay Student Residence,” 8 November 1971.
[DRS-110140-0002]
368. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851-6-4, part 5b, J. Kirkbride
to Charron, 14 June 1973. [NPC-605336c]
369. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851-6-4, part 5a, “FoodServices Visit, Sechelt Student Residence,” Agnes Campbell, 12 May 1970. [NPC-621169a]
370. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, Pupil Residence – General, 1973–
1978, Archival box 4-2, Archival Acc. G1995-004, Gary Black, 28 February 1973. [FNU-001748]
371. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851-6-4, part 5a, N. Ross toActing Regional Director, Saskatchewan Region, “Food services at All Saints Indian Residential School as Observed on June 17, 1971,” 5 July 1971. [NPC-605536p]
372. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851/6-4, part 5a, 1969–1972,
Medical Services: Nutrition in Indian Schools, O. J. Rath to Duhaime, 1 December 1970.
[AEMR-171877]
373. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851-6-4, part 5a, M. Thomson to Zone Director, 31 March 1970. [NPC-605554a]
374. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851-6-4, part 5a, M. Thomson to Regional Director, Northern Region, 26 June 1970. [NPC-605546a]
375. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Winnipeg, RG10, Acc. 2001-01035-4, box 015, file501/25-13-11-084G, volume 1, “Food Service, MacKay Student Residence,” 8 November 1971.
[DRS-110140-0002]
376. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851-6-4, part 5a, “FoodService at Qu’Appelle Student Residence,” 19 January 1972. [NPC-605534c]
377. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851-6-4, part 5b, J. Kirkbride
to W. Starr, 27 June 1973. [NPC-605336f ]378. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851-6-4, part 5b, J. Kirkbrideto M. Fillion, 13 June 1973. [NPC-605336b]
379. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2990, file 851-6-4, part 5b, J. Kirkbrideto L. Whiteman, 23 May 1973. [ 120.17682I]
380. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3420, file 851-6-D355, J. Kirkbride to
Michaud, 29 January 1973. [ORC-008493]
381. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories – Education, Culture and Employment, file73-500-402, volume 2, Fort McPherson Hostel [Anglican] – Quarterly Returns [Fort McPherson], 01/72–12/76, Transfer no. 0330, box 8-21, M. Thomson, to Regional Director, Northern
Region, 23 November 1972. [FHU-002366-0000]

676 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
382. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, NAC, RG22, volume 1209, file 982/2, part 1, Minutesof Special Meeting of the Advisory Boards of Indian Residences throughout British Columbia,
16 January 1971, 4. [MIS-003460-0001]
383. Health Canada, Food and Nutrition, Canada’s Food Guides from 1942 to 1992, http://www.
hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/food-guide-aliment/context/fg_history-histoire_ga-eng.php#fnb9.

Fire hazard: 1940–2000
Table 38.1. Schools or residence buildings destroyed by fire
1. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1940, 186.
2. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1940, 186.
3. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1941, 166.
4. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6308, file 653-5, part 6, E. S. Jones
to The Secretary, Indian Affairs Branch, Department of Mines and Resources, 10 April 1942.
[FHR-000252]
5. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6112, file 350-5, part 1, Thomas Orford to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 3 February 1943. [FGA-001026]
6. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1944, 155.
7. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6378, file 767-5, part 3, H. A. Alderwood to R. A. Hoey, 3 January 1945; [JON-003675] Canada, Annual Report of the Department
of Indian Affairs, 1945, 169.
8. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6268, file 581-1, part 2, R. A. Hoey,
Acting Deputy Minister, 29 May 1946.[ NHU-000117]
9. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, Anglican Diocese of Athabasca Fonds, Edmonton,
AB, Acc. PR1970.0387/1641, box 41, Anglican Diocese of Athabasca Fonds, file A320/572,
Indian Schools – General, Official Correspondence of Bishop Sovereign, 1941–1947, Report ofFire at All Saints’ School, Lac la Ronge, Sask. 2 February 1947. [PAR-123539]
10. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8756, file 671/25-1-010, J. P. B. Ostrander to Indian Affairs Branch, 19 January 1948. [THR-000266-0001]
11. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG85, volume 224, file 630/111-1, part 1A, Government School – Fort Simpson – N.W.T., 1950, Director to LeCapelain, 14 February 1950.
[FNU-000211]
12. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8638, file 511/6-1-038, part 1, E. S.
Jones to J. P. B. Ostrander, 6 September 1952. [GUY-000148]
13. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 446/6-1494, J. Lemire to R. F. Davey, 24 March 1965; [MCI-004409] INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS
Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 494/6-1-015, volume 8, G. S. Lapp to Indian Affairs, 26
March 1965. [MCI-006379]
14. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories – Education, Culture and Employment,
Ilihakvik School, 1972–1985, Transfer No. 0341, box 5, H. R. Cram to Hodgson, 22 March 1973.
[CBS-000260]
15. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, Pupil Residence – General,
1974–1978, Archival box 3-3, Archival Acc. G1995-004, J. Milligen to Department of Education,
15 October 1974. [CBS-000211-0001]

Notes • 677
16. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 371/6-1019, volume 8, Michael Shiner to A. Kroeger, 15 May 1975. [HFG-000061-0003]
17. TRC, NRA, no document location, no document fire source, Keith Branston, “Fire Claims 3rd
Floor of Breynat Hall,” The Journal, Volume 4, Number 19, 16 October 1980. [GNN-000383]

Table 38.2. Outbuildings destroyed by fire, 1940–1997
1. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6445, file 881-10, part 5, Lejac Residential School General Report, 31 March 1940. [LEJ-002066]
2. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6444, file 881-5, part 6, 1938–1941,
Microfilm reel C-8768, R. Howe to D. M. MacKay, 24 October 1940. [LEJ-003150]
3. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6453, file 884-5, part 5, 1936–1941,
Kootenay Agency – Kootenay Residential School – Building Maintenance – Supplies – Accounts, FA 10-17, Microfilm reel C-8775, NAC Ottawa, D. M. MacKay to Secretary IndianAffairs, 21 May 1941. [EGN-004992]
4. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6443, file 881-1, part 2, R. Howe to Sir,
2 December 1942. [LEJ-000814]
5. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6033, file 150-61, part 1, Philip Phelan
to Mr. Hoey, 1 May 1945. [NRD-001525]
6. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6370, file 763-5, part 6, Director toActing Deputy Minister, 24 October 1946. [CYP-000862]
7. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6278, file 584-5, part 13, J. Waite to
Indian Affairs, 14 February 1948. [SBR-001426]
8. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6319, file 657-5, part 8, R. S. Davis to
Indian Affairs, 17 May 1948. [MDD-006126]
9. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6333, file 661-5, part 6, W. J. D. Kerley
to Indian Affairs, 21 May 1949. [RLS-000493]
10. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6333, file 661-5, part 6, W. J. D. Kerley
to J. P. B. Ostrander, 20 October 1950. [RLS-000533-0001]
11. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
14, file 10, T. C. Ross to Norman Paterson, 6 February 1951. [CJC-007763]
12. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8252, file 479/6-1-001, part 4, J. Stallwood to Indian Affairs, 27 January 1955. [TAY-003768]
13. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8275, file 494/6-1-014, part 5, Eric L.
Barrington to G. Swartman, 23 February 1957. [PLK-000496-0002]
14. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 74/6-1353, volume 2, H. Lariviere to R. F. Davey, 7 February 1956. [AIR-000121]
15. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8709, file 965/6-1, part 8, 1959, Microfilm reel C-14168, G. F. Kelly to W. E. Grant, 3 March 1959. [LEJ-004875-0001]
16. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG85, volume 1295, file 311/111-B, part 4, School
Buildings – Fort Simpson, N.W.T. [Construction and Maintenance], 1959–1961, P. Templeton
to S. Lesage, 31 July 1959. [FNU-001033]
17. Provincial Archives of Alberta, Oblate Accession, 71.220, Tome II, box 7, 22 November 1963,
cited in Persson, “Blue Quills,” 184.

678 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
18. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 672/61-007, volume 3, Fire Loss Report, P.A. Residential School, D. Lawson, 23 June 1967. [PAR003379-0001]
19. TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, file 989/40-3-2, volume 1, Fire Losses –Individual Cases – Williams Lake District, 01/1958–12/1970, locator H77, DIAND, HQ Central
Registry, R. G. Cooper to Indian Commissioner, British Columbia, 19 October 1967. [JOE019175-0000]

Table 38.3. Additional reported fires that did not destroy buildings, 1940–1997
1. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6266, file 579-5, part 9, E. McPherson
to Indian Affairs, 5 November 1941. [FAR-000024]
2. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 6303, file 653-5, part 6, E. S. Jones to The
Secretary, Indian Affairs Branch, Department of Mines and Resources, 10 April 1942. [FHR000252]
3. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10752, Shannon File, 1944, Misc. Outgoing Correspondence, F. Matters to Indian Affairs, 2 February 1944. [CRS-001610]
4. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6033, file 150-61, part 1, Memorandum to Mr. Hoey, Philip Phelan, 1 May 1945. [NRD-001525]
5. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10759, Shannon File, 1946–1947,
Incoming Correspondence re Education, H. A. Alderwood to F. Matters, 7 March 1947; [CRS001655] Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6192, file 462-5, part 8, F. Matters to
Indian Affairs, 5 March 1947. [CRS-001947]
6. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, [110]774/6-1-753, volume I, 09/45–12/53, NAC, E.
A. Robertson to Indian Affairs, 1 November 1948. [EDM-004918]
7. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6192, file 462-5, part 9, Henry Cook to
B. F. Neary, 4 March 1948. [CRS-001978-0001]
8. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8634, file 511/6-1-025, part 1, J. H.
Staunton to R. S. Davis, 21 December 1951. [PCR-004748-0001]
9. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Winnipeg, RG10, Acc. W84-85/402, box 13662, file511/23-5-082, volume 1, Lachlan McLean to J. Rayson, 21 September 1951. [PLP-100733]
10. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Dennis Shea to F. O’Grady, 27
March 1954. [OBG-003722]
11. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8659, file 658/6-1, part 2, J. R. Bell to
E. S. Jones, 7 April 1956. [BVL-000669-0001]
12. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa. 103/6-1-764,
01/58–06/59, volume 5, RCAP, J. E. DeWolf to K. R. Brown, 7 April 1958. [PUL-001821]
13. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, file 630-145/10-2, part 3, Reports
and Returns – Federal School Coppermine, N.W.T, 1958–1961, Archival box 246-9, Archival
Acc. G-1979-003, T. K. Brady to Mr. Booth, 25 May 1959. [CPU-001435]
14. TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, 779/6-1-011, volume 2, 1957–1971, CR-HQ,
R. G. Whatmough for R. A. W. Switzer to Paul Deziel, 11 May 1960; [AGL-002253] Library andArchives Canada, 779[134]/6-726, volume 2, 10/59–08/61, NAC, J. W. Stewart to L. C. Hunter,
11 April 1960. [AGL-001337]
15. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/6-2018, volume 2, D. Greyeyes to Indian Affairs, Fire Loss Report, 22 June 1968. [GDC-005571]

Notes • 679
16. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG85, Perm. volume 1438, file 630/100-1, part 11,
Govt. School Fort Smith, N.W.T. [Joseph Burr Tyrrell School] October 1962–November 1964,
F.A. 85-4, R. G. Whatmough to B. Thorsteinson, 29 April 1964. [FSU-001460-0000]
17. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 801/6-1-011, volume 12, Carcross IRS, 01/1966–
06/1969, RG 10-151, V1989-90/101, M. C. F. Gibbs to A. E. Fry, 6 June 1966. [CAR-0112750000]
18. TRC, NRA, Prairies – Northwest Regional Service Centre – LAC – Edmonton, Acc. E1996/97046, box 7, file 674/25-2, W. Karashowsky to J. Bourbonnais, 31 October 1966. [BVL-0023140000]
19. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, file 630.012, part 2, volume 2,
Hostel Facilities – Churchill, 1965, Archival box 37-3, Archival Acc. M1994-009, R. L. Graves toRegional Superintendent of Schools, 31 January 1967. [CVC-002785-0000]
20. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, Acc. N1994-009, box 37-3, file631.012, part 2, Statistics Fort Churchill, 1965, R. A. Page to Principal, Churchill Vocational
Centre, 28 May 1967. [CVC-003198-0002]
21. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, file 801/6-1-011, volume 12, Carcross
IRS, 01/1966–06/1969, RG10-151, V1989-90/101, M. L. Lintick to G. S. Swanson, 6 March 1968.
[CAR-011277-0003]
22. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, RG10, Acc. E1996-97/415, box 36, file25-2-029, Jan. 1967–Jan. 1969, E. Turenne to Walter Karawshowski [misspelled in original; correct spelling is Karashowsky], 6 May 1968. [SPR-003247]
23. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Winnipeg, RG10, Acc. 2001-01035-4, box 015, file501/25-13-082G, volume 1, J. P. Malcolm to K. Baksh, 12 September 1974; [PLP-100393]
24. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, School – Fort Smith, 1972–1978,
Archival box 2-17, Archival Acc. G1995-004, H. J. Darkes to H. Michaud, 17 October 1974.
[BTU-001619]
25. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 773/6-1-003, volume 5, 09/74–01/80, E. A. Fontana
to R. J. Carney, 26 April 1976. [MRY-002243-0000]
26. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/25-131-019, volume 2, Paul Poitras to Indian Affairs, 25 March 1977; [PLD-009229] Paul Poitras toIndian Affairs, 24 April 1977; [PLD-009231] Charles Bellegarde to Indian Affairs, 7 May 1977;[PLD-009233] Paul Poitras to Indian Affairs, 25 June 1977; [PLD-009239] Ann Bellegarde to
Indian Affairs, 15 September 1977; [PLD-009237] Allan Dickie, 19 April 1978. [PLD-009245]
27. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, Pupil Residence – General,
1974–1978, Archival box 3-3, Archival Acc. G1995-004, Marvin Marykuca to R. K. Toutant, 1
November 1977. [AHU-003894]
28. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, Acc. E1996-97/270, box 8, file 675/2513, volume 1, Joe Gerencser to David Seesequasis, 9 March 1979. [SMD-012138]
29. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, RG10, FA 10-137, v92-93/201, box 2[10486], file 987/40-6-19, volume 1, Fire Safety Reports – St. Mary’s, 09/75–10/80, NAC – Burnaby, L. MacKay to J. Allon, 31 October 1980. [MIS-010104]
30. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
140, file 3, Ronald J. Pratt, 24 October 1986. [GDC-005182-0001]
31. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, MuscowequanBox 23, file 23. Statement of Susan Start, 12 January 1993; [MDD-003931] Statement of [nameredacted], 14 January 1993. [MDD-003932]

680 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
32. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, MuscowequanBox 23, file 23, Elaine Pelletier, 1 November 1993. [MDD-003933]

Table 38.4. School fires or attempted fires that weresuspected or proven to be deliberately set
1. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6307, file 653-1, part 2, M. Christianson to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 17 April 1942. [FHR-000585]
2. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8754, file 651/25-1, part 1, J. P. B.
Ostrander to Indian Affairs, 28 April 1947; [PAR-009230] R. A. Hoey to Deputy Minister, 2 June
1947. [PAR-009238]
3. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6337, file 663-5, part 4, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Investigation, 24 January 1948. [THR-003033]
4. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6333, file 661-5, part 6, W. J. D. Kerley
to Indian Affairs, 21 May 1949. [RLS-000493]
5. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8634, file 511/6-1-025, part 1, “Investigation Re Fire – Girls Dormitory, Pine Creek Indian Residential School, Camperville,
Manitoba, 19 December 1951.” [PCR-004752-0001]
6. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8659, file 658/6-1, part 2, J. R. Bell to
E. S. Jones, 7 April 1956. [BVL-000669-0001]
7. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, RG10, Acc. E1996-97/415, box 36, file25-2-029, Jan. 1967–Jan. 1969, E. Turenne to Walter Karawshowski [misspelled in original; correct spelling is Karashowsky], 6 May 1968. [SPR-003247]
8. TRC, NRA, Prairies – Northwest Regional Service Centre – LAC – Edmonton, Acc. E1996/97046, box 7, file 674/25-2, J. Bourbonnais to R. T. Smith, 21 October 1966. [BVL-002314-0001]
9. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 773/6-1-003, volume 5, 09/74–01/80, E. A. Fontana
to R. J. Carney, 26 April 1976. [MRY-002243-0000]
10. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/25-131-019, volume 2, Paul Poitras to Indian Affairs, 25 March 1977; [PLD-009229] Paul Poitras toIndian Affairs, 24 April 1977; [PLD-009231] Charles Bellegarde to Indian Affairs, 7 May 1977;[PLD-009233] Paul Poitras to Indian Affairs, 25 June 1977; [PLD-009239] Ann Bellegarde to
Indian Affairs, 15 September 1977; [PLD-009237] Allan Dickie, 19 April 1978. [PLD-009245]
11. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, MuscowequanBox 23, file 23, Statement of Susan Start, 12 January 1993; [MDD-003931] Statement of [nameredacted], 14 January 1993. [MDD-003932]

Fire hazard: 1940–2000
1. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6012, file 1-1-5A, part 2, R. A. Hoey to
Dr. McGill, 31 May 1940. [BIR-000248]
2. For enrolment, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8645, file 651/6-1,
part 4, R. A. W. Switzer to E. S. Jones, 8 October 1953. [PAR-017891-0001] For fire hazards, see:
TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8645, file 651/6-1, part 1, Minister of
Citizenship and Immigration to His Excellency, The Governor-General in Council, 22 November 1950; [PAR-000516] TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection

Notes • 681– Ottawa, Prince Albert box 1, 1973–74, Prince Albert District Chiefs Conference, Petition from
Prince Alberta District Chiefs, Tom Settee and nine others, 22 May 1973. [PAR-000303-0003]
3. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 957/6-1-019, volume 1, folder 3, 3/51–2/65, A. Parryto the Fire Marshal, 19 April 1960. [MIS-000269-0001]
4. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/6-2018, volume 2, D. Greyeyes to Indian Affairs, 22 June 1968. [GDC-005571]
5. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 3, Microfilm reel
C-7937, R. A. Hoey to G. Dorey, 29 May 1944. [AEMR-013540]
6. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7l[0]1, file 772/3-1, part 1, R. A. Hoey
to R. J. Staley, 2 June 1944. [AEMR-200681]
7. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1945, 169.
8. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1940, 186.
9. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1940, 186.
10. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1941, 166.
11. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 6303, file 653-5, part 6, E. S. Jones to The
Secretary, Indian Affairs Branch, Department of Mines and Resources, 10 April 1943; [FHR000252] Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1942, 136.
12. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6112, file 350-5, part 1, Thomas Orford to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 3 February 1943. [FGA-001026]
13. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1944, 155.
14. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6378, file 767-5, part 3, H. A. Alderwood to R. A. Hoey, 3 January 1945; [JON-003675] Canada, Annual Report of the Department
of Indian Affairs, 1945, 169.
15. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6268, file 581-1, part 2, R. A. Hoey toActing Deputy Minister, 29 May 1946. [NHU-000117]
16. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, Anglican Diocese of Athabasca Fonds, Edmonton,
AB, Acc. PR1970.0387/1641, box 41, Anglican Diocese of Athabasca Fonds, file A320/572,
Indian Schools – General, Official Correspondence of Bishop Sovereign, 1941–1947, Report ofFire at All Saints’ School, Lac la Ronge, Sask. 2 February 1947. [PAR-123539]
17. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8756, file 671/25-1-010, J. P. B. Ostrander to Indian Affairs Branch, 19 January 1948. [THR-000266-0001]
18. Apetagon, “Smoke and Flying Children,” 55–56.
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 876-5, part 4, West Coast Agency – Ahousaht
Residential School – General Administration – Supplies – Accounts 1938–1944, F.A. 10-17,
Perm. volume 6430, Microfilm reel C-8759, P. B. Ashbridge to D. M. MacKay, 3 February 1940.
[AST-200085-0001]
20. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6378, file 767-5, part 3, H. A. Alderwood to R. A. Hoey, 3 January 1945; [JON-003675] Canada, Annual Report of the Department
of Indian Affairs, 1945, 169.
21. TRC, NRA, Library and Canada, RG10, volume 6316, file 656-5, part 7, Philip Phelan to T. B. R.
Westgate, 15 August 1941. [PAR-008547]
22. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, Anglican Diocese of Athabasca Fonds, Edmonton,
AB, Acc. PR1970.0387/1641, box 41, Anglican Diocese of Athabasca Fonds, file A320/572,
Indian Schools – General, Official Correspondence of Bishop Sovereign, 1941–1947, Report ofFire at All Saints’ School, Lac la Ronge, Sask., 2 February 1947. [PAR-123539]

682 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
23. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8756, file 671/25-1-010, J. P. B. Ostrander to Indian Affairs Branch, 19 January 1948. [THR-000266-0001]
24. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, Acc. 71.220/1327, Armand Boucher to R. A. Hoey,
no date; [THR-000362] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6337, file 6635, part 4, Bernard F. Neary to J. B. Cabana, 26 April 1949. [THR-000247-0001]
25. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1944, 155.
26. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6317, file 656-5, part 8, R. A. Hoey to
C. G. Brault, 29 August 1947. [PAR-003667]
27. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6320, file 658-1, part 2, George K.
Ross to Indian Affairs, 28 February 1946; [PAR-001570] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada, RG10, volume 6317, file 656-5, part 8, Henry D. Martin to B. F. Neary, 30 April 1948.
[PAR-003700]
28. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6317, file 656-5, part 8, R. A. Hoey to
C. G. Brault, 29 August 1947. [PAR-003667]
29. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2.15, box 21, file 3, Quarterly Report of the Superintendent of the Indian School Administration to the Executive Committee, Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada,
11 May 1948. [AAC-082727]
30. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8645, file 651/6-1, part 2, Memorandum to the Deputy Minister, Director [of Indian Affairs], 22 August 1951. [PAR-017615-0000]
31. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6308, file 653-5, part 6, M. Christianson to Mr. Hoey, 23 June 1944. [FHR-000292]
32. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6307, file 653-1, part 2, J. P. B. Ostrander to Indian Affairs Branch, 1 September 1948. [FHR-000335]
33. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6307, file 653-1, part 2, Director [illegible] to Deputy Minister, 22 June 1949. [FHR-000356]
34. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6307, file 653-1, part 2, Director to
George Dorey, 22 April 1949. [FHR-000349]
35. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6033, file 150-61, part 1, R. A. Hoey to
H. McGill, 31 May 1944. [NRD-001523]
36. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 3, Microfilm reel
C-7937, R. A. Hoey to G. Dorey, 29 May 1944. [AEMR-013540]
37. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6210, file 468-10, part 5, SamuelDevlin to Indian Affairs, 20 May 1946. [MER-003806-0001]
38. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6333, file 661-2, part 6, R. E. Tiffin,
Fire Commissioner to J. P. B. Ostrander, 31 August 1950. [RLS-000552]
39. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6333, file 661-5, part 6, Mrs. C. Maxwell Loveys to D. M. MacKay, 2 June 1950. [120.06850]
40. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10752, Shannon File, 1944, Misc. Outgoing Correspondence, F. Matters to Indian Affairs, 2 February 1944. [CRS-001610]
41. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10759, Shannon File, 1946–1947,
Incoming Correspondence re Education, H. A. Alderwood to F. Matters, 7 March 1947. [CRS001655]
42. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6192, file 462-5, part 9, F. Matters to
Indian Affairs Branch, 4 March 1948. [CRS-001975]

Notes • 683
43. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6192, file 462-5, part 9, Henry Cook to
B. F. Neary, 4 March 1948. [CRS-001978-0001]
44. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6192, file 462-5, part 9, F. Matters to
Indian Affairs, 24 April 1948; [CRS-001988] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10,
volume 6192, file 462-5, part 9, Bernard Neary to F. Matters, 1 May 1948. [CRS-001989]
45. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11091, Shannon File, 1948, Letters to
Indian Affairs Branch, J. L. Whitney to Philip Phelan, 21 July 1948. [CRS-002092]
46. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6730, file 160-2, part 3, R. A. Hoey to
H. McGill, 16 September 1941. [FGA-001323-0000]
47. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6189, file 461-5, part 8, F. Dubois to F.
Edwards, 16 September 1940. [CJC-000758-0001]
48. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6189, file 461-5, part 9, Philip Phelan
to Norman Paterson, 11 December 1944. [CJC-000783]
49. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6198, file 465-5, part 9, J. O. Plourde
to R. A. Hoey, 17 November 1942. [KNR-000498]
50. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6215, file 470-5, part 4, Gifford Swartman to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 14 November 1940. [PLK-000163]
51. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6434, file 877-5, part 7, NAC, D. M.
MacKay to Secretary, Indian Affairs Branch, 25 February 1941; [ABR-000980-0001] RG10, volume 8453, file 985/23-5, Inspector’s Report on Alberni Indian Residential School, 11 March
1941. [ABR-006565-0002]
52. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6453, file 884-5, part 5, 1936–1941,
Kootenay Agency – Kootenay Residential School – Building Maintenance – Supplies – Accounts, FA 10-17, Microfilm reel C-8775, NAC Ottawa, D. M. MacKay to Secretary IndianAffairs, 21 May 1941. [EGN-004992]
53. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6266, file 579-5, part 9, E. McPherson
to Indian Affairs, 5 November 1941. [FAR-000024]
54. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6351, file 753-5, part 6, 1947, Microfilm reel C-8707, J. H. Leyland to R. R. Moore, 23 December 1946. [EDM-004444]
55. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6253, file 575-5, part 7, R. Webb to
Indian Office, Birtle, Manitoba, 13 March 1943. [BIR-000287-0001]
56. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B92 3891, C. Pant. Schmidt to Principal,
Ermineskin, Alberta, school, 10 January 1944, 8–9. [OGP-030428]
57. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, FA 10-177 v93-94/038 and v95-96/047, Perm.
volume 13215 23-4, Agent’s Monthly Reports – Kootenay Agency [Formerly Shannon File,now in 2 parts], 12/1943–04/1950, NAC Burnaby, J. M. Barre to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 2October 1945. [EGN-004086]
58. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6274, file 583-5, part 8, Geo. H.
Spriggs to J. Waite, 3 December 1945. [PLP-000812-0001]
59. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3127, file 860-8-X400, part 1a, E. L.
Stone to Superintendent of Indian Health Services, 31 May 1946. [NPC-621076-01]
60. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6380, file 769-5, part 3, G. S. Lapp,
Superintendent, Department of Mines and Resources, Indian Affairs Branch to Indian Affairs
Branch, 5 November 1948. [WFL-000494-0000]
61. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6445, file 881-5, part 9, B. F. Neary to
W. S. Arneil, 17 January 1949. [LEJ-000541]

684 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
62. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8663, file 673/6-1-037, part 2, R.
Beauregard to R. S. Davy, 25 July 1955. [SPR-001501]
63. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8664, file 673/6-1-037, part 3, G.
Ptizel to E. S. Jones, 21 November 1955. [SPR-002123-0001]
64. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 74/6-1350, volume 1, W. J. Harvey to Indian Affairs, Ottawa, 9 April 1956. [FGA-000299]
65. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8693, file 954/6-1, part 6, G. J. Bowen
to W. S. Arneil, 15 November 1956. [LOW-042497-0001]
66. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 942-5, part 4, 1950–51, volume 6482, Microfilm
reel C-8796, A. H. Fleury to B. H. Neary, 22 January 1951. [LOW-000506]
67. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8695, file 956/6-1, part 3, C. F. Hives
to J. Meek, 23 March 1957. [GRG-003055]
68. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 773/6-1-004, volume 8677, part 6, 1957–1958 NAC,
Office of the Fire Commissioner, St. Paul’s Residential School, 25 November 1957. [PUL005151-0001]
69. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 103/6-1-750,
12/57–09/58, volume 4, RCAP, Office of the Fire Commissioner, St. Mary’s Residential School,
26 November 1957. [MRY-000939]
70. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, RG10, FA 10-136, Acc. 1984-85/316,
volume 28 [500326], file 988/6-1-885-10, Kuper Island Indian Res. School – Fire Prevention,
1957–1964, J. V. Boys to Indian Commissioner for British Columbia, 30 May 1958. [KUP012371]
71. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8685, file 777/6-1-007, part 4, Department of the Provincial Secretary, Office of the Fire Commissioner, 21 August 1958. [JRD004129-0001]
72. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10361, file 506/6-1-019, part 3,
Charles Buck to R. D. Ragan, 28 May 1958. [FAR-000037-0002]
73. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8278, file 494/6-1-015, part 4, J. S.
Allan to Mr. Matters, 21 January 1958. [MCI-001918-0001]
74. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Department of the Provincial
Secretary, Office of the Fire Commissioner, Re: Sturgeon Lake Indian School, Calais, Alberta,
14 July 1959. [GMA-002257-0001]
75. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6201, file 466-5, part 5, N. C. Rathburn to W. J. Zimmerman, 9 March 1946. [TAY-002400-0001]
76. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8253, file 479/6-1-001, part 7, N. C.
Rathburn to W. J. Zimmerman, 10 February 1958. [TAY-004042]
77. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8253, file 479/6-1-001, part 8, R. F.
Davey to Regional Supervisor Toronto, 31 March 1959. [TAY-004113]
78. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8253, file 479/6-1-001, part 8, Fire
Inspector to W. J. Zimmerman, 14 November 1959. [TAY-004133-0001]
79. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 479/25-1001, volume 2, J. B. Bergevin for J. Mussell to Olga Maxwell, 26 August 1970. [TAY-001163]
80. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6320, file 658-1, part 2, 13, H. A.
Alderwood to T. A. Crerar, 13 December 1943. [PAR-001130]
81. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8645, file 651/6-1, part 4, R. A. W.
Switzer to Chas. Buck, 11 December 1953. [PAR-017652]

Notes • 685
82. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6320, file 658-1, part 2, J. P. B. Ostrander to Indian Affairs, 30 April 1946. [PAR-000905]
83. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6322, file 658-5, part 11, D. M. MacKay to Deputy Minister, 20 April 1949. [PAR-017369]
84. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8645, file 651/6-1, part 1, Minister of
Citizenship and Immigration to His Excellency, The Governor-General in Council, 22 November 1950. [PAR-000516]
85. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8645, file 651/6-1, part 2, D. N. Morrison to J. P. B. Ostrander, 27 July 1951. [PAR-017611-0001]
86. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8645, file 651/6-1, part 4, R. A. W.
Switzer to E. S. Jones, 8 October 1953. [PAR-017891-0001]
87. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8645, file 651/6-1, part 5, Fire Inspection Report, March 1954, Prince Albert Indian Residential School, Department of Citizenshipand Immigration, March 1954. [PAR-000612]
88. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, R776-0-5 (RG55), volume 195, T. B. # 475360, Sep08-1954, Authority to repair the Residential School at Prince Albert, Saskatchewan using day
labour under departmental supervision, 20 August 1954; [NPC-520206] RG10, volume 8647,
file 651/6-1, part 11, Henry G. Cook to R. F. Davey, 20 January 1960. [PAR-017046]
89. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8622, file 506/6-1-019, part 2, Charles
Buck to C. A. Thomson, 9 April 1954. [FAR-002480]
90. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6456, file 885-5, part 7, Microfilm reel
C-8778, C. H. Buck to R. A. Gibson, 20 July 1949. [KUP-004163]
91. For information about the Fraser Lake escapes in the 1930s, see: TRC, NRA, Library andArchives Canada, RG10, volume 6444, file 881-5, part 4, 1926–1933, Microfilm reel C-8768,“Extract from Indian Agent Moore’s Report for the Month of February 1932, regarding the
Lejac Indian Residential School.” [LEJ-004508]
92. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6456, file 885-5, part 7, Microfilm reel
C-8778, C. H. Buck to R. A. Gibson, 20 July 1949. [KUP-004163]
93. TRC, AVS, Leona Agawa, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, 6 November 2010, Statement Number: 01-ON-4-6 NOV10-006.
94. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6316, file 656-5, part 7, T. B. R. Westgate to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 18 August 1941. [PAR-008548]
95. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 494/25-1015, volume 1, Philip Phelan to G. Swartman, 21 February 1945. [MCI-000756]
96. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 494/25-1015, volume 1, G. Swartman to Indian Affairs, 1 March 1945. [MCI-000757]
97. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6278, file 584-5, part 11, George H.
Spriggs to J. Waite, 27 December 1945. [SBR-001317-0001]
98. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6278, file 584-5, part 12, J. M. Wardle
to R. A. Hoey, 3 January 1946. [SBR-001364-0000]
99. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 6-15-1, volume 1, Report of Commission on Indian Affairs, 1946.
[AEMR-016240]
100. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, 951/6-1-879, part 1, Christie IRS,
03/1945–08/1948, F.A. 10-138, Perm. volume 13389, National Archives of Canada – Burnaby,
Fire Marshall to D. M. MacKay, 30 December 1946. [CST-004152]

686 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
101. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6199, file 465-5, part 11, Norman
Paterson to Indian Affairs Branch, 15 April 1947. [KNR-000518]
102. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8648, file 652/6-1, part 1, A. Dron to
Indian Affairs, 29 April 1948. [SMD-001931-0001]
103. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG22, volume 1206, file 674/2, part 1, D. M. MacKay
to Deputy Minister, 28 June 1949. [SMD-000908]
104. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6380, file 769-5, part 3, G. S. Lapp,
Superintendent, Department of Mines and Resources, Indian Affairs Branch to Indian Affairs
Branch, 5 November 1948. [WFL-000494-0000]
105. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8257, file 485/6-1-001, part 1, J. F.
Lockhart to Indian Affairs, 20 October 1950. [FFR-000307]
106. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6189, file 461-5, part 12, W. M. Benidickson to W. E. Harris, 6 June 1950. [CJC-001327]
107. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8263, file 487/6-1-014, part 1, T. C.
Ross to Norman Paterson, 5 June 1951. [CJC-000288]
108. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8263, file 487/6-1-014, part 1, Norman Paterson to Education Division, 28 March 1952. [CJC-000289]
109. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG22, Perm. volume 1069, file 250-11-17, part 1,
Fort Providence – School 1957, F.A. 22-3, John Parker to G. Robertson, 22 October 1957. [FPU002206]
110. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG22, Perm. volume 1069, file 250-11-17, part 1,
Fort Providence – School 1957, F.A. 22-3, Ben Sivertz to Deputy Minister, 12 November 1957.
[FPU-002208]
111. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG85, Perm. volume 1224, file 630/101-3, part 8,
R.C. Schools – Fort Resolution, N.W.T. January 1956–March 1958, F.A. 85-3, C. L. Merrill to J.
Trocellier, 20 September 1957. [FRU-002035]
112. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8259, file 486/6-1-001, part 1, Henry
Cook to B. F. Neary, 7 January 1950. [MFI-000351]
113. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8259, file 486/6-1-001, part 1, W. J.
Scott to Indian Affairs, 12 January 1950. [MFI-000352]
114. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8259, file 486/6-1-001, part 1, D.
Hester to H. G. Cook, 12 August 1950. [MFI-000369]
115. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8259, file 486/6-1-001, part 1, D. M.
MacKay to Deputy Minister, 12 October 1950. [MFI-000375]
116. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8259, file 486/6-1-001, part 3, S. G.
Barker to F. Matters, 9 February 1953. [MFI-000489]
117. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8259, file 486/6-1-001, part 4, Memorandum, Chief Engineering & Construction Service, 29 September 1953. [MFI-000506]
118. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 1999-01431-6, box 133, file 401/23-17,
part 1, J. F. Lockhart to F. Matters, 16 June 1954. [MFI-007716]
119. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8259, file 486/6-1-001, part 5, F. Matters to Indian Affairs, 25 June 1954. [MFI-000516]
120. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8259, file 486/6-1-001, part 5, Henry
Cook to R. F. Davey, 17 September 1954. [MFI-000519]
121. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8274, file 494/6-1-014, part 1, P. Phelan to F. Matters, 24 November 1952. [PLK-000419]

Notes • 687
122. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8274, file 494/6-1-014, part 4, J. E.
Ritchie to R. F. Davey, 23 August 1955. [PLK-000405-0001]
123. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8275, file 494/6-1-014, part 5, Henry
Cook to R. F. Davey, 27 April 1956. [PLK-000474]
124. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8275, file 494/6-1-014, part 6, H. M.
Jones to Deputy Minister, 12 April 1957. [PLK-000376]
125. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6266, file 579-5, part 9, Philip Phelan
to J. Brachet, 9 November 1945. [FAR-003245]
126. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6266, file 579-5, part 9, J. Brachet toIndian Agent, Selkirk, 11 September 1946. [FAR-003250-0001]
127. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6266, file 579-5, part 11, B. E. Olson to
Bernard F. Neary, 3 September 1948. [FAR-003288]
128. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6266, file 579-5, part 11, B. F. Neary to
B. E. Olson, 10 September 1948. [FAR-003289]
129. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6266, file 579-5, part 11, B. F. Neary to
R. S. Davis, 10 November 1949. [FAR-003800]
130. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6266, file 579-5, part 11, R. S. Davis to
Indian Affairs, 22 December 1949. [FAR-003801]
131. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7185, file 1/25-1-6-1, part 1, E. Scholfield to B. F. Neary, 6 January 1950. [SRS-001568-0000]
132. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8622, file 506/6-1-019, part 1, Fire
Inspection Report, Fort Alexander Indian Industrial School, Fort Alexander, 3 August 1950.
[FAR-002418-0003]
133. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8622, file 506/6-1-019, part 1, R. S.
Davis to B. F. Neary, 9 November 1950. [FAR-002418-0001]
134. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8622, file 506/6-1-019, part 1, R. S.
Davis to Indian Affairs, 6 September 1952. [FAR-002427-0000]
135. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8622, file 506/6-1-019, part 1, H. E.
Puttee to R. S. Davis, 29 October 1952. [FAR-002433-0000]
136. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8622, file 506/6-1-019, part 1, Philip
Phelan to R. S. Davis, 13 July 1953. [FAR-002449-0001]
137. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8622, file 506/6-1-019, part 2, Excerpt
From Regional Supervisor Davis’ Report on Fire Protection dated May 18th 1954. [FAR002486]
138. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6261, file 577-5, part 8, H. E. Pitre, 12
October 1949. [CLD-004322-0001]
139. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6261, file 577-5, part 8, R. S. Davis to
Indian Affairs Branch, 29 December 1949. [CLD-004325]
140. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8641, file 511/6-1-054, part 2, G.
E. Trudeau to G. Marcoux, 16 August 1955; [CLD-004399] R. D. Ragan to G. E. Trudeau, 21August 1956. [CLD-001080]
141. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6351, file 753-5, part 6, 1947, Microfilm reel C-8707, J. H. Leyland to R. R. Moore, 23 December 1946. [EDM-004444]
142. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6351, [110]774/6-1-753 volume I,
09/45–12/53 NAC, E. A. Robertson to Indian Affairs, 1 November 1948; [EDM-004918] TRC,

688 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6351, file 753-5, part 7, 1947–1949, Microfilm reel C8707 and C8708, E. J. Staley to E. A. Robertson, 28 February 1949. [EDM-007300]
143. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6351, file 753-5, part 7, 1947–1949,
Microfilm reel C8707 and C8708, B. F. Neary to G. H. Gooderham, 19 March 1949. [EDM007301]
144. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, [110]774/6-1-753, volume I, 09/45–12/53 NAC,
Findlay Barnes to N. H. Woodsworth, 30 March 1953. [EDM-004791-0001]
145. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, [110]774/6-1-753, volume I, 09/45–12/53 NAC, H. N.
Woodsworth to F. Barnes, 18 April 1953. [EDM-004787]
146. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8666, file 709/6-1-001, part 3, A. E.
Bridges to R. F. Davey, 12 November 1953. [EDM-007760-0000]
147. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, [110]774/6-1-753, volume 2, 1/54–12/57 NAC, R. F.
Battle to Director, Department of Indian Affairs, 8 September 1954; [EDM-005023] file 753-5,
part 7, 1947–1949, Microfilm reel C8707 and C8708, E. J. Staley to E. A. Robertson, 28 February
1949. [EDM-007300]
148. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 487/6-1-016, volume
1, Fire Protection Engineering Survey No. 2, St. Mary’s Indian Residential School, October toNovember 1966. [KNR-000373]
149. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 1984-85/112, box 74, file 487/6-1-016,
part 2, R. A. Switzer to C. J. Crapper, 3 December 1968. [KNR-001607-0001]
150. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/1-18,
volume 1, W. McKim to A. Lacerte (undated). [KNR-000214]
151. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11552, file 312-11, part 2, Russell
T. Ferrier and Duncan C. Scott to Principals of Indian Residential Schools, 5 February 1932.
[AEMR-177210]
152. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7185, file 1/25-1-6-1, part 1, R. A.
Hoey to Principals of Indian Residential Schools, 10 February 1938; [SRS-001560-0001] INAC
– Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 772/23-5-010, 1894–1966,
volume DRSRO, J. N. R. Iredale to Indian Affairs, 21 February 1946. [MOR-001068]
153. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6189, file 461-5, part 8, F. Dubois to F.
Edwards, 16 September 1940. [CJC-000758-0001]
154. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6253, file 575-5, part 7, Philip Phelan
to A. G. Smith, 29 August 1945. [BIR-000298]
155. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 772/23-5-010,
1894–1966, volume DRSRO, J. N. R. Iredale to Indian Affairs, 21 February 1946. [MOR-001068]
156. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 959/6-1-022B,
volume 1, 11/42–01/49, RCAP, [302-19], B. F. Neary to M. S. Todd, 9 January 1947. [MIK002879]
157. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6192, file 462-5, part 9, F. Matters to
Indian Affairs, 24 April 1948. [CRS-001988]
158. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8257, file 485/6-1-001, part 1, Philip
Phelan to J. F. Lockhart, 20 December 1952. [FFR-002294]
159. TRC, NRA, Prairies – Northwest Regional Service Centre – LAC – Edmonton, RG10, Acc.
E-1996-97/451, box 20, loc. 308257 [18/18], file 25-1, Philip Phelan to J. Lemire, 29 January
1952. [MRS-002156-0001]

Notes • 689
160. TRC, NRA, Prairies – Northwest Regional Service Centre – LAC – Edmonton, RG10, Acc.
E-1996-97/451, box 20, loc. 308257 [18/18], file 25-1, J. Lemire to Philip Phelan, 1 February
1952. [MRS-002156-0000]
161. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8611, file 658/1-13, part 1, Philip
Phelan to M. Landry, 24 December 1952. [BVL-000551]
162. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8659, file 658/6-1, part 2, J. R. Bell to
E. S. Jones, 28 January 1956. [BVL-000661]
163. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/251-067, volume 1, Statement of Annie Assiniboine, Long Plain Band, undated; [IRC-041132]
DIAND, Residential Schools Records Office, file 501/25-1-067, volume 1, Statement of Ella
Bell, Long Plain Sioux, 4 March 1949. [PLP-000030-0013]
164. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8630, file 511/6-1-017, part 6, Fire
Inspection Report, Indian Residential School, Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, H. E. Puttee, 18
April 1955. [PLP-000697-0002]
165. TRC, NRA, Documentation location to be determined, document file source, District, 916/61-029, part 2, 1960–1962, To the Fire Marshall, Re: Inspection of the Alberni Indian Residential
School, 16 August 1960. [ABR-000471-0001]
166. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, file 959/6-1, part 9, Kwawkewlth Agency – Correspondence Regarding the Alert Bay Indian Residential School Buildings [Plans],
1960–1961, F.A. 10-27, volume 8701, Microfilm reel C-14163, National Archives of Canada –Ottawa, illegible for R. A. W. Switzer to H. M. Jones, 16 February 1961. [MIK-013126-0001]
167. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8621, file 506/6-1-018, part 3, W. Perrin, 16 October 1962; [ARS-005112-0002] R. A. W. Switzer to R. F. Davey, 15 November 1962.
[ARS-005112-0000]
168. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8621, file 506/6-1-018, part 3, Fire
Inspection Report October, 1962, Assiniboia Indian Residential School, W. Perrin, 16 October
1962. [ARS-005112-0002]
169. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 8710, file 965/6-1, part 11,
1961–1964, Microfilm reel C-14169, “Fire Protection Engineering Survey, February 1964, Lejac
Indian Residential School, Lejac, B.C., Office of the Dominion Fire Commissioner, Department of Public Works, Ottawa,” P. H. Waterson and R. C. Wilson, 14. [LEJ-003418-0002]
170. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 1999-01431-6, box 368, file 963/6-1,
School Buildings, Kamloops Student Residence, part 21, 1964–1967 NAC – Ottawa, Fire
Protection Engineering Survey, February 23–24, 1965, Kootenay Indian Residential School,
Cranbrook, B.C. [EGN-001082]
171. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 487/6-1-016, volume
1, Fire Inspection Report, St. Mary’s Indian Residential School, November 1966. [KNR-000373]
172. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Winnipeg, RG10, Acc. W86-87/083, box 030, file
127/6-1-014, volume 1, R. A. W. Switzer to W. G. Robinson, 2 May 1968. [BIR-005188-0001]
173. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, PAA 71.220 B160 2336, Minutes of the Meeting of
the Residential School Principals and District School Superintendents, October 1968. [OGP022048]
174. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/2513-083, volume 11, W. J. Hughes to Regional Director, Manitoba, 27 November 1970. [BRS000788-0001]

690 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
175. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/2513, volume 1, Fire Protection Engineering Survey, Qu’Appelle Students Residence, Lebret,
Saskatchewan, 10 October 1973. [PLD-009024-0001]
176. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, 774/6-1-016, volume 4, 09/75–03/81,
NAC Edmonton, A. H. MacBride to J. van de Voort, 19 December 1975. [ERM-007201]
177. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton 4965-D32, volume 3, 03/81-03/81 NAC
Edmonton, Ed Lafreniere to J. Makokis, B. Ward, R. Anderson, J. King, 9 March 1981. [EDH002879]
178. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, 4965-1247, volume 1, 05/80–12/82,
NAC Edmonton, L. Johnson to E. Lafreniere, 18 March 1981. [ERM-007912]
179. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories – Education, Culture and Employment, file73-500-402, volume 2, Fort McPherson Hostel [Anglican] – Quarterly Returns [Fort McPherson], 01/72–12/76, Transfer No. 0330, box 8-21, Harry J. Mayne to Joe Coady, 16 January 1976.
[FHU-002395]
180. TRC, CAR, Kay Blake, “Cecilia Jeffrey, Indian Residential School, 1950–1958.”[13c-c000117-d0025-001]
181. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6320, file 658-1, part 2, J. P. B. Ostrander to Indian Affairs, 30 April 1946. [PAR-000905]
182. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6434, file 877-5, part 7, NAC, D. M.
MacKay to Secretary, Indian Affairs Branch, 25 February 1941; [ABR-000980-0001] RG10,
volume 8453, file 985/23-5, Inspector’s Report on Alberni Indian Residential School, 26 November 1941. [ABR-006565-0002]
183. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6434, file 877-5, part 7, NAC, R. C.
Scott to R. A. Hoey, 15 March 1941. [ABR-000975]
184. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6307, file 653-1, part 2, M. Christianson to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 17 April 1942. [FHR-000585]
185. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6308, file 653-1, part 6, M. Christianson to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 18 April 1942. [FHR-000254]
186. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6307, file 653-1, part 2, M. Christianson to Secretary Indian Affairs, 18 May 1942. [FHR-000271]
187. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8754, file 651/25-1, part 1, J. P. B.
Ostrander to Indian Affairs, 28 April 1947; [PAR-009230] R. A. Hoey to Deputy Minister, 2 June
1947. [PAR-009238]
188. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6317, file 656-5, part 8, J. P. B. Ostrander to Indian Affairs, 16 March 1948; [PAR-009258] J. P. B. Ostrander to Indian Affairs, 3August 1948. [PAR-009276]
189. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8753, file 601/25-1, part 1, J. P. B.
Ostrander to Indian Affairs, 24 November 1948. [PAR-001188]
190. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6317, file 656-5, part 8, J. P. B. Ostrander to Indian Affairs, 16 March 1948; [PAR-009258] J. P. B. Ostrander to Indian Affairs, 3August 1948. [PAR-009276]
191. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6337, file 663-5, part 4, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Investigation, 24 January 1948. [THR-003033]
192. Funk, “Une Main Criminelle,” 77–78.

Notes • 691
193. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8634, file 511/6-1-025, part 1, “Investigation Re Fire – Girls Dormitory, Pine Creek Indian Residential School, Camperville,
Manitoba, 19 December 1951.” [PCR-004752-0001]
194. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8634, file 511/6-1-025, part 1, J. H.
Staunton to R. S. Davis, 21 December 1951. [PCR-004748-0001]
195. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8634, file 511/6-1-025, part 1, G. H.
Marcoux to P. Phelan, 8 January 1952. [PCR-004752-0000]
196. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8659, file 658/6-1, part 2, J. R. Bell to
E. S. Jones, 7 April 1956. [BVL-000669-0001]
197. TRC, NRA, Prairies – Northwest Regional Service Centre – LAC – Edmonton, Acc. E1996/97046, box 7, file 674/25-2, J. Bourbonnais to R. T. Smith, 21 October 1966. [BVL-002314-0001]
198. TRC, NRA, Prairies – Northwest Regional Service Centre – LAC – Edmonton, Acc. E1996/97046, box 7, file 674/25-2, W. Karashowsky to J. Bourbonnais, 31 October 1966. [BVL-0023140000]
199. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, RG10, Acc. E1996-97/415, box 36, file25-2-029, Jan. 1967–Jan. 1969, E. Turenne to Walter Karawshowski [misspelled in original; correct spelling is Karashowsky], 6 May 1968. [SPR-003247]
200. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, Paul Poitras to Indian Affairs, 25
March 1977. [PLD-009229]
201. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/25-131-019, volume 2, Paul Poitras to Indian Affairs, 24 April 1977. [PLD-009231]
202. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/25019, volume 2, Charles Bellegarde to Indian Affairs, 7 May 1977; [PLD-009233] Paul Poitras toIndian Affairs, 25 June 1977. [PLD-009239]
203. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/25-131-019, volume 2, Ann Bellegarde to Indian Affairs, 15 September 1977. [PLD-009237]
204. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/25-131-019, volume 2, Allan Dickie, 19 April 1978. [PLD-009245]
205. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8638, file 511/6-1-038, part 1, E. S.
Jones to J. P. B. Ostrander, 6 September 1952. [GUY-000148]
206. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, file 630.012, part 2, volume 2,
Hostel Facilities – Churchill, 1965, Archival box 37-3, Archival Acc. M1994-009, R. L. Graves toRegional Superintendent of Schools, 31 January 1967. [CVC-002785-0000]
207. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
140, file 3, Ronald J. Pratt, 24 October 1986. [GDC-005182-0001]
208. Hansen, Regulation of Building Construction, http://archive.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/ibp/irc/cbd/
building-digest-237.html; Revay and Associates Limited, Issues Paper on National Building
Code, 1–2.
209. TRC, NRA, Document location: unknown, document file source, file 208/6-1 (C1), C. H. Buck
to W. S. Arneil, 7 October 1957. [AEMR-010121]
210. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 8697, file 957/6-1, part 2, C.
H. Cullem for R. J. Bickford to E. C. Hicks, 7 October 1957. [MIS-000176]
211. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7185, file 1/25-1-6-1, part 1, S. S.
Wright to Bernard Neary, 17 February 1950. [SRS-001574-0000]

692 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
212. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7185, file 1/25-1-6-1, part 1, Philip
Phelan to J. P. Mackey, 6 March 1950. [SRS-001577]
213. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives – Burnaby, School Buildings – Repairs – Sq. Res. School, F.A.
10-593, Archival Acc. V2005-00480-4, Archival box 1, A. H. Abbott to M. Michaella, 8 January
1958. [SQU-206024]
214. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, F.A. 10-379, 1999-01431-6, box 405, 987/251-018, part 1, Indian Education – Squamish Students Residence, Fraser District, 1950–1969,
NAC Ottawa, R. F. Davey to Director Indian Affairs, 17 July 1958. [SQU-000573]
215. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, School Buildings – Repairs – Sq. Res.
School, F.A. 10-593, Archival Acc. V2005-00480-4, Archival box 1, A. V. Parminter for W. S.
Arneil to Chief Education Division, Indian Affairs, 12 September 1958. [SQU-206032]
216. TRC, NRA, INAC – BC Regional Records Office – Vancouver, file 989/40-3, volume 1, Fire
Losses – General, 05/1958–11/1980, Acc. V81-352, box 24762, DIAND, BC Central Registry,“12 Children Dead In Hospital Fire,” Vancouver Sun, 23 May 1958; [JOE-019090] TRC, NRA,
Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, Pupil Registers – Kootenay Residential School to
Chilcotin Day School, F.A. 10-189, Archival Acc. V1996-97/816, Archival box 104, Register of
Pupils, of the Cariboo Indian Residential School, 1958. [JOE-210005]
217. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, L. K. Poupore to W. M. Duke, 2June 1960. [ABV-002080]
218. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8797, file 1/25-13, part 8, H. M. Jonesto Deputy Minister, 23 December 1960. [CST-000469]
219. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, A. F. Noonan, 21 October 1963;[CIS-000589-0001] TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection –Ottawa, 951/6-1, volume 2, 11/67–10/10/70, DRSRO, Fire Protection Engineering Survey Re:
Christie Indian Residential School (Church Owned), 13 February 1965. [CST-001418]
220. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, F.A. 10-63, volume 13463 901/25-1, part 1, 1950–
1966 GARDD, R. F. Davey to J. Boys, 11 June 1965. [CST-000832]
221. TRC, NRA, British Columbia Archives – Victoria, Vertical Files – Christie IRS, Microfilm reel28, frame 1988, B.C. Archives, George Nicholson, “Indian children give up their school in theforest,” Vancouver Sun, 15 June 1971. [CST-800006]
222. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, file 955/6-1, part 5, Acc. 199901431-6, box 367, 1961–1967, NAC Ottawa, R. C. Wilson for R. A. W. Switzer to G. J. Bowen, 23
November 1965. [SLT-004435]
223. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, file 987/25-13-1, volume 1, School Residences School Closures, 1975–1977, F.A. 10-137, part 1, Archival Acc. V1986-87/243, Archival
box 4, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, Fire Protection Engineering Survey Report No.
5, Sechelt Indian Residential School, 10 April 1973. [SLT-014052-0001]
224. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8710, file 965/6-1, part 11, 1961–1964,
Microfilm reel C-14169, Fire Protection Engineering Survey, September 1964, Lejac Indian
Residential School, Lejac, British Columbia. [LEJ-003418-0002]
225. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, RG10, FA 10-189, Acc. v96-97/816, file
6-1-963, box 3, Fire Protection – K.S.R. NAC – Burnaby, Fire Protection Engineering Survey,
September 24–25, 1964, Kamloops Indian Residential School, Kamloops, British Columbia.
[KAM-062000]

Notes • 693
226. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 8697, file 956/6-1, part
10, Fire Protection Engineering Survey, September 26, 1964, St. George’s Indian Residential
School, Lytton, British Columbia. [GRG-002817-0001]
227. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 8704, file 962/6-1, part 11,
Microfilm reel C-14164, 1961–1965, 1960, National Archives – Ottawa, Fire Inspection Report
Cariboo Indian Residential School, 22 February 1965. [JOE-060097-0000]
228. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, Acc. 1999-01431-6, box 368, file963/6-1, School Buildings, Kamloops Student Residence, part 21, 1964–1967, NAC – Ottawa, Fire Protection Engineering Survey, February 23–24, 1965, Kootenay Indian Residential
School, Cranbrook, B.C. [EGN-001082]
229. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 775[706]/6-1-020, volume 1, 04/65–11/67, NAC, W.
D. MacKay to R. F. Battle, 23 April 1959. [FTV-006040-0000]
230. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Mgr. Routhier to R. F. Battle, 23
June 1959. [GMA-000699]
231. TRC, NRA, no document location, no document file source, H. M. Jones to Routhier, 16 February 1961. [GMA-000760]
232. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 8758, file 773/25-1, part 2, R.
F. Battle to Indian Affairs Branch, 11 June 1959. [SAC-001075-0000]
233. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file number, Maurice McDougall and threeothers to Brother Knights, 7 December 1959. [GMA-003281-0002]
234. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8758, file 773/25-1, part 2, H. M.
Jones to Deputy Minister, 5 January 1960. [CYP-004018]
235. TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, CR-HQ, file 772/6-1-001, volume 10,
04/66–02/72, illegible for W. G. Robinson to Director of Education, 16 July 1968. [CFT-002054]
For Cluny closing date, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, [205]701/6-1, volume
III, 01/1968–02/1971, NAC, R. D. Ragan to P. Deziel, 31 December 1968. [MOR-005193]
236. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, NAC, file 772/6-1-001, 01/67–10/69, Cluny Indian
School Closing, by Don Peacock, [Calgary Albertan] 20 December 1969. [CFT-002237]
237. TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, 779/6-1-009, volume 8, 1966 CR – HQ, G. J.
Bowen to Director of Education, 6 July 1966; [BQL-000632] TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 779/6-1-009, volume 8, 1966 RCAP, G. J. Bowen
to B. Wilson, 21 July 1966. [BQL-005674-0000]
238. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 779/6-1-009,
volume 8, 1966 RCAP, R. A. W. Switzer to G. J. Bowen, 27 July 1966. [BQL-005695-0004]
239. TRC, NRA, NAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, 775/6-1, volume 1, 1955–72, CR-HQ, R. C.
Wilson for R. A. W. Switzer to G. J. Bowen, 11 July 1967. [AMP-009523-0001]
240. TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, 775/6-1-005, Jan/64–Feb/73, volume 5, DIAND, Central Records – HQ, R. F. Davey to Henri Routhier, 23 August 1968. [FTV-006722-0000]
241. TRC, NRA, Headquarters, 777/6-1-007, 02/65–11/69, volume 6, HQ., R. F. Davey to Henri
Routhier, 30 December 1968. [JRD-001725-0001]
242. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 701/25-1, volume 6(locator #H21-316), Jean Chretien to Martin O’Connell, 22 October 1969. [NCA-015260-0000]
243. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 775/6-1-006, volume II, 01/69–01/75, NAC, P. L.
McGillvray for R. F. Davey to Regional Superintendent of Schools, 6 June 1969. [AMP-0050160001]

694 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
244. TRC, NRA, Headquarters, 775/6-1-006, 1968–1973, volume 8, HQ, W. I. Mouat to IndianAffairs, 24 December 1970. [AMP-007686]
245. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 775/6-1-GHC,
volume 1, 05/1973–06/1975, RCAP, E. W. Robinson to Don McBride, 27 April 1973. [AMP010378]
246. TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, 772/6-1-010, volume 8, 1966–1972, CR-HQ,
C. J. Crapper for G. J. Bowen to Director, Education Branch, 21 March 1969. [MOR-0027870000]
247. TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, 772/6-1-010, volume 8, 1966–1972, CR-HQ,
R. F. Davey to C. Crapper, 26 March 1969. [MOR-002786]
248. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 621/6-1010, volume 1, Fire Protection Engineering Survey, Onion Lake Indian Residential School, 27
May 1965. [ORC-008490]
249. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 671/6-1-025, volume
12, R. F. Davey to Regional Superintendent of Education, 11 March 1969. [ORC-008557]
250. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 671/6-1-025, volume
12, R. F. Davey to C. J. Crapper, 26 March 1969. [ORC-008554]
251. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 671/6-2-025, volume
4, Onion Lake Band Council Resolution, 31 July 1974. [ORC-008733-0002]
252. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, box 2, Acc. 1999-01431-6, file 1/1-2-2-21, part2, D. Kogawa to Director Education Services, 8 February 1968. [NCA-003014]
253. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1969–1970, 128.
254. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 672/6-1016, volume 16, W. G. Robinson to Director of Education, 13 March 1968. [PAR-017715-0000]
255. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, Prince Albert,
box 1, 1973–74, Prince Albert District Chiefs Conference, Petition from Prince Alberta District
Chiefs, Tom Settee and nine others, 22 May 1973. [PAR-000303-0003]
256. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 672/6-1, volume 1(locator N-332), G. Gooderham to J. Bennett, 15 August 1973. [NCA-016977]
257. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 601/25-13,
volume 5, J. R. Mayor to J. Freeman, 7 September 1973. [PAR-019420]
258. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10365, file 511/6-1-026, part 16, R. A.
W. Switzer to G. W. Richards, 21 April 1967. [SBR-001650]
259. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/6-1075, volume 8, R. C. Wilson for R. A. W. Switzer to G. J. Bowen, 17 September 1968. [PCR006373]
260. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/6-1019, volume 10, E. J. Schoenherr to Chief, Engineering and Construction Division, 27 April
1967. [FAR-002624]
261. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 1/25-13,
volume 15, R. F. Davey to Assistant Deputy Minister, Indian and Eskimo Affairs, 18 August
1969. [NCA-011279]
262. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8278, file 494/6-1-015, part 7, J.
Lemire to G. Swartman, 25 January 1961. [MCI-001427-0001]
263. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 446/6-1494, J. Lemire to R. F. Davey, 24 March 1965. [MCI-004409]

Notes • 695
264. TRC, AVS, Lawrence Wanakamik, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Thunder Bay, Ontario, 6 January 2011, Statement Number: 01-ON-06JA11-002.
265. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 494/6-1015, volume 8, G. S. Lapp to Indian Affairs, 26 March 1965. [MCI-006379]
266. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1969–1970, 128.
267. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 129/252-016, volume 1, H. B. Rodine to Supervising Principal, Kenora Inspectorate, 28 April 1966.
[KNR-002732]
268. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 487/6-1-016, volume 1, Fire Protection Survey No. 2, October–November 1966, St. Mary’s Indian Residential
School. [KNR-000373]
269. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/3-8,
volume 2, L. Hakenson to Justice King, 22 October 1971. [KNR-000992-0001]
270. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/1-18,
volume 1, W. McKim to A. Lacerte, (undated). [KNR-000214]
271. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, series C-V-4, volume 11337, file 493/6-1-009,
part 2, C. J. Crapper to Regional Director, Ontario, 5 January 1968. [SWK-000676-0001]
272. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, series C-V-4, volume 11338, file 493/6-1-009,
part 3, A. R. Aquin to Regional Director, 1 March 1968. [SWK-002204-0001]
273. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 13121, file 40-2, part 1, N. Goater toSuperintendent, Sault Ste. Marie, Indian Affairs, 13 January 1970. [SWK-001562-0001]
274. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 86-87/347, file 411/25-2, volume 1, A. F.
McWhinnie to District Superintendent of Education, Sudbury Agency, 8 June 1970. [SWK007859]
275. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, 779/6-1-737, volume2, 05/74–05/76,
NAC – Edmonton, R. W. Brown to Allan Rudyk, 8 May 1974. [AGL-002666]
276. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, RG10, FA 10-189, Acc. v96-97/816, file
6-1-963, box 3, 1959–1975, School Buildings – Kamloops Student Residence, NAC Burnaby,
Fire Protection Engineering Survey, Report No. 5, Kamloops Indian Residential School, A.
Sim, 29 May 1972. [KAM-060715-0001]
277. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 371/6-1019, volume 8, C. A. Edwards to A. Kroeger, 5 March 1975. [HFG-000057]
278. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 371/6-1019, volume 8, Michael Shiner to A. Kroeger, 14 May 1975. [HFG-000061-0003]
279. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 672/6-1007, part 6, J. R. Mayor to O. N. Zakreski, 15 April 1975. [PAR-021768-0003]
280. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 672/25-13016, volume 4, Sol Sanderson to O. Anderson, 10 March 1980. [PAR-000077]
281. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
2A, file 18, Peter McKenzie to E. L. Davies, 25 October 1977. [MDD-008753-0001]
282. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, 985/6-1-012, part 2, 1973–1976, V198485/333, box 4 [500598], FA 10-144, NAC Burnaby/GRB, Report of Inspection Lejac Residential
School, 8 July 1975. [LEJ-008133-0002]
283. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6444, file 881-5, part 4,
1926–1933, Microfilm reel C-8768, “Extract from Indian Agent Moore’s Report for the Monthof February 1932, regarding the Lejac Indian Residential School.” [LEJ-004508]

696 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
284. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, 985/6-1-012, part 2, 1973–1976, V198485/333, box 4 [500598], FA 10-144, NAC Burnaby/GRB, Report of Inspection Lejac Residential
School, 8 July 1975. [LEJ-008133-0002]
285. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 773-6-1-003, volume 5, 09/74–01/80, NAC, E. A.
Fontana to J. Shot Both Sides, 12 March 1979. [MRY-002237-0000]
286. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, 4700-10-435, volume 1, 9/87–12/88,
NAC Edmonton, Sheila Carr-Stewart to Jim Twigg, 14 January 1988. [MRY-008208]
287. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E49742017, volume 1, Peter McKenzie to L. A. Parker, 29 April 1980. [PLD-007624-0003]
288. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E49742017, volume 1, Henry Musqua to Doug Drummond, 25 May 1980. [PLD-007624-0002]
289. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Winnipeg, RG10, Acc. 2001-01035-4, box 015, file501/25-13-082G, volume 1, J. P. Malcolm to K. Baksh, 12 September 1974. [PLP-100393]
290. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, RG10, FA 10-138, Acc. v85-86/397, file963/6-1-005-A, Perm. volume 2, [502381], part 5, Kamloops I.R.S. 1973–74, NAC – Burnaby, J.
E. Bell to G. S. Boyle, 4 June 1974. [KAM-007232]
291. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, RG10, FA 10-137, v92-93/201, box 2[10486], file 987/40-6-19, volume 1, Fire Safety Reports – St. Mary’s, 09/75–10/80, NAC – Burnaby, L. MacKay to J. Allon, 31 October 1980. [MIS-010104]
292. TRC, NRA, INAC – BC Regional Records Office – Vancouver, VAN-E 4310-5-2025, volume 1,
Christie Student Residence, 7/1981–12/1983, Acc. V93-O16, box 93-01-D37/39-052, DIAND –BC Central Registry, N. A. Duval to F. J. Walchli, 17 July 1981. [CST-008511-0001]
293. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 801/6-1-011, volume 12, Carcross IRS,
01/1966–06/1969, RG 10-151, V1989-90/101, M. C. F. Gibbs to A. E. Fry, 6 June 1966; [CAR011275-0000] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, file 801/6-1-011, volume
12, Carcross IRS, 01/1966–06/1969, RG10-151, V1989-90/101, M. L. Lintick to G. S. Swanson, 6
March 1968. [CAR-011277-0003]
294. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG85, Perm. volume 1297, file 311/150A, part 1, School Bldgs – Cambridge Bay, N.W.T. 1955–December 1963, F.A. 85-4, Northern
Administration and Lands Branch to Jacobson, 21 November 1957. [CBS-000774]
295. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories – Education, Culture and Employment,
Ilihakvik School, 1972–1985, Transfer No. 0341, box 5, H. R. Cram to Hodgson, 22 March 1973.
[CBS-000260]
296. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, Pupil Residence – General,
1974–1978, Archival box 3-3, Archival Acc. G1995-004, J. Milligen to Department of Education,
15 October 1974. [CBS-000211-0001]
297. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, School – Fort Smith, 1972–1978,
Archival box 2-17, Archival Acc. G1995-004, H. J. Darkes to H. Michaud, 17 October 1974.
[BTU-001619]
298. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, file 72-451-000, volume 2, Hostels,
01/72, Archival box 273, Archival Acc. G1999-047, Ewan Cotterill to Director of Administration, 26 February 1975. [BTU-001622]
299. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, Pupil Residence – General,
1974–1978, Archival box 3-3, Archival Acc. G1995-004, Marvin Marykuca to R. K. Toutant, 1
November 1977. [AHU-003894]

Notes • 697
300. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, RG10, Acc. E1998-00829-0, box 108 [9],file E4965-2013, volume 1, R. A. Gaw to A. Bemister, 29 June 1983. [BVL-002901]
301. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives – Edmonton, RG10, Acc. E1998-00829-0, box 108 [9], fileE4965-2013, volume 1, Hubert Ouimet to H. Ritchie, 28 June 1984. [BVL-002986]
302. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, Beauval
Residential School, box 1, file 1-5, Memorandum of Understanding and Agreement Re: The
Beauval Indian Education Centre, 6 June 1995. [BVL-001306]
303. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6012, file 1-1-5A, part 2, R. A. Hoey to
Dr. McGill, 31 May 1940. [BIR-000248]

Runaways and truants: 1940–2000
1. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 128/25-2575, volume 1, N. M. Rusaw to J. R. Bell, 10 February 1959; [IRC-041311] TRC, AVS, Sam Ross,
Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Opaskwayak Cree Nation,
Manitoba, 17 January 2012, Statement Number: 2011-0294.
2. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6210, file 468-10, part 4, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, W. E. Needham, 6 May 1943. [MER-003570-0001]
3. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6190, file 461-10, part 3, J. Eldon
Andrews to Norman Paterson, 25 July 1953. [NCA-005170]
4. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/18-24,
volume 1, A. Lacelle to Norman Paterson, 30 November 1954. [CJC-004016-0003]
5. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 1/18-24, volume 1(locator #X-46-4), George Down to Indian Affairs, 25 June 1943. [NCA-014251]
6. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6210, file 468-10, part 4, Lydia Doxtator to Indian Affairs, 20 April 1943. [MER-003563-0002]
7. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6210, file 468-10, part 4, Oliver Strapp
to Philip Phelan, 9 April 1943; [MER-003558] Oliver Strapp to Philip Phelan, 24 April 1943.
[MER-003564-0000]
8. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6210, file 468-10, part 4, R. A. Hoey toO. B. Strapp, 28 April 1943. [MER-003566]
9. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6210, file 468-10, part 4, George W.
Down to O. B. Strapp, 12 July 1943; [MER-003600-0005] George W. Down to O. B. Strapp, 16
July 1943. [MER-003600-0003]
10. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6202, file 466-10, part 6, E. P. Randle
to Indian Affairs Branch, 11 February 1949. [TAY-000362]
11. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6202, file 466-10, part 6, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, A. H. Langille, 2 March 1949. [TAY-002340-0001]
12. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6202, file 466-10, part 6, Bernard
Neary to E. P. Randle, 9 April 1949. [TAY-002347]
13. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6053, file 260-10, part 1, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, 11 September 1941; [SRS-005201-0002] Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, 13 September 1941; [SRS-005201-0001] volume 6053, file 280-10, part 2,
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, 10 December 1941; [SRS-008091-0001] volume 6053,
file 260-10, part 2, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, 17 April 1942; [SRS-005569-0001]

698 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, 20 April 1942; [SRS-005569-0002] Royal Canadian
Mounted Police Report, 21 April 1942; [SRS-005569-0003] Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Report, 22 April 1942; [SRS-005569-0004] Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, 26 April
1944; [SRS-005058-0002] Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, 5 May 1944; [SRS-0050590002] Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, 26 November 1944; [SRS-005235-0001] Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report, 23 December 1944; [SRS-005240-0001] Royal Canadian
Mounted Police Report, 15 January 1945; [SRS-005240-0002] Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Report, 18 February 1945; [SRS-005242-0001] Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, 21
February 1945; [SRS-004327-0002] Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, 24 September
1945; [SRS-008244-0001] Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, 17 February 1946. [SRS008227-0001]
14. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6278, file 584-10, part 2, Police
Report, G. N. McRae, 23 April 1940; [SBR-110686-0001] Police Report, G. L. Tisdale, 30 April
1940. [SBR-110686-0002]
15. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6278, file 584-10, part 2, Police Report, W. Munnoch and R. Sutherland, 27 May 1940. [SBR-110691-0001]
16. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6259, file 576-10, part 15, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, H. B. Lurees, 1 October 1942. [BRS-003599]
17. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6259, file 576-10, part 15, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, 12 January 1943. [BRS-000268]
18. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6259, file 576-10, part 15, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, W. H. F. Chilton, 1 February 1943. [BRS-000265]
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6259, file 576-10, part 15, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, 12 January 1943. [BRS-000345]
20. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6251, file 575-1, part 3, “Birtle Manitoba Agency,” A. G. Smith, 7 April 1942. [BIR-000262]
21. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6254, file 575-10, part 2, Police Report, C. V. Merton, 9 April 1942. [BIR-001322-0001]
22. TRC, NRA, Presbyterian Church of Canada, Residential Schools Name Index, 2009, file 19887004-12-1, N. M. Rusaw to Frieda Matthews, 1 August 1948. [BIR-002711]
23. TRC, NRA, Presbyterian Church of Canada, Residential Schools Name Index, 2009, file 19987004-12-1, N. M. Rusaw to Frieda Matthews, 20 September 1948. [BIR-002707]
24. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6275, file 583-10, part 1, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, H. K. Greaves, 27 October 1941. [PLP-000399-0001]
25. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6275, file 583-10, part 1, Police Report, W. G. Morley, 6 November 1941. [PLP-000400-0001]
26. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6275, file 583-10, part 1, Police Report, W. G. Morley, 1 December 1941. [PLP-000404-0001]
27. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6275, file 583-10, part 1, Police Report, W. G. Morley, 10 December 1941. [PLP-000410-0001]
28. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6334, file 661-10, part 2, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, 25 October 1940. [RLS-001023-0001]
29. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 9151, file 312-11 ACE, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, A. S. Band, 31 January 1940. [GDC-051340]
30. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 9148, file 309-11 ACE, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, F. E. Spriggs, 19 May 1941. [PAR-003418]

Notes • 699
31. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6320, file 657-10, part 2, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, J. P. Douglas, 7 October 1944; [MDD-001704] T. H. Playford, 10
October 1944. [MDD-002258]
32. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6320, file 657-10, part 2, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, T. H. Playford, 10 April 1945. [MDD-007383-0001]
33. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6320, file 657-10, part 2, Philip Phelan
to R. S. Davis, 27 April 1945. [MDD-007384]
34. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 3, file 651-10, Royal Canadian
Mounted Police Report, 31 October 1944. [MRS-046254]
35. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6331, file 660-10, part 6, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, K. G. Pedensen, 15 March 1949. [PLD-003155-0001]
36. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 774/25-1-016, part 1, 1938–1957, NAC, Philip Phelan
to Gerard Labonte, 31 July 1945. [ERM-002063]
37. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 774/25-1-016, part 1, 1938–1957, NAC, Gerard
Labonte to Philip Phelan, 20 August 1945. [ERM-002064]
38. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B94 3972, “Principal’s Report for Fiscal
Year ending 31 March 1948,” Ermineskin Residential School. [OGP-032546]
39. TRC, NRA, Document location described in database as “to be determined,” 988/23-9 19461947, R. H. Moore to D. M. MacKay, 17 July 1946. [KUP-001598]
40. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, locator: 6426, file 875-1, part 4, 04/37-11/47,
NAC – Ottawa, S. J. Wickens to Indian Agent, 1 October 1947. [MIK-006514]
41. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 1/18-24, volume 1(locator #X-46-4), George Down to Indian Affairs, 25 June 1943. [NCA-014251]
42. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG22, volume 1209, file 979/1-1, volume 1, G. H.
Barry to D. M. MacKay, 8 January 1941. [IRC-049021]
43. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6053, file 260-10, part 2, Philip Phelan
to J. P. Mackey, 22 April 1942. [SRS-005548]
44. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6053, file 260-10, part 2, J. P. Mackey
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 25 April 1942. [SRS-005550]
45. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 1/25-1-5-2,
volume 1, “Regulations With Respect to Teaching, Education, Inspection, and Discipline for
Indian Residential Schools, Made and Established for the Superintendent General of IndianAffairs Pursuant to Paragraph (a) of Section 114 of the Indian Act,” 20 January 1953. [PAR001203-0001]
46. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 2-15, box
24, Superintendent, “Superintendent’s Conversations with Principal Oran re: Sioux Lookout
School, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, December 2, 1961.” [PLK-000966]
47. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6186, file 460-23, part 1, Paul Langlois
to Constable Dexter, 14 June 1941. [FTA-000105-0001]
48. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6186, file 460-23, part 1, “Statementof Albert Matinas,” 22 June 1942. [FTA-000116-0011]
49. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6186, file 460-23, part 1, “Statementof Charles Kioki,” 22 June 1942. [FTA-000116-0013]
50. TRC, NRA, National Archives of Canada, RG10, volume 6186, file 460-23, part 1, Philip Phelan
to H. Belleau, 17 July 1941. [AEMR-010811]

700 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
51. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 1/18-24, volume 1(locator #X-46-4), T. R. L. MacInnes to Inspectors, Indian Agents, Principals of Residential
Schools, 6 May 1941. [NCA-014242]
52. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6209, file 468-10, part 3, Philip Phelan
to O. B. Strapp, 30 May 1941. [MER-001094]
53. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6209, file 468-10, part 3, O. B. Strapp
to Philip Phelan, 3 June 1941. [MER-001095]
54. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 1/18-24, volume1(locator #X-46-4), Harold W. McGill to Inspectors, Indian Agents, Principals of Residential
Schools, 21 June 1943. [NCA-014244]
55. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6210, file 468-10, part 5, G. E. Hurl
to Indian Affairs, 25 January 1945; [MER-003712-0001] S. H. Soper to R. A. Hoey, 15 February
1945; [MER-003722] G. E. Hurl to Indian Affairs, 4 April 1945; [MER-003734-0001] Philip Phelan to G. E. Hurl, 12 April 1945; [MER-003734-0000] Philip Phelan to G. E. Hurl, 23 May 1945.
[MER-003742-0000]
56. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6053, file 260-10, part 3, “Extract from
Indian Agent Rice’s letter dated May 6, 1944.” [SRS-005060]
57. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6254, file 575-10, part 3, A. G. Hamilton to Indian Affairs Branch, 21 March 1945.
58. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7194, file 511/25-1-015, “Report on
Truancy, Brandon Residential School,” J. Waite. [IRC-041088]
59. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG85, Perm. volume 1327, file 530-149,
part 4, School Ordinance and Regulations – N.W.T. May 1950–December 1957, F.A. 85-4, J. D.
Cairns to J. V. Jacobson, 17 October 1957. [RCN-005480]
60. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, file 630-110/32-2, Reports Breynat
Hall, Fort Smith, 1957–1959, Archival box 223-1, Archival Acc. G-1979-003, C. Gilles to H. J.
Darkes, 1 February 1966. [BTU-000804]
61. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 25-2-940, Admiss and Disch. Carcross IRS, 01/59–
12/61, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, J. T. Parsons, June 6 1960. [AGN-090007]
62. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6204, file 467-10, part 2, Gilbert
Thompson to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 1 December 1943. [MFI-001274]
63. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
15, file 3, J. Eldon Andrews to George Land, 30 January 1953. [CJC-007748]
64. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 487/18-24, volume 1,
L. A. Marshall to Indian Affairs, 20 December 1954. [KNR-001380-0003]
65. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 487/18-24, volume
1, “Ontario Provincial Police Crime Report,” R. J. MacGarva, 6 December 1954. [KNR-0013800004]
66. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 487/18-24, volume 1,
L. A. Marshall to Indian Affairs, 20 December 1954. [KNR-001380-0003]
67. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 487/18-24, volume 1,
F. Matters to Indian Affairs Branch, 20 December 1954. [KNR-001380-0000]
68. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6275, file 583-10, part 2, Joseph Jones
to A. G. Hamilton, 31 January 1949. [PLP-004354]
69. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6275, file 583-10, part 2, John W.
Kettlewell to Mr. Hamilton, 3 February 1949. [PLP-004356-0001]

Notes • 701
70. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 1, file 124/25-1-015, N. Paterson to F.
Matters, 5 November 1954; [CJC-000273-0000] TRC, AVS, Guy Hunter, Statement to the Truth
and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 17 June 2010, Statement
Number: 02-MB-17JU10-061.
71. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, file 882-2, part 8, Kamloops Agency – Kamloops Residential School – Quarterly Returns, 1947–1952, F.A. 10-17, volume 6447, Microfilmn
reel C-8770, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, Indian Residential School Quarterly
Return for Kamloops Indian Residential School, 30 September 1947 (pages 8, 9, 10 of 2-page
portable document file); [KAM-002274] TRC, ASAGR, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, E-DivNIRS task force Final Report, M. W. Pacholuk, “Final Report of the Native Indian Residential
School Task Force, Project E-NIRS,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 49. [AGCA-564517]
72. TRC, CAR, Kay Blake, file 2010-5007, “Cecilia Jeffrey, Indian Residential School, 1950–1958.”[13c-c000117-d0025-001] For Kay Blake’s former name, see: TRC, CAR, Kay Blake, “Remembering Cecilia Jeffrey,” Glad Tidings, volume 61, number 6, June/July 1985, 10–14.
[13c-c001295-d0001-001]
73. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6272, file 582-23, part 1, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, 9 April 1951. [PCR-000190]
74. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6272, file 582-23, part 1, R. S. Davis to
P. Phelan, 22 May 1951. [PCR-000188]
75. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8610, file 655/1-13, part 1, D. M.
Mackay to Paul Piche, 30 July 1951. [PLD-000055]
76. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 494/3-3-3, volume 1,“Provincial Police Report,” G. A. McMonagle, 19 December 1956. [PLK-001205-0001]
77. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8275, file 494/6-1-014, part 5, R. F.
Davey to G. Swartman, 13 November 1956. [PLK-000488]
78. Government of Canada, Canada’s Missing, Case Reference: 2006005399, https://secure.
rcmp-grc.gc.ca/missing-disparus/case-dossier.jsf?case=2006005399&id=4 (accessed 16
September 2013).
79. For date of Barrington’s leaving Sioux Lookout, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector –IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 494/25-1-014, volume 2, Eric L. Barrington to R. F.
Davey, 22 May 1961. [PLK-000922] For his next appointment, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa 777[131] 6-1-767, volume 4, 12/08/58–
12/28/62 IRSRHFC, Eric Barrington to Superintendent, Lesser Slave Lake Indian Agency, 8September 1961. [JON-002946]
80. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 961/25-2,
volume 15, Admissions and Discharges – Kuper Island Residence, Cowichan Agency, B.C.,
01/08/1958–02/07/1966, Control No. 34-15 IRSRC – Historical Files, J. V. Boys to Indian Commissioner for B.C., 29 January 1959. [KUP-200601]
81. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, Burnaby, file 988/25-2-008, volume 1, Admissions
and Discharges – Kuper Island IRS, 1959–1960, F.A. 10-136, V1984-85/316, Archival box 49,
Acting superintendent, Cowichan Agency to Principal Kuper Island I.R.S., 29 September 1959.
[KUP-220036]
82. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, 772/25-1, volume 1, 04/60–06/70, N.
Goater to A. H. Murray, 10 March 1962. [OLD-007287-0005]
83. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, RG10, Acc. E1996-97/415, box 36, file25-2-662, 1964–1966, E. Turenne to K. Kerr, 6 June 1965. [SPR-006307]

702 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
84. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, series C-IV-2, Acc. 1984-85/112, box 31, file401/25-2, volume 1, H. B. Rodine to Director of Education Services, 31 January 1967. [CJC000271-0001]
85. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
17, file 4, “Inquest hears tragic tale of runaway boy,” Kenora Miner and News, 18 November
1966; [CJC-007909] CBC News, Coroner’s Statement Upon Issuing His Warrant for Holding An
Inquest in the Case of Charles Wenjack, R. Glenn Davidson, 4 November 1966, and Report ofPost-Mortem Examination, A-258, Charles Wenjack, 23 October 1966, Dr. Peter Pan, http://
www.cbc.ca/thunderbay/interactives/dyingforaneducation/docs/charles_1966_5308.pdf(accessed 4 January 2015); Adams, “Lonely Death,” 30–44.
86. Adams, “Lonely Death,” 38.
87. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
17, file 4, “Inquest hears tragic tale of runaway boy,” Kenora Miner and News, 18 November
1966; [CJC-007909] CBC News, http://www.cbc.ca/thunderbay/interactives/dyingforaneducation/docs/charles_1966_5308.pdf accessed 4 January 2015, Coroner’s Statement Upon Issuing His Warrant for Holding An Inquest in the Case of Charles Wenjack, R. Glenn Davidson,
4 November 1966; Report of Post-Mortem Examination, A-258, Charles Wenjack, 23 October
1966, Dr. Peter Pan; Adams, “Lonely Death,” 30–44.
88. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/25-1014, Giollo Kelly to R. F. Davey, 7 June 1966. [CJC-000309]
89. TRC, NRA, INAC, file 487/18-2, volume 1, P. C. Clarkin to Director Education Services, Ottawa, Ontario, 31 January 1967. [CJC-006524]
90. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
17, file 4, Colin Wasacase to Giollo Kelly, 17 November 1966. [CJC-007910]
91. Adams, “Lonely Death,” 44. Maclean’s article from CBC report 2000-7004-5-7.
92. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
17, file 4, “Inquest hears tragic tale of runaway boy,” Kenora Miner and News, 18 November
1966. [CJC-007909]
93. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
17, file 4, “Inquest hears tragic tale of runaway boy,” Kenora Miner and News, 18 November
1966. [CJC-007909]
94. Verdict of Coroner’s Jury, Charles Wenjack, 17 November 1966.
95. R. F. Battle to H. B. Cotnam, 19 December 1966.
96. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 1/25-13, R.
F. Davey to All Regional School Superintendents, 26 January 1967. [SRS-000923]
97. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
19, file 9, “To be followed when a student is reported absent without leave [word missing] ahostel or residential school operated under contract with the Indian Affairs Branch by religious body in Ontario.” No date. [NCA-009059-0001]
98. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 487/18-24, volume 1,
F. M. Shaw, to H. B. Rodine, 7 November 1966. [CJC-002261-0002]
99. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 487/18-24, volume 1,
R. F. Davey to Regional Director, 17 November 1966. [CJC-002260]
100. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 451/25-2004, volume 2, “Report on the Death of Joseph Commanda,” H. B. Rodine, 6 September 1968.
[TAY-001114-0001]

Notes • 703
101. TRC, NRA, INAC, file 487/18-2, volume 1, “2 Boys Died From Exposure,” Kenora Miner andNews, 18 December 1970; [KNR-003158-0002] P. J. Hare to Indian Affairs, 7 December 1970.
[KNR-003168]
102. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
19, file 9, “To be followed when a student is reported absent without leave [word missing] ahostel or residential school operated under contract with the Indian Affairs Branch by religious body in Ontario.” No date. [NCA-009059-0001]
103. TRC, NRA, INAC, file 487/18-2, volume 1, “2 Boys Died From Exposure,” Kenora Miner andNews, 18 December 1970. [KNR-003158-0002]
104. TRC, NRA, INAC, file 487/18-2, volume 1, P. J. Hare to Indian Affairs, 7 December 1970; [KNR003167] P. J. Hare to Indian Affairs, 8 December 1970. [KNR-003168]
105. TRC, NRA, DIAND, Residential Schools Records Office, file 901/25-13, volume 4 (156-2),
Verdict of Coroner’s Jury, Philip Swain and Roderick Keesick, 17 December 1970. [AEMR-201297B]
106. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 901/25-13,
volume 4 (locator 156-2), J. B. Bergevin to H. B. Cotnam, 1 March 1971. [NCA-012545-0000]
107. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, Confidential, Hostels, 1971–1974,
Archival box 8-24, Archival Acc. G1995-004, Leonard Holman to J. Coady, 7 September 1972.
[IKU-001764]
108. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, Diocese of the Arctic, General Synod Archives, file110-09, Stringer Hall, Accession M96-7, series 2:1, Notice of missing boys, 1972. [AGS-000341]
109. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, Confidential, Hostels, 1971–1974,
Archival box 8-24, Archival Acc. G1995-004, Leonard Holman to J. Coady, 14 July 1972. [SHU000486] For distance, see: Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk Highway, http://actionplan.gc.ca/en/initiative/inuvik-tuktoyaktuk-highway (accessed 30 September 2014).
110. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, series C-V-4, volume 11325, file 6-39-1, part 1,
Charles G. Kehler to R. P. G. Laurence, 5 October 1944. [IRC-048219]
111. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6459, file 887-1, part 2, F. J. C. Ball to
the Secretary, Indian Affairs Branch, 29 January 1940. [SLT-000574]
112. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6320, file 657-10, part 2, R. S. Davis to
Indian Affairs, 14 November 1945. [MDD-009551]
113. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6275, file 583-10, part 3, D. A. H.
Nield to Indian Affairs, 23 July 1953. [PLP-001749-0000]
114. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6859, file 494/25-2-014, part 2, Eric
Barrington to Superintendent, Indian School Administration, 1 August 1957. [PLK-0012100001]
115. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6859, file 494/25-2-014, part 2, R. F.
Davey to F. Matters, 15 August 1957. [PLK-001211]
116. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11447, file 494/25-2, part 1, L. R. Fawcett to Regional Supervisor, Indian Affairs, North Bay, Ontario, 18 June 1964. [PLK-001111]
117. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 431/25-2485, E. Rooney to H. B. Rodine, 25 February 1965; [FFR-001552-0001] H. B. Rodine to Supervising Principal, 22 March 1965. [FFR-001553]
118. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6258, file 576-10, part 10, Police
Report, A. G. Marsom, 11 May 1940. [BRS-002302-0001]

704 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
119. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10693, file 43/25-2-471, part 1, J. R.
Oliver to J. A. Marleau, 26 September 1951. [AGA-000581]
120. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 774/25-1-016, part 1, 1938–1957, NAC, W. P. B. Pughto Philip Phelan, 7 November 1945. [ERM-002072]
121. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11507, file 676/25-2, part 1, F. X. Gagnon to C. S. Bell, 10 December 1946. [BVL-000435]
122. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10759, G. Swartman to Fred Mattinas,
20 October 1947. [PLK-003512]
123. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10759, D. C. Wickenden to F. Matters,
7 November 1947. [PLK-003511]
124. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10693, file 43/25-2-471, part 2, Leo
Burns to Henry Gauthier, 12 June 1956. [AGA-000726]
125. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, series C-V-4, volume 11358, file 13/25-2-469,
part 1, Roy Phillips to Superintendent, 3 March 1954. [IRC-048240-0002]
126. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8542, file 51/25-2, part 2, Superintendent, Shubenacadie Agency to Superintendent Lennox Island Agency, 6 May 1958. [SRS008549]
127. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, RG10, Acc. E-1996-97/415, box 36, file661/25-2-654, 1958, J. J. T. Johnstone to H. H. Chapman, 13 February 1958. [GDC-009843]
128. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, RG10, Acc. E-1996-97/415, box 36, file616/25-2-654, 1958, J. J. T. Johnstone to [name redacted], 25 August 1958. [GDC-009852]
129. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6323, file 658-10, part 6, N. D. Pilcher
to Superintendent, Carlton Indian Agency, 15 November 1950. [PAR-009391-0002]
130. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, file 801/25-2-943, volume 1, Prot. Hostel,
1960–1962, FA 10-151, Archival Acc. V1989-90/101, Archival box 39, W. E. Grant to [nameredacted], 5 October 1960; [YHU-000372] W. E. Grant to [name redacted], 5 October 1960;[YHU-000373] W. E. Grant to Jack Thom, 14 October 1960; [YHU-000368] W. E. Grant to [nameredacted], 14 October 1960; [YHU-000341] W. E. Grant to [name redacted], 17 October 1960.
[YHU-000369] [131. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, Admissions/Discharges R.C. Hostel, 252-941, volume 4, Sept/60–Dec/62, E. A. Cullinane to W. E. Grant, 2 May 1961. [YKS-000035]
132. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, Burnaby, file 988/25-2-030, part 1, Admission andDischarge – Christie Residential School, 1959–1960, F.A. 10-136, Archival Acc. V1984-85/316,
Archival box 17; [CST-001019-0000] Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, A. F. Noonan toSuperintendent West Coast Indian Agency, “Recommendation for Discharge,” 7 November
1960. [CST-001019-0001]
133. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6053, file 260-10, part 1, J. P. Mackey
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 15 September 1941. [SRS-005200]
134. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6053, file 260-10, part 1, Philip Phelan
to J. P. Mackey, 24 September 1941. [SRS-005202]
135. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6053, file 260-10, part 3, J. P. Mackey
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 25 November 1943. [NCA-011652]
136. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6053, file 260-10, part 3, H. C. Rice to
Indian Affairs, 16 January, 1945; [SRS-005236] Philip Phelan to J. W. Brown, 17 January 1945.
[NCA-011687-0001]

Notes • 705
137. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6053, file 260-10, part 3, H. C. Rice to
Indian Affairs, 28 February 1945. [SRS-005241]
138. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6330, file 660-10, part 4, “Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report,” 8 October 1942. [PLD-003035-0001]
139. TRC, NRA, Presbyterian Church in Canada, Residential Schools Name Index, 2009, 19887004-13-1, N. M. Rusaw to Frieda Matthews, 7 December 1956. [BIR-002866]140. An Act respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1951, chapter 29, section 119, reproduced in
Venne, Indian Acts, 352.
141. Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society, 122.
142. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
15, file 3, J. Eldon Andrews to George Land, 30 January 1953. [CJC-007748]
143. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6859, file 487/25-2-016, part 2, R. G.
Cooper to Regional Supervisor, North Bay, Ontario, 26 September 1958. [FFR-001544]
144. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11358, file 13/25-2-469, part 2, Roy
Phillips to Mr. Whitney, 25 April 1958. [SWK-007231]
145. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10390, file 511/25-2, part 10B, Father
G. Gelinas to D. Minnis, 21 September 1959. [PCR-102393]
146. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file [205]701/18-24, volume 2, Truancy – Indian Schools 1952–1965, Control No. 410-A-1 IRSRC Historical Files, R. F. Battle to K. R. Brown, 26 May 1959. [RCA-011705]
147. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file [205]701/18-24, volume 2, Truancy – Indian Schools 1952–1965, Control No. 410-A-1 IRSRC Historical Files, Lyman Jampolsky to J. R. Wild, 13 February 1959. [RCA-011704-0001]
148. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10389, file 511/25-2, part 7, 5 January
1961, D. A. H. Nield to A. G. Leslie, 5 January 1961. [BIR-001215]
149. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 577/25-2014, volume 1, D. A. H. Nield to Stella Blackie, 20 October 1965. [BIR-103399]
150. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6445, file 881-10, part 5, Agent’s Report on Stuart Lake Agency for September, Robert Howe, 2 October 1940. [LEJ-002079]
151. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6445, file 881-10, part 6, Report ofCorporal L. F. Fielder, 14 October 1943. [LEJ-001389]
152. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6443, file 881-1, part 2, R.
Howe to Indian Affairs Branch, 12 September 1946. [LEJ-000855]
153. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6445, file 881-10, part 7, R. Howe to
Indian Affairs, 7 October 1946. [LEJ-001830]
154. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1-076, volume 1, A. G. Hamilton to Indian Affairs, 4 November
1943. [SBR-000408]
155. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6302, file 650-10, part 3, R. A. Hoey toJ. P. B. Ostrander, 11 September 1942. [BVL-000433]
156. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6204, file 467-10, part 2, R. A. Hoey toGilbert Thompson, 8 December 1943. [MFI-001277]
157. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 1/18-24, volume 1(locator #X-46-4), Rev. L. C. Schmidt to Harold McGill, 2 July 1943. [NCA-014258]
158. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6374, file 764-10, part 2, PARC, H. A.
R. Gagnon to Director, Indian Affairs Branch, 12 October 1945. [PUL-009517-0000]

706 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
159. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 9148, file 309-11 ACE, John Baptiste,Peter King, and Alex Sapp to Indian Agent, Battleford, 31 August 1945. [PAR-000897-0002]
160. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 9148, file 309-11 ACE, J. Bryce to J. P.
B. Ostrander, 19 October 1945. [PAR-003393]
161. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 9148, file 309-11 ACE, C. S. Bell to J. P.
B. Ostrander, 1 November 1945. [PAR-000903]
162. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6323, file 658-10, part 6, Bernard
Neary to J. P. B. Ostrander, 25 October 1948. [PAR-001614]
163. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8754, file 651/25-1, part 1, “Extractfrom Superintendent Jones’ Quarterly Report for the period ended September 30th, 1948.”[PAR-000390]
164. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6323, file 658-10, part 6, Superintendent Indian School Administration, Missionary Society of the Church of England in Canada,
21 October 1948. [PAR-000392]
165. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6317, file 656-5, part 9, C. A. F. Clark
to Superintendent of Indian Education, 2 November 1948. [PAR-000395]
166. An Act respecting Indians, Revised Statutes of Canada 1927, chapter 98, section 9.5, reproduced in Venne, Indian Acts, 247.
167. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6355, file 757-1, part 2, 1928–1948,
John E. Pugh to Indian Affairs, 8 October 1947. [MOR-005548]
168. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, PAA 71.220 B94 3972, Principal Ermineskin Indian
Residential School to Indian Affairs Branch, 31 March 1948. [OGP-032546]
169. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6374, file 764-10, part 2, PARC, J. E.
Pugh to Indian Affairs Branch, 7 March 1946. [PUL-009511]
170. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, 103/6-1-764, volume 1, 09/44–12/54, C.
A. F. Clark to Superintendent of Education, 9 November 1949. [IRC-048180]
171. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 773/25-1003, volume 1, 10/36–09/70, “Minutes of the Blood Band Council Held in The Indian Agency
Office,” 22 November 1949, annotated by C. A. F. Clark. [IRC-041373]
172. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 773/25-1-004, volume 1, 1936–1956, G. H. Gooderham to B. F. Neary, 26 January 1950. [IRC-041379]
173. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 773/25-1-004, volume 1, 1936–1956, H. G. Cook to
G. H. Gooderham, 20 August 1952. [IRC-048234]
174. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 773/18-24,
volume 2, 05/44–04/67, R. D. Ragan to Philip Phelan, 26 November 1952. [IRC-048091]
175. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, box 130, Acc. 1999-01431-6, file 401/3-8, part
1, George Land, J. Hunter, J. Henry to W. Harris, 25 October 1953. [NCA-006721-0005]
176. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 124/25-1-015, volume 1, N. Paterson to F. Matters, 5 November 1954. [CJC-000273-0000]
177. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 487/18-24, volume 1,“Truant Officer’s Report, Cecilia Jeffrey School, Kenora for month of September 1953.” [CJC002263-0001]
178. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 124/25-1-015, volume 1, N. Paterson to F. Matters, 5 November 1954. [CJC-000273-0000]

Notes • 707
179. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, RG10, FA 10-136, volume 11466, 987/1824, part 1, Truancy, 1952–1969, H. H. Lyall for H. E. Taylor to W. S. Arneil, 22 August 1952.
[SQU-001302]
180. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives of Canada – Burnaby, RG10, FA 10-136, volume 11466,
987/18-24, part 1, Truancy, 1952–1969, NAC Burnaby, J. A. Peacock for M. F. E. Anthony to
Director, Indian Affairs Branch, 8 August 1952; [SQU-001304] H. H. Lyall for H. E. Taylor to W.
S. Arneil, 22 August 1952; [SQU-001302] RG22, volume 852, file 6-21-4, part 1, Philip Phelan toW. M. Cory, 8 October 1952; [NCA-014390-0003] Library and Archives Canada, RG22, volume852, file 6-21-4, part 1, W. S. Arneil to Indian Affairs Branch, 4 November 1952; [NCA-0143900001]An Act respecting Indians, Statutes of Canada 1951, chapter 29, section 118, reproduced
in Venne, Indian Acts, 351.
181. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG22, volume 852, file 6-21-4, part 1, Memorandum
to Mr. Phelan, 23 October 1952; [NCA-014390-0002] Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby,
RG10, FA 10-136, volume 11466, 987/18-24, part 1, Truancy, 1952–1969, NAC Burnaby, W. M.
Cory to P. Phelan, 19 November 1952. [SQU-001298-0000]
182. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, RG10, FA 10-136, volume 11466, 987/1824, part 1, Truancy, 1952–1969, NAC Burnaby, Philip Phelan to W. S. Arneil, 27 October 1952.
[SQU-001300]
183. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, RG10, FA 10-136, volume 11466, 987/1824, part 1, Truancy, 1952–1969, NAC Burnaby, W. S. Arneil to H. E. Taylor, 28 November 1952.
[SQU-001296]
184. TRC, NRA, Document location unknown, Admissions and Discharges, Lower Post, file 25-2892, volume 2, box 38, file date[s]: 01/59–02/62, RG10, v-1989-90-91/101, J. E. Y. Levaque to W.
Grant, 17 September 1960. [YKS-007447]
185. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, 985/25-2, part 4, 1970–1971, V198485/333, box 3 [500797], FA 10-144, NAC Burnaby/GRB, J. G. Fitzgerald to L. F. Foster, 22 April
1971. [LEJ-007670]
186. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, Acc. E1997-98/318, box 11, file _/18-24,
no volume, N. Ogrady to W. J. D. Kerley, 4 October 1957. [MDD-006316]
187. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, Acc. E1997-98/318, box 11, file _/18-24,
no volume, W. J. D. Kerley to Isabel Windigo, 8 November 1957. [MDD-006315]
188. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 18-24, volume 1, 04/50–12/65 NAC, Royal Canadian
Mounted Police Report, 15 November 1957. [PUL-200087]
189. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, file [103]/18/24, volume 1, Truancy,
08/1965–04/1980, Archival Acc. E-1994-95/653, Archival box 3, Royal Canadian Mounted
Police report, 20 February 1958. [PUL-200208]
190. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 18-24, volume 1, 04/50–12/65, Royal Canadian
Mounted Police report, 5 March 1958. [PUL-073808]
191. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, RG10, Acc. E1996-97/415, box 34 of
56, file _/25-2-660, V. Bilodeau to Superintendent, Pelly Indian Agency, 26 May 1960. [PLD007801]
192. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, RG10, Acc. E1996-97/415, box 34, file114/25-2, May 1961–Nov. 1961, F. J. Dosdall to Regional Supervisor, 8 September 1961. [PLD035584-0000]
193. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 97-98/311, file 111/25-2, 1962–1969, P.
Kaweski to Regional Director, Indian Affairs, 7 November 1967. [SMD-002625]

708 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
194. TRC, NRA, Prairies – Northwest Regional Service Centre – LAC – Edmonton, file 674/25-2, A.
Duhaime to F. Frey, 8 November 1967. [SMD-015030]
195. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives – Burnaby, file 801/25-2-14, volume 2, Admission and Discharge – R.C. Hostel, 05/1967–01/1969, F.A. 10-151, V1989-90/101, Archival box 38, Memorandum, Gerald Michaud, 9 November 1967. [CDH-001182]
196. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives – Burnaby, file 801/25-2-14, volume 2, Admission andDischarge – R.C. Hostel, 05/1967–01/1969, F.A. 10-151, V1989-90/101, Archival box 38, Gerald
Michaud to Indian Affairs, 28 November 1967. [CDH-001202]
197. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa Quarterly
Returns, Yukon Student Res., 853/23-26, volume 1, 9/60–3/69, Quarterly Returns, Coudert
Residence, 31 December 1967. [CDH-005030]
198. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, Akaitcho Hall Students, 1971–
1972, Archival box 9-15, Archival Acc. G1995-004, A. J. Boxer to R. Toutant, 2 November 1971.
[AHU-003867]
199. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Winnipeg, RG10, Acc. W84-85/402, box 13636, file506/23-5-021, volume 1, G. T. Ross to Fr. Masse, 14 March 1968; [FAR-006028] RG10, volume
10386, file 506/25-2, part 8B, “Report on Pupil Leaving and Recommendation for Discharge of
Pupil From Residential School,” 21 January 1969. [FAR-002075]
200. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10386, file 506/25-2, part 7B, G. T.
Ross to Regional Supervisor of Social Programs, 18 December 1968. [FAR-002063]
201. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Winnipeg, RG10, Acc. W84-85/402, box 13642, file506/25-2-18, volume 1, L. P. Joubert to J. Wright, 5 December 1969. [ARS-004699]
202. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Winnipeg, RG10, Acc. W84-85/402, box 13640, file506/25-2-018, volume 1, Roland Chaput to [name redacted], 29 March 1968. [ARS-0084060000] For the boy’s age, see: Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Indian Affairs
Branch, Quarterly Return, Government-Owned Residential Schools, 31 March 1968. [ARS000022-0001]
203. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, file 674/25-2-021, A. Duhaime to F. M.
Frey, 4 December 1968. [SMD-007771]
204. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, file 611/23-26-021, Duck Lake, “Listed
December 31, 1968, omitted March 31, 69 return,” 31 March 1969. [SMD-007632]
205. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, 985/25-2, part 5, 1971–1973, V198485/333, box 3 [500797], FA 10-144, NAC Burnaby/GRB, J. Fitzgerald to F. Thomas, 3 December
1971; [LEJ-007725-0001] J. Fitzgerald to D. Fraser, 16 December 1971. [LEJ-007725-0000]
206. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/6-1461, volume 3, E. Weigeldt to M. Rehaluk, 24 January 1975. [CJC-002016]
207. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 487/18-2, volume 1, [name redacted] to Department of Indian Affairs, 13 January 1970. [RCO-000243]
208. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, series B-3-e-xv, volume 12025, file 487/23-26014, part 3, “Residence/Group Home Enrolment Report, Cecilia Jeffrey Student Residence,” 31March 1976. [CJC-001539-0001]

Notes • 709

Discipline: 1940–2000
1. TRC, NRA, DIAND, HQ, file 1/25-20-1, volume 1, 10/65–03/69, W. C. Thomas to L. Jampolsky,
22 December 1965. [IRC-041367]
2. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 1/25-20-1, volume 1, 10/1965–03/1969, Russell Moses, 1966.
[AEMR-011142A]
3. TRC, AVS, Edmund Metatawabin, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Fort Albany, Ontario, 28 January 2013, Statement Number: SP098.
4. TRC, AVS, Flora Moore, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,Montreal, Québec, 24 April 2013, Statement Number: 2011-3435.
5. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 3, Frank Edwards to The Secretary, Indian Affairs Branch, 13 June 1930 [This letter appears to be misdated, proper date 1940]; [CJC-000650] E. W. Byers to R. A. Hoey, 14 June 1940. [CJC-000649]
6. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 3, R. A. Hoey to
H. W. Snell, 3 September 1937. [TAY-003122]
7. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6355, file 757-1, part 2, 1928–1948,
Bernard F. Neary to George Dorey, 6 February 1947. [IRC-048200]
8. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6422, file 869-1, part 3, Cecil Perkins
to Indian Commissioner, Vancouver, 20 June [1940]. [IRC-041349]
9. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6422, file 869-1, part 3, “Re: Joseph
Hans: Pupil of this school and Ray Carter, Farm Instructor,” 24 June 1940. [IRC-041351-0002]
10. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6422, file 869-1, part 3, “Statement by
Mr. R. H. Carter, Farm Instructor, Coqualeetza Indian Residential School.” [IRC-041351-0003]
11. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6422, file 869-1, part 3, Gerald H.
Barry to D. M. McKay, 24 June 1940. [IRC-041351-0000]
12. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10412, Shannon Box 39, part B,
1940–1941, “Edmonton Indian Agency, Report on Investigation Held at Youville Residential
School.” [IRC-041324]
13. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 10412, Shannon Box 39, part B,
1940–1941, Philip Phelan to G. C. Laight, 8 February 1941. [IRC-041323]
14. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 3, Affidavit ofJessie Seneca, 25 May 1943. [IRC-041076]
15. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 3, Affidavit ofJessie Seneca, 25 May 1943. [IRC-041076]
16. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 3, Affidavit ofAnnie Waddilove, 7 June 1943. [IRC-041079]
17. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 3, Affidavit ofCharlotte French, 8 June 1943. [IRC-041081]
18. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 3, Affidavit ofJessie Seneca, 25 May 1943; [IRC-041076] Affidavit of Annie Waddilove, 7 June 1943. [IRC041079]
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 3, “Resolution
No. 1 of the Chippewas of the Thames,” 24 June 1943. [IRC-041085]
20. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6205, file 468-1, part 3, R. W. MacDonald to Indian Affairs, 12 January 1944. [MER-000519]
21. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. 92.164C, box 33,
file 2, Personnel files for Principals J. F. Woodsworth and O. B. Strapp. [UCA-080521]

710 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
22. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6259, file 576-10, part 17, John
Dowan to Indian Affairs, 12 September 1950. [BRS-000944]
23. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, Acc. W84-85/482, box 006, file 11-5-20,
volume 2, “Brandon Indian Residential School List Pupils Home for Vacation Who Returnedfor 1950–51 Term”; [BRS-004374-0001] Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. W84-85/482,
box 005, file 11-5-14, volume 1a, O. B. Strapp to J. Rayson, 9 June 1951. [The name is given in
the records alternatively as Evan, Avin, and Avon.] [BRS-004319]
24. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/23-5-056, volume 1, C. A. F. Clark to Superintendent of Education,
10 October 1949. [BRS-000556]
25. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6259, file 576-10, part 15, O. B. Strapp
to Philip Phelan, 15 September 1945. [BRS-000278]
26. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6259, file 576-10, part 15, T. C. Douglas to J. A. Glen, 28 September 1946. [BRS-000292-0001]
27. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6259, file 576-10, part 16, T. C. Douglas to J. A. Glen, 11 December 1946. [BRS-001203-0001]
28. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 4, J. P. B. Ostrander to Indian Affairs, 2 December 1946. [BRS-000523]
29. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 4, A. G. Hamilton to Indian Affairs, 11 January 1947; [BRS-000526] RG10, volume 6259, file 576-10, part 16,
Bernard Neary to A. G. Hamilton, 7 January 1947. [BRS-001205]
30. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 4, T. C. Douglas
to J. A. Glen, 11 January 1947. [BRS-000527-0001]
31. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 4, A. G. Hamilton to Indian Affairs, 11 January 1947. [BRS-000526]
32. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6256, file 576-2, 1, “Indian Residential School Quarterly Return,” Brandon, Manitoba, Industrial School, Quarter Ended March
31, 1947, 7. [BRS-000096]
33. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG22, volume 1206, file 673/1-1, part 1, T. C. Douglas to J. A. Glen, 14 October 1947. [MRS-003525]
34. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6259, file 576-10, part 16, George
Dorey to B. F. Neary, 27 December 1946. [BRS-000301]
35. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 3, R. S. Davis to
Indian Affairs, 13 February 1947. [GDC-010362-0001]
36. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, M. Christianson to Indian Affairs Branch, Department of Mines and Resources, 9 March 1943. [IRC041074]
37. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, W. J. D. Kerley
to M. Christianson, 6 March 1943. [IRC-041073]
38. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, M. Christianson to W. J. D. Kerley, 13 March 1943. [IRC-041072]
39. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 3, G. W. Dodds
to T. A. Crerar, undated. [IRC-048098-0003]
40. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6187, file 461-1, part 3, R. A. Hoey to
A. G. Hamilton, 20 March 1944; [IRC-048098-0000] A. G. Hamilton to Indian Affairs Branch, 4April 1944. [IRC-048100-0001]

Notes • 711
41. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/25-1,
volume 1, G. W. Dodds to G. Diefenbaker, undated. [IRC-041262]
42. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6304, file 651-10, part 3, J. Lemire toW. J. D. Kerley, 26 November 1945. [MRS-003568]
43. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6304, file 651-10, part 3, Alex Peepeech, 13 November 1945. [MRS-003567]
44. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6304, file 651-10, part 3, W. J. D. Kerley to Indian Affairs, 30 November 1945. [MRS-003569]
45. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 772/251-001, volume 1, 05/37–12/72, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, 3 October 1944, R. J.
Wall. [IRC-047127]
46. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 9148, file 309-11 ACE, J. Bryce to J. P.
B. Ostrander, 19 October 1945. [PAR-003393]
47. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6380, file 769-1, part 1, J. M. Morris to
Hoey, 6 March 1946. [IRC-040067]
48. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 4, 1937–1947, Loretta, 9September 1947. [IRC-048090-0002]
49. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 875-1, part 4, volume 6426, 1937–1947, S. J. Wickens
to Indian Agent, Alert Bay, 27 September 1947. [MIK-002782-0003]
50. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 4, 1937–1947, F. Earl
Anfield to D. M. MacKay, 29 September 1947. [IRC-048090-0000]
51. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 4, 1937–1947, S. J.
Wickens to Indian Agent, 24 September 1947. [IRC-048090-0001]
52. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 4, M. S. Todd to
Indian Commissioner, British Columbia, 3 October 1947. [MIK-002271]
53. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6426, file 875-1, part 4, J. Coleman toIndian Commissioner for British Columbia, 14 October 1947, 7. [MIK-002279-0002]
54. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6358, file 757-10, part 2, 1943–1952,“Re; – Complaint – School. Rosie Wesley, age 14 years,” 7 November 1946, Florence Hodgson
to J. N. R. Iredale, 8 November 1946. [IRC-041316-0003]
55. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. 83.050C, box 110,
file 21, Morley IRS – Correspondence 1940–1947/UCC docs, Toronto, G. H. Gooderham toIndian Affairs Branch, Department of Mines and Resources, 29 January 1947. [UCA-081594]
56. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. 83.050C, box 110,
file 21, Morley IRS – Correspondence 1940–1947/UCC docs, Toronto, E. J. Staley to George
Dorey, 31 January 1947. [UCA-081593]
57. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6355, file 757-1, part 2, Bernard F.
Neary for Hoey, 5 February 1947. [IRC-041116]
58. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6355, file 757-1, part 2, 1928–1948,
Bernard F. Neary to George Dorey, 6 February 1947. [IRC-048200]
59. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. 83.050C, box 110,
file 21, Morley IRS – Correspondence 1940–1947/UCC docs, Toronto, George Dorey to G. R.
Inglis, 10 February 1947. [UCA-081599]
60. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6355, file 757-1, part 2, 1928–1948,
Bernard F. Neary to George Dorey, 6 February 1947. [IRC-048200]

712 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
61. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6355, file 757-1, part 2, G. Roy Inglis
to George Dorey, 13 February 1947. [IRC-048224]
62. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. 83.050C, box 27,
file 464, Morley IRS – Correspondence 1946–47/UCC docs, Toronto, “Memo. Re Morley Indian Residential School, &c.,” George Dorey, 24 March 1947. [UCA-081605]
63. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 1, file 772/3-6, 1940–1954, “Copy of Minutes, Council Meeting of the Stoney Council Members,” 25 November 1947. [IRC-048121]
64. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 772/3-6, volume 1, 1940–1954, “Copy of theCouncil Meeting Minutes of the Stoney Band of Indians,” 27 October 1948. [IRC-048120]
65. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 672/1-13016, volume 1, C. A. F. Clark to A. J. W. Scrase, 20 June 1949. [IRC-041371]
66. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, 103/6-1-764, volume 1, 09/44–12/54, C.
A. F. Clark to Superintendent of Education, 9 November 1949. [IRC-048180]
67. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6275, file 583-10, part 2, Joseph Jones
to A. G. Hamilton, 31 January 1949. [PLP-004354]
68. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6275, file 583-10, part 2, Dr. John W.
Kettlewell to Mr. Hamilton, 3 February 1949. [PLP-004356-0001]
69. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6275, file 583-10, part 2, A. G. Hamilton to Indian Affairs, 1 February 1949. [PLP-004355]
70. INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1-067, volume
1, “Statement of Lillian Daniels, Swan Lake Band,” 4 March 1949. [IRC-041137]
71. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1067, volume 1, Statement of Pearl Woods. [PLP-000030-0008]
72. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1067, volume 1, Statement of Ella Bell, Long Plain Sioux, 4 March 1949. [IRC-041138]
73. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1067, volume 1, Joseph Jones to A. G. Hamilton, 28 February 1949. [IRC-041147]
74. TRC, NRA, INAC, Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/125-1067, volume 1, Statement of Mrs. Ross, Matron, 4 March 1949. [IRC-041126]
75. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6275, file 583-10, part 2, A. G. Hamilton, “Truancy – Portage school, Jan. 29, 1949.” [PLP-004355]
76. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1067, volume 1, Joseph Jones to A. G. Hamilton, 28 February 1949. [IRC-041147]
77. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 501/25-1-067, volume 1, Bernard F. Neary to A. G. Hamilton, 21 February 1949. [AEMR-016158]
78. TRC, NRA, DIAND, Residential Schools Records Office, file 501/25-1-067, volume 1, Joseph
Jones to A. G. Hamilton, 28 February 1949. [IRC-041147]
79. TRC, NRA, DIAND, Residential Schools Records Office, file 501/25-1-067, volume 1, Joseph
Jones to A. G. Hamilton, 28 February 1949. [IRC-041146]
80. TRC, NRA, DIAND, Residential Schools Record Office, file 501/25-1-067, volume 1, Statementof Mr. Roxborough, Boys’ Supervisor, 4 March 1949; [PLP-000030-0004] Statement of Miss
Hayward, 4 March 1949. [PLP-000030-0005]
81. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1067, volume 1, R. S. Davis to D. M. McKay, 4 March 1949. [PLP-000030-0001]
82. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1067, volume 1, R. S. Davis to D. M. MacKay, 7 March 1949. [PLP-000031]

Notes • 713
83. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6307, file 653-1, part 2, Reverend
George Dorey to Colonel B. F. Neary, 26 May 1949. [FHR-000352]
84. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 772/25-1002, volume 1, 1950–1965, G. H. Gooderham to E. S. W. Cole, 18 February 1950. [IRC-041162]
85. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 772/25-1002, volume 1, 1950–1965, E. S. W. Cole to B. F. Neary, 21 February 1950. [IRC-041163]
86. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 772/25-1002, volume 1, 1950–1965, W. P. B. Pugh to G. H. Gooderham, 1 March 1950. [IRC-041168]
87. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 956/25-1, volume 1, 11/50–02/62, Lila Whitehead to R. F. Davey, 18 June 1952. [IRC-049037]
88. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 956/25-1,
volume1, 11/50–02/62, R. F. Davey to F. A. McLellan, 24 June 1952. [IRC-049017]
89. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSCC-GS 75-103, series
2-15, box 29, file 10, Anglican Document No. 52.63, Victoria Ketcheson and Patricia Watson,
29 November 1952. [PAR-001992]
90. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSCC-GS 75-103, series
2-15, box 29, file 10, A. J. Scrase to H. G. Cook, 3 December 1952. [ACC-000990-0000]
91. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSCC-GS 75-103, series
2-15, box 29, file 10, Unsigned letter, 3 December 1952. [ACC-000990-0001]
92. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC, MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2-15, box 29, file 10, H. G. C. to Charles Fielding, 8 December 1952. [ACC-084476]
93. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8542, file 51/25-1, part 2, Philip Phelan, 14 April 1953. [FAR-000067]
94. TRC, NRA, Document location unknown, document file location unknown, Indian Affairs
Field Manual, 1958, section 17.12, page 203 of 330, portable document file. [AEMR-011711]
95. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 1/25-1-52, volume 1, “Regulations with respect to teaching, education, inspection, and discipline for
Indian Residential Schools, Made and Established by the Superintendent General of IndianAffairs Pursuant to Paragraph (a) of Section 114 of the Indian Act,” undated; [PAR-0012030001] H. M. Jones to Deputy Minister, 20 January 1953. [PAR-001203-0000]
96. Axelrod, “No Longer a ‘Last Resort,’” 267.
97. Axelrod, “No Longer a ‘Last Resort,’” 267.
98. Axelrod, “No Longer a ‘Last Resort,’” 266.
99. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 205/25-1, volume II, 06/48–12/55, “Calgary School
Board, Report on Corporal Punishment in Calgary Schools,” 6 December 1951. [IRC-0414000001]
100. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1064, volume 1, G. H. Marcoux to Mr. Davis, 21 October 1953; [IRC-041191] George Spencer to
DIAND, 29 September 1953. [BIR-000434-0001]
101. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1064, volume 1, G. H. Marcoux to Mr. Davis, 21 October 1953. [IRC-041191]
102. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1064, volume 1, R. F. Davey to D. A. H. Neild, 19 November 1953. [IRC-041193]
103. TRC, NRA, DIAND, Residential Schools Record Office, file 501/25-1-064, volume 1, R. F. Davey to George B. Spencer, J. P., 6 October 1953. [IRC-041188]

714 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
104. TRC, NRA, DIAND D file 801/25-9, volume 1, 1955–1956, British Columbia Region, Indian
Residential School Principals’ Conference, 24 November 1955. [100.00633]
105. TRC, NRA, Document location to be determined, Hance/Aleck/Michell – Anglican Church of
Canada and Anglican Church of Cariboo List of Documents, Helen Clafton to Bishop Dean, 5March 1957. [ANG-063238]
106. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 956/1-13, volume 1, 01/51–05/67, “Complaints Regarding St. George’s Residential School at Lytton, B.C.,”
Betty-Marie Barber, 13 December 1957. [IRC-041212]
107. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, (8758), FA 10-25, file 772/25-1-010, 1949–
1961, “Statements given to Mr. Wild on February 28, 1951, re Morley Indian Residential
School.” [IRC-048228-0001]
108. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, (8758), FA 10-25, file 772/25-1-010, 1949–
1961, “Meeting of the Stony Parents and Councillors. Re: Complaints about Residential
School—7 March 1951.” [IRC-048228-0002]
109. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, [1858], FA 10-25, file 772/25-1-010, 1949–
1961, G. H. Gooderham to Mackay, 12 March 1951. [IRC-048089]
110. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, (8758), FA 10-25, file 772/25-1-010, 1949–
1961, G. Dorey to P. Phelan, 18 April 1951. [IRC-048231]
111. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Ottawa, 772/6-1-010 part 2, volume 8672, 1949–1953, NAC,
G. H. Gooderham to Superintendent of Education, Indian Affairs Branch, 5 August 1953.
[MOR-005873]
112. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8757, file 709/25-1-001, part 2, R. F.
Davey to M. C. Macdonald, 7 September 1955. [EDM-000200]
113. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7194, file 511/25-1-015, R. F. Davey to
R. D. Ragan, 20 February 1957. [IRC-041108]
114. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7194, file 511/25-1-015, R. D. Ragan
to R. F. Davey, 20 March 1957. [BRS-000987]
115. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, [8758], FA 10-25, file 772/25-1-010, 1949–
1961, W. A. Betts to R. F. Battle, 15 February 1956. [IRC-048094]
116. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, [8758], FA 10-25, file 772/25-1-010, 1949–
1961, E. A. Robertson for R. F. Battle to W. A. Betts, 2 March 1956. [IRC-048095]
117. TRC, NRA, INAC, file 494/18-28, volume 1, G. Swartman to Indian Affairs Branch, 12 May
1955. [PLK-002025]
118. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/25-1014, locator #63-7, 10 October 1956, Grace Peterson. [IRC-041201]
119. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 487/25-1-014, #63-7, Residential Schools Record Office, R. F. Daveyto I. B. Robson, 19 October 1956; [IRC-041204] I. B. Robson to R. F. Davey, 25 October 1956.
[IRC-041205]
120. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/25-1018, volume 2, locator 11-10, R. F. Davey to H. B. Rodine, 4 July 1957. [IRC-040040]
121. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/25-1018, volume 2, locator 11-10, H. B. Rodine to R. F. Davey, 12 July 1957. [IRC-040041]
122. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, file 118/3-3-8, part 1, 1958–66, 10416, Mr. andMrs. Matthew Houle, 14 January 1959. [IRC-048104]
123. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, file 118/3-3-8, part 1, 1958–66, 10416, S. C.
Knapp to Regional Supervisor, 12 January 1959. [IRC-048103-0000]

Notes • 715
124. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6445, file 881-10, part 5, “Lejac Indian
Residential School General Report,” 31 March 1940. [LEJ-002066]
125. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, FA 10-17, volume 6445, file 881-10, part 8,
1946–1949, NAC – Ottawa, B. F. Neary to J. Mulvihill, 5 December 1947. [LEJ-008022]
126. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 4, Roy B. Hunterto R. T. Chapin, 23 March 1942; [BRS-000474-0002] Royal Canadian Mounted Police report, 11
March 1942. [BRS-000463-0001]
127. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 4, A. G. Hamilton to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 27 March 1942. [BRS-000470]
128. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 4, Harold McGill
to Deputy Minister, 2 April 1942. [BRS-000474-0000]
129. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 4, A. J. Doucet to
Colonel Neary, 11 June 1948. [BRS-000540]
130. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 4, “Extract fromletter from Regional Supervisor Davis, dated June 28, 1948, Original on file 77-133,” 28 June
1948. [BRS-000541]
131. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/23-5065, volume 1, C. A. F. Clark to Superintendent of Education, 10 October 1949. [BRS-000556]
132. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 2-15, box
24, Superintendent, “Superintendent’s Conversations with Principal Orman re: Sioux Lookout
School, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, December 2, 1961,” 2 December 1961. [PLK-000966]
133. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 959/1-13,
05/1951–05/1977, volume 1, John C. Lawrance, undated 1963. [IRC-041250]
134. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 959/1-13,
05/1951–05/1977, volume 1, J. V. Boys to R. F. Davey, 17 January 1964. [IRC-041235]
135. TRC, NRA, Diocese of British Columbia Archives, Anglican Church of Canada, Victoria, BC,
file 63-11-7-18, T. E. Jones to H. E. Sexton, 20 April 1964. [GDC-064198]
136. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 321/25-1352, Wallace Regis to Mr. Jolicoeur, 10 April 1961. [SIR-000050-0001]
137. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 321/25-1352, A. R. Jolicoeur to Léo Laurin, 18 April 1961. [SIR-000050-0000]
138. Adams, “The Indians.”
139. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8799, file 487/25-13-014, part 1, G. S.
Lapp to Head of the Secretariat, 9 August 1965. [CJC-000011-0000]
140. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/25-1014, control #63-7, H. B. Rodine to P. Deziel, 30 November 1965. [CJC-000584]
141. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/25-1014, Giollo Kelly to R. F. Davey, 7 June 1966. [CJC-000309]
142. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 117/24-4,
K. Kerr to Regional Supervisor, 27 May 1995. [IRC-041240]
143. LeBeuf, Role of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 458.
144. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, RG10, Acc. E-1996-97/415, file 25-1,
box 31/56, J. G. McGilp to Superintendent, 19 June 1965. [IRC-041241]
145. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, RG10, Acc. E-1996-97/415, file 25-1,
box 31/56, K. Kerr to Regional Supervisor, 28 June 1965. [IRC-041243]

716 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
146. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 774/25-1016, volume 2, 1950–1966, Juliette Pomerleau to Chief Superintendent of Education, Education Division, Indian Affairs, 24 May 1966. [IRC-041247]
147. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 774/25-1016, volume 2, 1950–1966, Mildred Roasting. [IRC-041248]
148. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 774/25-1016, volume 2, 1950–1966, Arlene Simon. [IRC-041249]
149. TRC, CAR, Paul Ant. Hudon to Georges-Marie Latour, 30 July 1966. [10a-c900151-d0019-002]
150. TRC, NRA, Federal Records Centre – National Capital Region, file DM6-2-3, volume 5, locator
N346-2, Jacqueline Bisson to Deputy Minister, 18 September 1967. [120.07837]
151. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, St George’s
IRS, D.C. 2C11, Lytton St. George’s Sch. #88.44, section 205, “All Saints Residential School Staff
Manual,” 1967. [PAR-000233]
152. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
41, Warner, Albert, 1967, L. C. Bishop to Reverend Goater, 21 April 1967. [IRC-044060]
153. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
41, Warner, Albert, 1967, Employment record for Albert Warner. [IRC-044061]
154. Axelrod, “No Longer a ‘Last Resort,’” 273.
155. Axelrod, “No Longer a ‘Last Resort,’” 262, 274, 280.
156. Repeal 43 Committee, “School Corporal Punishment,” http://www.repeal43.org/school-corporal-punishment/ (accessed 16 January 2014); Canadian Foundation for Children, Youthand the Law v. Canada (Attorney General), 2004 CanLII 4 (SCC), 103–104.
157. TRC, NRA, St. Paul’s Archives, series 4, box 10, file 1, “Discipline and Our Children, Father
Allan Noonan, Principal, Kamloops Residential School,” no date. [OMI-034228] Although the
speech is undated, Noonan was principal of the Kamloops school from 1964 to 1968, when
the school was turned into a residence. INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, 963/16-1, volume 3, Audit Reports – Kamloops Student Residence, 1960–1970, HQ-CR, S. W. Kaiser for R.
F. Davey to A. Noonan, 1 September 1964; [KAM-004077] “An Era Is Coming to an End at Red
Brick Indian School,” Vancouver Province, 13 May 1968. [OKM-000773]
158. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, volume 13, file 701/25-1, W. C. Thomas to Principals
and District Superintendents of Education, Alberta Region, 31 May 1971. [IRC-046009]
159. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 901/25-1,
volume 13, Indian Education – British Columbia Regional Office, 20/05/1973–22/04/1974,
locator N-337-415, V. A. LaPlante to James McCallum, 24 September 1973. [IRC-041267]
160. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 372/2513-024, volume 1, C. T. Blouin and L. Poulin, to A. R. Jolicoeur, 13 October 1970. [LTR-0011780001]
161. Gingerich and Hostetler, “Northern Light Gospel Mission Conference (NLGMC),” http://
gameo.org/index.php?title=Northern_Light_Gospel_Mission_Conference_(NLGMC)&oldid=76467 (accessed 3 December 2013).
162. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, “Native Mission School Shut Down over Discipline
Controversy,” by Margaret Loewen Reimer, Mennonite Reporter, volume 19, number 22, 13
November 1989. [PHD-000143]
163. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, “Native Groups Clash over Poplar Hill School,” byMargaret Loewen Reimer, Mennonite Reporter, volume 20, number 1, 8 January 1990. [PHD000144]

Notes • 717
164. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, “Mennonite Workers Protest Mission’s Role in
Native School Controversy,” by Margaret Loewen Reimer, Mennonite Reporter, volume 20,
number 5, 5 March 1990. [PHD-000145]
165. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, “Native students and parents have high regard forschool,” Letter to Editor, Doris Shantz and eleven others, Mennonite Reporter, volume 20,
number 8, 16 April 1990. [PHD-000146]
166. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, “Northern Light and MCC Draft Joint Statement on
Native School,” by Margaret Loewen Reimer, Mennonite Reporter, volume 20, number 10, 14
May 1990. [PHD-000148]
167. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11447, file 494/25-2, part 3, C.
Schnupp to S. W. Thordarson, 5 January 1965. [PHD-000337]
168. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 81/25-1(Ctrl #240-13), Richard Morris to Chiefs, Petahbun Area, 9 February 1979. [NCA-001721]
169. “Student Protesters Wanted Free Time,” Winnipeg Free Press, March 13, 1987.
170. “Student, 19 Admits Guilt in School Brawl,” Toronto Star, May 29, 1987.
171. Fontaine v. Canada (Attorney General), 2011 CanLII 4938 (ON SC), 6.
172. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, “Police Lay No charges in Poplar Hill Investigation,”
Mennonite Reporter, volume 21, number 4, 18 February 1991. [PHD-000173]
173. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files,
box 131, Employee File – [name redacted] “Record of Discussion Between Mr. G. Worth and[name redacted],” 3 June 1970. [IRC-047140]
174. TRC, NRA, Document location unknown, GRS Files, box 128, file 10, W. P. Starr to [nameredacted], 11 March 1975. [IRC-047146]
175. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
128, file 10, 23 February 1977. [IRC-047143]
176. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
128, Employee File – [name redacted], W. P. Starr to [name redacted], 25 February 1977. [IRC047144-0001]
177. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
127, Employee File – [name redacted], W. P. Starr to [name redacted], 17 May 1978. [IRC047149-0001]
178. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
9A, file 9, Miscellaneous Correspondence, 59-85, [name redacted], Department Head Report,
10 April 1984. [IRC-047156]
179. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
L13, Students Individuals, 86, Anthony Whitehead, Duane Chatsis, 23 May 1986. [IRC-047159]
180. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
L13, Advisory Board Reports, 84-85, Extract from Advisory Board Reports, Jan 1984–June 1985.
[IRC-047071]
181. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
140, Miscellaneous 1968–1990, “A few items for your child care meeting,” 4 November 1986.
[IRC-047161]
182. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
L1., A. Bemister to P. Lizee, 30 June 1987. [IRC-047035]
183. A. (M.) v. Canada (Attorney General), 2001 CanLII 504 (SK QB); A. (M.) v. Canada (Attorney
General), 2003 CanLII 002 (SK CA).

718 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
184. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
19, Students 87-88, “Student incident report,” [name redacted], 17 September 1987. [IRC047165]
185. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
19, Students 87-88, “Student incident report,” R. J. Pratt, 1 December 1987. [IRC-047167]
186. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
19, file 13, “Student incident report,” Ron Pratt, 9 December 1987. [IRC-047175-0000]
187. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
19, Students 87-88, “Student Incident Report,” Thomas W. Pratt, 14 June 1988. [IRC-047177]
188. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
L27A, file 5, “Student Incident Report,” 6 September 1988. [IRC-047178]
189. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
L2, Students, Gerry Worth to Garth/Elaine Geddes, 19 September 1988. [IRC-047180-0000]
190. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
R2, volume 1, Ronald J. Pratt and Herman Blind to [name redacted], 14 March 1991. [IRC047201]
191. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
R2, [name redacted], Ronald J. Pratt and Herman Blind to [name redacted], 8 December 1993.
[IRC-047202-0002]

Abuse: 1940–2000
1. Phil Fontaine, interview by Barbara Frum, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, The Journal,
30 October 1990, http://archives.cbc.ca/society/education/clips/11177/.
2. Schedule D: Independent Assessment Process (IAP) for Continuing Indian Residential School
Abuse Claims, www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/schedule_d-iap.pdf.
3. Indian Residential Schools Adjudication Secretariat, Adjudication Secretariat Statistics, from
September 19, 2007, to January 31, 2015, http://iap-pei.ca/information/stats-eng.php (accessed 20 February 2015).
4. Letter, Julian N. Falconer to Paul Vickery and Catherine Coughlan, 9 January 2014. (The letteris misdated 9 January 2013.)
5. TRC, NRA, INAC – Archival Unit – Ottawa, file 772/3-1, volume 2, 10/11–05/66, C. Pant.
Schmidt to Harold McGill, 17 August 1944; [IRC-047003] T. R. L. MacInnes to Director, IndianAffairs, 25 August 1944. [IRC-047005]
6. Sarah Elizabeth Brown, “Ex-residential School Student Files Suit,” Whitehorse Star, 21 April
2003; Elizabeth Asp, Jackie McLaren, Jim Sheldon, Michelle Tochacek, Ruby Van Bibber,“Bishop’s comments invalidated any apology,” Letter to the Editor, Whitehorse Star, 11 August
1999.
7. “Former Students File Suit over Sexual, Physical Abuse,” Saskatoon StarPhoenix, 26 November 1996; Caroline Murray, “Abuse Victims Recall Atrocities,” Whitehorse Daily Star, 25 November 1996; Shea, Institutional Child Abuse, 2. R. v. Maczynski, 1997 CanLII 2491 (BC CA);
Lawson, “Yukon and Northwest Territories,” 245.
8. “Man Accused of Child Sex Abuse Dies in Jail,” Vancouver Sun, 2 June 1995; LeBeuf, Role of the
RCMP, 456.

Notes • 719
9. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 645-1, part 3, R. S. Davis,
excerpt from Quarterly Report Ending March 1945, on Touchwood Agency. [IRC-047128]
10. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, Western Arctic Division, Division file number 628-626-1, code 0559, re:Martin Houston, 29 August 1962. [AANDC-234684]
11. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
1A, file 22, Head Teacher [Illegible] to My Lord Bishop, 10 January 1956. [IRC-040120]
12. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
1A, file 22, Head Teacher [Illegible] to My Lord Bishop, 10 January 1956. [IRC-040120]
13. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 709/25-1-001, 1951–1961, part 2, L. C. Hunter to R.
F. Davey, 30 November 1960. [IRC-040054]
14. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. 8[Illegible].050C,
box 112, file 17, Edmonton IRS – Correspondence, 1958–60/UCC Docs Toronto, Dwight Powell to E. E. M. Joblin, 25 November 1960. [UCA-080215] For Joblin’s position with the United
Church, see: Trent University Library, Reverend Elgie E. M. Joblin fonds, http://www.trentu.
ca/library/archives/95-019.htm (accessed 13 November 2013).
15. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
15A, file 28, J. J. Johnstone to F. C. Jackson, 28 September 1961. [IRC-040043]
16. F. S. M. v. Clarke, 1999 CanLII 9405 (BC SC).
17. R. v. Frappier, [1990] YJ No. 163 (Territorial Court) (Frappier).
18. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, R. F. Davey to G. K.
Gooderham, 21 January 1964. [AANDC-694911]
19. TRC, ASAGR, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Regina vs. Amyot, Keavin Clark, Section 148
Criminal Code x 2 –Indecent Assault, Section 149 Criminal Code x 2 – Gross Indecency, nodate, unpaginated, page 16 of 189-page portable document file. [RCMP-564573]
20. TRC, NRA, No document location or source, E. Morriset to R. B. Kohls, 28 October 1974.
[OBG-002922]
21. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Ben Sivertz to Administrator of the Mackenzie, Fort Smith, NWT, 24 August 1962. [AANDC-234693]
22. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files,
box 3A, Pupils Health and Welfare, 54–60, Albert Southard to Dr. Perth and Miss Meade, 31
January 1956. [IRC-047233]
23. For assessment of abused students, see: TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern
Development Canada, W. G. Fraser to the Director of the Northern Administration, Branch,
Department of Northern Affairs and Nat. Resources, 10 October 1962. [AANDC-264032]
24. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 117/24-4, K. Kerr to Regional Supervisor, Saskatchewan, 27 May 1965. [SPR-000721]
25. Glenn Taylor, “Arrest in Grollier Hall Sex Case: Former Boys’ Supervisor Faces 32 Counts of
Sexual Assault on His Student,” Northern News Services, 16 June 1997, http://www.nnsl.com/
frames/newspapers/1997-06/jun16_97sex.html; Justice J. Vertes, “In the Supreme Court of
the Northwest Territories, Between Her Majesty the Queen and Paul Leroux,” 10 August 1998.
26. Dawn Ostrem, “Back to Court: Paul Leroux Challenges Convictions, Sentence,” Northern News
Services, 26 June 2000, http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/2000-06/jun26_00back.
html; “Paul Leroux Gets 3 Years for Residential School Abuse,” CBC News, 12 December 2013,
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/paul-leroux-gets-3-years-for-residential-schoolabuse-1.2461629.

720 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
27. For example, see: F. S. M. v. Clarke, 1999 CanLII 9405 (BC SC); King, School at Mopass, 56–57.
28. “Ex-residential School Worker Convicted of Abusing Boys,” CBC News, 5 November 2013,
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/ex-residential-school-worker-convicted-of-abusing-boys-1.2415810.
29. Andrew Raven, “Grollier Hall Supervisor Sentenced,” Northern News Services, 20 August 2004,
http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/2004-08/aug20_04crt.html.
30. E. B. v. Order of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in the Province of British Columbia, http://
www.scc-csc.gc.ca/case-dossier/info/sum-som-eng.aspx?cas=29890 (accessed 12 November2013); E. B. v. Order of Oblates, 2001 BCSC 1783; TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “Notes on visits to West Coast Missions … February–April/51.” [BVT-001249]
31. R. v. Frappier, [1990] YJ No. 163 (Territorial Court) (Frappier).
32. R. v. Plint, [1995] B.C.J. No. 3060 (BCSC); “Former Employee of Residential School Jailed for
Sex Abuses,” Victoria Times Colonist, 24 January 2004.
33. Frank et al., “Schools of Shame.”
34. F. S. M. v. Clarke, 1999 CanLII 9405 (BC SC).
35. Her Majesty the Queen and Harold Daniel McIntee, Reasons for Judgment, Judge C. C. Marnett, Provincial Court of British Columbia, 1 June 1989. [BKM-000204]
36. “Ex-residential School Worker Convicted of Abusing Boys,” CBC News, 5 November 2013,
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/ex-residential-school-worker-convicted-of-abusing-boys-1.2415810.
37. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 3, R. S. Davis to
Indian Affairs, 13 February 1947. [GDC-010362-0001]
38. It is clear that many of the people who have been convicted of abusing residential school
students were abused in their youth. Derek Clarke had been given up for adoption at the ageof two, and was raised in orphanages where he had been the victim of sexual assaults fromother boys. At his trial, Paul Leroux said he had been abused as a young man while he was amember of the Catholic choir in Granby, Québec. Keavin Amyot said he had been abused asa child. Martin Houston had been abused by older boys in a Manitoba reform school. George
Maczynski’s lawyer, Greg Nearing, told the court that Maczynski had spent much of his youth
in Soviet work camps in eastern Siberia. According to Nearing, “As a child he saw atrocities.
As a child soldier he was forced to kill. He is a victim of what he was charged with today.”
Although he was not abused, from the age of five, Bruce Haddock was raised in a boys’ schoolin Britain. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file
E4700-1, Student Residences – Litigation, 1988–1990, IRSRC – Historical Files, “Ex-school Official Jailed for Sex Attacks,” Gerry Warner, Vancouver Sun, 21 April 1988 [GRG-027030]; Dawn
Ostrem, “Back to Court: Paul Leroux Challenges Convictions, Sentence,” Northern News Services, 26 June 2000, http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/2000-06/jun26_00back.html;
Tonda MacCharles, “Crown Urges Long Jail Term for Social Worker Who Abused Inuit Boys,”
Ottawa Citizen, 25 July 1987; Royal Canadian Mounted Police files, SF 565 Martin HOUSTON(suspect), page 3 of statement to police by Martin Houston, no date, no location, page 71 of
117-portable document file; [AGCA-907781] Richard Gleeson, “Four Years for Sex Assault,”
Northern News Services, 8 August 1997, http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/1997-08/
aug8_97jail.html; Shea, Institutional Child Abuse, 9; Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Regina
vs. Haddock, Donald Bruce (R.T.C.C.), Native Indian Residential Schools Task Force, “E” Division Major Crime Section Statement of Donald Bruce Haddock, 10 October 2002, page 170 of
273-portable document file. [AGCA-564535]

Notes • 721
39. “Nun Forced Native Students to Eat Their Own Vomit,” Edmonton Journal, 25 June 1999.
40. For the case of R. v. Wesley, see: Shea, Institutional Child Abuse, 15.
41. Andrew Raven, “Grollier Hall Supervisor Sentenced,” Northern News Services, 20 August 2004,
http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/2004-08/aug20_04crt.html; “Former Employee
of Residential School Jailed for Sex Abuses,” Victoria Times Colonist, 24 January 2004; Gerry
Klein, “Priest Jailed for Sex Assaults,” Saskatoon StarPhoenix, 10 January 2004; R. v. Frappier,[1990] YJ No 163 (Territorial Court) (Frappier).
42. Harris, Unholy Orders, xxiii–xxv.
43. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2:15, box 25, file 15, H. G. Cook to all Principals, 13 July 1960. [ANG-083789]
44. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
13A, file 19, George Cook to Principals and Administrators, 17 April 1962. [GDC-005341]
45. TRC, NRA, National Archives of Canada, Acc. E1996-97/312, volume 2, file 672/25-1, R. F.
Davey to All School Superintendents, 7 May 1968. [120.07885]
46. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, volume 11500, file 901/1-13, part 1,
School Establishment, 1968–1972, FA 10-138, A. H. Friesen to All District School Superintendents, 1 June 1968. [120.07891]
47. TRC, NRA, INAC – Archival Unit – Ottawa, file 772/3-1, volume 2, 10/11–05/66, C. Pant.
Schmidt to Harold McGill, 17 August 1944; [IRC-047003] T. R. L. MacInnes to Director, IndianAffairs, 25 August 1944. [IRC-047005]
48. TRC, NRA, United Church Archives, Acc. 86.158C, box 1, file 3, Memorandum re Rev. Earl
Stotesbury and the Edmonton Residential School, 5 December 1960. [UCC-050079-0006]
49. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Alberta Justice, Clerk of the Provincial Court of Alberta, Conviction, 28 September 1960. [EDM-003354]
50. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8791, file 984/25-11, part 1, J. E. Inget
to Regional Office, Vancouver, Indian Affairs, 6 December 1960. [IRC-047238]
51. TRC, NRA, Edmonton IRS – Correspondence, 1960s/NAC Docs Vancouver, L. C. Hunter to F.
E. Anfield, no date. [UCA-080780]
52. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. [Illegible].050C,
box 112, file 1[Illegible], Edmonton IRS – Correspondence, 1958–60/UCC Docs Toronto,
Minutes of Meeting of the Indian School Committee of the Edmonton Presbytery held at St.
Stephen’s College on Thursday, October 27, 1960. [UCA-080212]
53. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 709/25-1-001, 1951–1961, part 2, L. C. Hunter to R.
F. Davey, 30 November 1960. [IRC-040054]
54. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. 8[Illegible].050C,
box 112, file 17, Edmonton IRS – Correspondence, 1958–60/UCC Docs Toronto, Dwight Powell to E. E. M. Joblin, 25 November 1960. [UCA-080215] For Joblin’s position with the United
Church, see: Trent University Library, Reverend Elgie E. M. Joblin fonds, http://www.trentu.
ca/library/archives/95-019.htm (accessed 13 November 2013).
55. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. 8[Illegible].050C,
box 112, file 17, Edmonton IRS – Correspondence, 1958–60/UCC Docs Toronto, O. B. Strapp
to E. E. M. Joblin, 28 November 1960. [UCA-080225]
56. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, [Illegible], Edmonton IRS– Joblin Scrapbooks/UCC Docs Toronto. [UCA-080256-0005]
57. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 709/25-1-001, part 2, 1951–1961, A. E. Caldwell
to Bob, 30 January 1961. [IRC-047017]

722 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
58. TRC, NRA, United Church Archives, Ludford Personnel and Pension documents, Reverend
James C. Ludford, work experience. [UCA-080133]
59. TRC, NRA, United Church Archives, Ludford Personnel and Pension documents, Proof of
death certification, James Clarence Ludford, (Date of Death, 27 March 1990), 30 March 1990.
[UCA-080127-0001]
60. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, 901/25-1, volume 1, 10/50–1/66,
Reg., Lonnie George Young to Dear Mom and Dad, 8 January 1962. [EDM-002198]
61. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, /25-1, volume 1, 10/50–1/66,
Reg., L. C. Hunter to J. V. Boys, 29 January 1962. [EDM-002200]
62. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 772/25-1010, volume 2, G. Kent Gooderham to Assistant Director of Education, 10 May 1963. [IRC049052-0000]
63. Manitoba Regional Service Centre – LAC – Winnipeg, Crown Personnel File, Pooley, Robert
George, No. 05-51566 FRC Winnipeg, Robert Pooley to A. MacKinnon, 31 May 1963. [MOR006216-0001]
64. TRC, NRA, Manitoba Regional Service Centre – LAC – Winnipeg, Crown Personnel File, Pooley, Robert George, No. 05-51566 FRC Winnipeg, A. MacKinnon to Regional Superintendent of
Schools – Alberta, 12 June 1963. [MOR-006219-0001]
65. TRC, ASAGR, R. G. Pooley to R. F. Davey, 23 November 1963; [AANDC-261608] TRC, ASAGR,
M. Brodhead to Regional School Superintendent – Alberta, 3 January 1964; [AANDC-261599]“Jail Teacher for One Year,” Winnipeg Free Press, 26 September 1963.
66. TRC, ASAGR, R. F. Davey to G. K. Gooderham, 21 January 1964. [ AANDC-694911]
67. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. 83.050C, box
111, file 3, Morley IRS – Correspondence 1963/UCC Docs Toronto, Unsigned letter to Donald
Littlejohns, E. S. Reikie, C. D. Powell, 12 June 1963; [UCA-081465] Manitoba Regional Service
Centre – LAC – Winnipeg, Crown Personnel File, Pooley, Robert George, No. 05-51566 FRC
Winnipeg, L. C. Hunter to Assistant Director (Education), 13 June 1963; [MOR-006219-0000]
M. Brodhead to Regional School Superintendent – Alberta, 3 January 1964. [AANDC-261599]
68. TRC, ASAGR, M. Brodhead to W. Skuba, 16 January 1964; [AANDC-168449] M. Brodhead toHazel P. Larson, 22 June 1964. [AANDC-168440]
69. TRC, ASAGR, W. G. Schmidt, “Report of Superintendent of Schools: Teacher Mr. Robert Pooley,” 28 October 1964. [AANDC-694925]
70. TRC, ASAGR, R. G. Pooley to R. F. Davey, 17 December 1964; [AANDC-694926] TRC, ASAGR,
R. F. Davey to G. K. Gooderham, 28 December 1964; [AANDC-168437] TRC, NRA, Manitoba
Regional Service Centre – LAC – Winnipeg, Crown Personnel File, Pooley, Robert George, No.
05-51566 FRC Winnipeg, R. F. Davey to E. E. M. Joblin, 15 June 1964. [MOR-006220-0000]
71. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, 987/3-8, part 2, 02/1959–
10/1962, Reggie Paul, Clarence Joe, and Charles Craigen to W. S. Arneil, 15 February 1959.
[SLT-005428]
72. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Wm. Bernardo to L. K. Poupore,
11 March 1959. [SEC-001406]
73. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, L. K. Poupore to Father Bernardo, 19 March 1959. [SEC-000395]
74. TRC, NRA, INAC – BC Regional Records Office – Vancouver, 987/3-8-5 volume 1, 02/1959–
05/1971, CR-BC, J. N. Neville to A. V. Parminter, 2 March 1959. [SLT-004960-0002]

Notes • 723
75. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Canonical Visitation, 20–21 April
1962, Joseph Fitzgerald; INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa,
957/16-2, 05/57–10/70, volume 2 RCAP; [SEC-000860] E. Latham to J. B. Currier, 17 April 1967,
page 17 of 19-page portable document file. [MIS-002305-0001]
76. TRC, NRA, INAC – BC Regional Records Office – Vancouver, 987/3-8-5 volume 1, 02/1959–
05/1971, CR-BC, J. N. Neville to A. V. Parminter, 2 March 1959; [SLT-004960-0002] No document location, no document file source, Wm. Bernardo to L. K. Poupore, 11 March 1959.
[SEC-001406]
77. TRC, ASAGR, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, M. W. Pacholuk, Final Report of the Native
Indian Residential School Task Force, Project E-NIRS, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, nodate, 1, 11, 12, 26, 51, 52, 56, 57, 58, 62, 65; [RCMP-564517] Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council,
Indian Residential Schools.
78. R. v. Plint, [1995] B.C.J. No. 3060 (BCSC); “Former Employee of Residential School Jailed for
Sex Abuses,” Victoria Times Colonist, 24 January 2004.
79. Gerard Young, “Elderly Sex Offender Gains Parole,” Victoria Times Colonist, 21 August 2003.
80. “Former Employee of Residential School Jailed for Sex Abuses,” Victoria Times Colonist, 24
January 2004; United Church of Canada Archives, Residential School Archive Project, The
Children Remembered, Alberni Residential School, http://thechildrenremembered.ca/
schools-history/alberni/ (accessed 6 November 2013).
81. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2:15, box 23, file 9, Superintendent’s Visit to Alert Bay, January 20–22 inclusive 1952.
[ANG-083539]
82. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8803, file 958/25-13, part 2, Living
Quarters for Employees, Alberni School, 9 March 1959. [ABR-000275-0001]
83. Claudia Rowe, “Charges in B.C. Sex Abuse Case,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 15 November 2003,
http://www.poynter.org/archived/abuse-tracker/18350/charges-in-b-c-sex-abuse-case.
84. Royal Canadian Mounted Police News Release, “Native Indian Residential School Task Force,”
12 September 2007, provided to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission 18 November
2013.
85. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG55, R776-0-5, volume 22002, DIAND 1970, part2, TB #696386, Discharge of Employee Memorandum, Treasury Board to Indian Affairs andNorthern Development, 23 March 1970. [IRC-049050]
86. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 978/2, volume 1209, 05/1965–06/1971, NAC, V. A.
Stephens to H. B. Robinson, 29 May 1970. [ABR-094456]
87. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, [Name redacted] Crown Personnel File, A. W. Harding to [name redacted], 26 February 1973. [GRG-006512]
88. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, [Name redacted] Crown Personnel File, A. W. Harding to N. B. Chapple, 5 March 1973. [GRG-006513]
89. TRC, NRC, Headquarters, HQ 956/25-13, volume 3, Work and Education History of Derek
Clarke, undated document; [GRG-006131-0001] F. S. M. v. Clarke, 1999 CanLII 9405 (BC SC).
90. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
2A, file 29, Circular No. 11/60, Henry Cook to All Principals and Administrators, 4 April 1960.
[IRC-043028]
91. F. S. M. v. Clarke, 1999 CanLII 9405 (BC SC).
92. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Personnel File, Derek Clarke, volume 1, Derek Clarke to A. W. Harding, 20 May 1973. [GRG-006260]724 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
93. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, A. W. Harding to D. Clarke, 22
May 1973. [GRG-006261]
94. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E4700-1,
Student Residences – Litigation, 1988–1990, IRSRC – Historical Files, “Ex-school Official Jailed
for Sex Attacks,” Gerry Warner, Vancouver Sun, 21 April 1988. [GRG-027030]
95. F. S. M. v. Clarke, 1999 CanLII 9405 (BC SC).
96. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E4700-1,
Student Residences – Litigation, 1988–1990, IRSRC – Historical Files, “Ex-school Official Jailed
for Sex Attacks,” Gerry Warner, Vancouver Sun, 21 April 1988. [GRG-027030]
97. LeBeuf, Role of the RCMP, 462; “School Sex Assaults Bring Jail,” Vancouver Sun, 4 October
1996.
98. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E4700-1,
Student Residences – Litigation, 1988–1990, IRSRC – Historical Files, “Clergyman Cleared of
Sex Charges,” Vancouver Sun, 9 June 1989. [GRG-027034]
99. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E4700-1,
Student Residences – Litigation, 1988–1990, IRSRC – Historical Files, Terry Glavin, “Alleged
Victim of Sodomy out for Money, Lawyer Says,” Vancouver Sun, 31 May 1989. [GRG-027032]
100. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file E4700-1,
Student Residences – Litigation, 1988–1990, IRSRC – Historical Files, “Clergyman Cleared of
Sex Charges,” Vancouver Sun, 9 June 1989. [GRG-027034]
101. F. S. M. v. Clarke, 1999 CanLII 9405 (BC SC).
102. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Aleck/Michell – Anglican Churchof Canada, 1st Supplementary List of Documents, “Memorial Requiem in Memory of Reverend William Anthony Harding, 26 May 1992.” [ANG-063554]
103. E. B. v. Order of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in the Province of British Columbia, http://
www.scc-csc.gc.ca/case-dossier/info/sum-som-eng.aspx?cas=29890 (accessed 12 November2013); TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “Notes on visits to West
Coast Missions … February–April/51.” [BVT-001249]
104. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, J. P. Mulvihill to L. K. Poupore, 9June 1957. [OKM-000580] For Kearney’s first name, see: Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, 988/23-16-879, volume 3, 06/1957–06/1958, D. NAC – BC, Principal’s Monthly Report,
Christie Indian Residential School, signed M. D. Kearney, 2 December 1957. [CST-001186]
105. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Christie Indian Residential
School, To Mission Friends, 18 September 1957. [BVT-001633]
106. Eva Salinas, “Four-year Hunt Ends in Arrest,” Globe and Mail, 3 August 2006. http://www.
theglobeandmail.com/news/national/four-year-hunt-ends-in-arrest/article713735/.
107. TRC, NRA, Document location unknown, document file source unknown, Edward J. Clark to
Reverend Father, 23 September 1961. [OMS-000786] For dates of Kearney’s service at Mission,see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 8803, file 957/25-13,
part 2, 1957–1965, P. Deziel for R. F. Davey to M. Kearney, 22 July 1960; [MIS-001799] TRC,
NRA, Deschatelets Archives. Ottawa, HR 6553.C73 63, G. E. Cousineau to R. F. Davey, 28 June
1963. [OMI-030165]
108. TRC, NRA, Document location unknown, document file source unknown, Listing of Residential School Staff in British Columbia and Alberta, undated. [CAR-090087]

Notes • 725
109. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 8803, file 957/25-13, part2, 1957–1965, S. W. Kaiser for R. F. Davey to H. Dunlop, 26 June 1964; [MIS-001924] “HistoricTransfer of Authority,” Fraser Valley Record, 5 September 1973. [OMS-000307]
110. Eva Salinas, “Four-year Hunt Ends in Arrest,” Globe and Mail, 3 August 2006, http://www.
theglobeandmail.com/news/national/four-year-hunt-ends-in-arrest/article713735/.
111. “Former Residential School Official in B.C. Court,” CBC News, 5 March 2007, http://www.cbc.
ca/news/canada/british-columbia/former-residential-school-official-in-b-c-court-1.685064.
112. “Pretrial Date Set in Residential School Case,” Abbotsford Times, 14 September 2007, http://
www.canada.com/story.html?id=e39d3f61-34d7-413d-9cda-6bcb56939fa5.
113. TRC, ASAGR, RCMP Continuation reports/briefing note/letters ‘’E’’ Div Broadcast – Disclosure to the IRS TRC Barristers and Solicitors Rendered from DocID: AGC.
RCMP.00009.00002.0001074, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Briefing Note, undated, page 36
of 83-page file. [RCMP-904100]
114. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, J. M. Allard to W.
J. Trudeau, 31 March 1966; [AANDC-589171] V. Goyette to J. Allard, 22 April 1966. [AANDC-589163]
115. TRC, ASAGR, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Regina vs. Amyot, Keavin Clark, Section 148
Criminal Code x 2 -Indecent Assault, Section 149 Criminal Code x 2 – Gross Indecency, nodate, unpaginated, page 16 of 189-page portable document file. [RCMP-564573]
116. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, PAA 71.220 B160 2333, Guy Voisin to Cher Père
Principal, 28 October 1966. [OGP-021921] For Voisin’s position, see: TRC, NRA, Deschatelets
Archives Ottawa HR 8004.C73E 8, 12 October 1966. [OMI-031356]
117. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Keavin Amyot to LaMarsh, 25 November 1966. [AANDC-029792]
118. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Keavin Amyot job
application, 12 November 1968. [AANDC-589325] In this job application, Amyot states that
he worked at the Qu’Appelle school in Lebret, Saskatchewan, from November 1965 to June
1966, and started with the Mission, British Columbia, school in September 1967. This is either
an error or a misrepresentation on his part: from other documents, it is clear he started with
the Qu’Appelle school in November 1966. He likely went to the Mission school in September
1967.
119. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, 901/25-13, part 3, Per Capita Grants –Residential Schools, folder 2 of 2, 07/1964–11/1969, FA 10-138, Perm. volume 13470, no date.
[MIS-201916-0006]
120. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Keavin Amyot to Dear
Sir, 9 July 1969. [AANDC-589314]
121. Karen Mackenzie, “Sex Assault Victims Launch Lawsuit,” Northern News Services, 13 October
2008, http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/2008-10/oct13_08sex.html; Sherri Barron,“Man Jailed for Abusing Inuit Boys,” Ottawa Citizen, 30 July 1987.
122. Tonda MacCharles, “Crown Urges Long Jail Term for Social Worker Who Abused Inuit boys,”
Ottawa Citizen, 25 July 1987.
123. Sherri Barron, “Man Jailed for Abusing Inuit Boys,” Ottawa Citizen, 30 July 1987.
124. TRC, ASAGR, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, M. W. Pacholuk, Final Report of the Native
Indian Residential School Task Force, Project E-NIRS, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, nodate, 40. [RCMP-564517]

726 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
125. TRC, NRA, Her Majesty the Queen and Harold Daniel McIntee, Reasons for Judgment, Judge
C. C. Marnett, Provincial Court of British Columbia, 1 June 1989; [BKM-000204] Ann Rees,“Priest’s Victims Admit Sexual Abuse,” Vancouver Province, 19 July 1989.
126. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file number, Oblate personnel form for
Glenn Doughty, 4 May 1960. [OBG-004074]
127. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives, Ottawa, File location unknown, title illegible, Directory of
Oblate Personnel, 1964, 101. [OMI-031511]
128. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Glenn Doughty to Father MacKay, 22 December 1972. [AANDC-364945]
129. Kevin Donovan, “Police Charge Second Catholic Cleric with Sexual Assaults on Native Boys,”
Toronto Star, A15, 28 March 1990.
130. Shea, Institutional Child Abuse, 2.
131. “Oblate Brother Facing Sex Charges,” CBC News, 1 June 2000, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/oblate-brother-facing-sex-charges-1.231517.
132. LeBeuf, Role of the RCMP, 462.
133. Jack Keating, “Charges Laid in Sex Abuse of Natives,” Vancouver Province, 24 April 2003.
134. Eva Salinas, “Four-year Hunt Ends in Arrest,” Globe and Mail, 3 August 2006, http://www.
theglobeandmail.com/news/national/four-year-hunt-ends-in-arrest/article713735/.
135. Frank Peebles, “Last Residential School Suspect Eludes Police,” Prince George Citizen, 21
August 2006, http://archives.algomau.ca/main/sites/default/files/2010-061_004_032.pdf.
136. TRC, ASAGR, RCMP Continuation reports/briefing note/letters ‘’E’’ Div Broadcast – Disclosure to the IRS TRC Barristers and Solicitors Rendered from DocID: AGC.
RCMP.00009.00002.0001074, Continuation Report, Corporal M. Pacholuk, 8 June 2011, page1of 83-page file. [RCMP-904100]
137. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, L. K. Poupore to Harrington,
28 June 1961; [BKM-000167-0066] INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection– Ottawa, 962/25-1, volume 1, Indian Education General, Cariboo Student Residence, B.C.,
1948–11/02/73, [29-4], IRSRHFC, R. F. Davey to G. E. Cousineau, 4 July 1967. [JOE-0620400001]
138. TRC, NRA, St. Pauls Archives, series 4, box 18, file 4, E. E. A. Worth to Hubert O’Connor, 28
October 1969. [OMI-033909]
139. TRC, NRA, No document location, no file source, News release, “For release, Tuesday, October 26,” 25 October 1971. [WLM-000611]
140. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Prince George, Diocesan Profile, http://www.pgdiocese.
bc.ca/our-diocese/diocesan-profile/ (accessed 13 November 2013).
141. R. v. O’Connor, [1996] B.C.J. No. 1663.
142. R. v. O’Connor, 1996 CanLII 8393 (BC CA) (refusing to grant bail pending appeal); R. v. O’Connor, 1996 CanLII 3348 (BC CA) (holding that the application for a review of the decision torefuse to grant bail pending appeal was not frivolous and ordering a review of that decision);R. v. O’Connor, 1997 CanLII 4071 (BC CA) (granting bail pending appeal). In May 1997,
Parliament amended the Criminal Code to require that the personal privacy of a complainant
be included in the factors that a judge is required to consider before ordering that therapeutic
records be turned over to an accused. R. v. Mills [1999] 3 S.C.R. 668.
143. R. v. O’Connor, 1998 CanLII 14987 (BC CA).

Notes • 727
144. Barbara McLintock, “Finally, He Confesses: A Roman Catholic Bishop Apologizes for His Sins,
and a Proud Native Woman Can Start Putting the Past Behind Her,” Vancouver Province, 18
June 1998.
145. Douglas Todd, “O’Connor Appeal Dropped after Healing Circle: The Ceremony Allowed the
Women the Former Bishop Had Sex with to Confront Him and Hear His Apology,” VancouverSun, 18 June 1998.
146. R. v. Constant (28 September 2005), Court of Queen’s Bench (Dauphin Centre), Indictment(5 May 2003), and Disposition (26 September 2005), #03-05-00069, Documents obtained
from Court of Queen’s Bench (Dauphin Centre), Dauphin, Manitoba, 28 January 2014; TRC,ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Director, Superannuation
Branch, Notification of contributory status document for Ernest Constant, Supervisor, McKay
Student Residence, Dauphin, Manitoba, 14 November 1969; [AANDC-013057] LeBeuf, Role of
the RCMP, 462.
147. TRC, NRA Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG85, Perm. volume 1062, file 630/125-8,
part 2, Govt. Hostel [Anglican – Inuvik – N.W.T.] September 1959–February 1961, FA 85-3, J. V.
Jacobson to Director, 21 September 1959. [RCN-008506]
148. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection –Ottawa, file 600-1-6,
volume 2, Hostel Management – N.W.T. General and Policy, May 1960–December 1960, Students’ Residences, Northwest Territories, October 1959. [RCN-000696-0001]
149. TRC, NRA, Brent Pushkarenko, “Demolition of Former Residential School Called for to Put
Bad Memories to Rest,” Edmonton Journal, 13 August 1998. [GNN-000298-0026]
150. R. v. Comeau [1998] N.W.T.J. No. 34 (NTSC).
151. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Walter Rudnicki to
Director, Indian Affairs, 17 August 1962; [AANDC-234696] Aboriginal Affairs and Northern
Development Canada, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, Western Arctic Division, Division file number 628-626-1, code 0559, re: Martin Houston, 29 August 1962. [AANDC-234684]
152. TRC, NRA, Beaufort-Delta Education Council Warehouse, Inuvik, NWT, Payroll, 1959 to 1966
[box 1], M. Ruyant to Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources, Payroll list of
employees at the hostel for September 1966, September 1966; [GHU-002427] Beaufort-Delta
Education Council Warehouse, Inuvik, NWT, Payroll, 1967 to 1970 [box 1], Department ofNorthern Affairs and National Resources, Northern Administration: Paylist – Hostel, May
1967. [GHU-002435]
153. TRC, ASAGR, Glenn Taylor, “Grollier Man Pleads Not Guilty to Sex Offences,” Northern News
Services, 28 November 1997, http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/1997-11/nov28_
97sex.html.
154. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Ben Sivertz to Administrator of the Mackenzie, Fort Smith, NWT, 24 August 1962; [AANDC-234693] Royal Canadian Mounted Police files, SF 565 Martin HOUSTON (suspect) Statement of Robert Donald
Clement, 21 August 1962 (pages 72 and 73 of 117-page portable document format; [RCMP907781] TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Royal Canadian
Mounted Police Report, Western Arctic Division, Division file number 628-626-1, code 0559,
re: Martin Houston, 29 August 1962. [AANDC-234684] For the boy’s age, see: TRC, ASAGR,
Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Walter Rudnicki to Director, IndianAffairs, 17 August 1962. [AANDC-234696]

728 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
155. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Ben Sivertz to Superintendent of Welfare, Administrator of the Mackenzie, Fort Smith, NWT, 10 October 1962.
[AANDC-234670]
156. Ed Struzik, “Priest’s Sordid Past Shocks Parish: Father Houston Was Declared Dangerous
Sexual Offender, Sent to Prison in 1962,” Edmonton Journal, 6 June 2002; TRC, ASAGR, Royal
Canadian Mounted Police, SF 565-8 Martin HOUSTON parole report, Special Report for Discharge from Parole, Martin Houston, 20 December 1989. [RCMP-906568]
157. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Ben Sivertz to Administrator of the Mackenzie, Fort Smith, NWT, 24 August 1962. [AANDC-234693] For Sivertz’s
position, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada RG85, volume 1444, file 630/302-1,
part 3, B. G. Sivertz to Fred B. Munroe, 21 June 1962. [GWR-000171-0000]
158. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, Western Arctic Division, Division file number 628-626-1, code 0559, re:Martin Houston, 29 August 1962. [AANDC-234684]
159. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, Western Arctic Division, Division file number 628-626-1, code 0559, re:Martin Houston, 29 August 1962. [AANDC-234684]
160. TRC, ASAGR, Royal Canadian Mounted Police files, SF 565 Martin HOUSTON (suspect), page
3 of statement to police by Martin Houston, no date, no location, page 71 of 117-portable
document file. [AGCA-907781; alternate document ID number: RCMP-907781]
161. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Ben Sivertz to Administrator of the Mackenzie, Fort Smith, NWT, 24 August 1962. [AANDC-234693] For Piché’s firstname and location, see: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, David Searle
to Paul Piché, 23 October 1952. [AANDC-694853]
162. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, David Searle to Gordon
Robertson, 23 October 1962. [AANDC-886831]
163. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, file 630/125-12-1, 2, 3B Grollier Hall, Inuvik R.C. 1961–1964, Archival box 244-4, Archival Acc. G-1979-003, Minutes ofmeeting of Hostel Superintendents to Pass On Confidential Information Concerning Martin
Houston, 10 September 1962. [IKU-001424]
164. “Father Houston,” Winnipeg Free Press, 28 August 2010, http://passages.winnipegfreepress.
com/passage-details/id-168256/name-Father_Houston/keyword-martin_houston/order-publish_date|DESC,last_name|ASC,first_name|ASC/.
165. TRC, ASAGR, Royal Canadian Mounted Police files, SF 565 Martin HOUSTON (suspect), page
3 of statement to police by Martin Houston, no date, no location, page 71 of 117-portable
document file. [AGCA-907781; alternate document ID number: RCMP-907781]
166. TRC, NRA, The Indian Record, March 1957; [IMR-000370] TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1-019, volume 1, J. Slobodzian to R.
D. Ragan, 26 November 1957. [FAR-060209-0001]
167. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1019, volume 1, J. Slobodzian to R. D. Ragan, 26 November 1957. [FAR-060209-0001]
168. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/25-1019, volume 1, J. Slobodzian to R. D. Ragan, 26 November 1957. [FAR-060209-0001]
169. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 9080, file 125/25-8, part 1, R. F. Daveyto R. S. Davis, 10 August 1955; [FAR-002291-0001] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada,
RG10, volume 8775, file 511/25-8, part 1, R. F. Davey to S. J. Kitella, 22 November 1956; [FAR-

Notes • 729
008032-0001] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 1999-01431-6, box 242,
file 501/25-8, volume 4, J. Slobodzian to Director, Education Services, 16 November 1966.
[FAR-004523-0000]
170. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, J. T. Parsons to the
Director, 25 October 1962. [AANDC-264030]
171. In a letter to Gordon Robertson, the commissioner of the Northwest Territories, David Searle,
the man who prosecuted Houston on behalf of the federal government, wrote, “There is alsoa hint in the R.C.M. Police reports that there is evidence of such previous [homosexual] conduct when he was attending a seminary.” See: TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern
Development Canada, David Searle to Gordon Robertson, 23 October 1962. [AANDC-886831]
172. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, J. T. Parsons to the
Director, 25 October 1962. [AANDC-264030]
173. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, David Searle to Gordon
Robertson, 23 October 1962. [AANDC-886831]
174. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, The Director to Administrator of the Mackenzie, Fort Smith, NWT, 29 October 1962. [AANDC-234662]
175. Ed Struzik, “Priest’s Sordid Past Shocks Parish: Father Houston Was Declared Dangerous
Sexual Offender, Sent to Prison in 1962,” Edmonton Journal, 6 June 2002; TRC, ASAGR, Royal
Canadian Mounted Police, SF 565-8 Martin HOUSTON parole report, Special Report for Discharge from Parole, Martin Houston, 20 December 1989. [RCMP-906568]
176. Andrew Raven, “Grollier Hall Supervisor Sentenced,” Northern News Services, 20 August 2004,
http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/2004-08/aug20_04crt.html.
177. TRC, ASAGR, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, SF 565-8 Martin HOUSTON parole report,
Special Report for Discharge from Parole, Martin Houston, 20 December 1989. [RCMP906568]
178. Ed Struzik, “Schools Scandal: Child Abuser Now a Manitoba Priest,” Edmonton Journal, 11
May 2002.
179. Ed Struzik, “Priest’s Sordid Past Shocks Parish: Father Houston Was Declared Dangerous
Sexual Offender, Sent to Prison in 1962,” Edmonton Journal, 6 June 2002.
180. Ed Struzik, “Priest’s Sordid Past Shocks Parish: Father Houston Was Declared Dangerous
Sexual Offender, Sent to Prison in 1962,” Edmonton Journal, 6 June 2002.
181. Ed Struzik, “Schools Scandal: Child Abuser Now a Manitoba Priest,” Edmonton Journal, 11
May 2002. Antoine Hacault’s last name is misspelled in the news accounts. For correct spelling, see: “Archbishop Antoine Hacault,” http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bhacault.
html (accessed 18 November 2013).
182. Ed Struzik, “Priest’s Sordid Past Shocks Parish: Father Houston Was Declared Dangerous
Sexual Offender, Sent to Prison in 1962,” Edmonton Journal, 6 June 2002.
183. Andrew Raven, “Grollier Hall Supervisor Sentenced,” Northern News Services, 20 August 2004,
http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/2004-08/aug20_04crt.html.
184. “Father Houston,” Winnipeg Free Press, 28 August 2010, http://passages.winnipegfreepress.
com/passage-details/id-168256/name-Father_Houston/keyword-martin_houston/order-publish_date|DESC,last_name|ASC,first_name|ASC/.
185. Derek Neary, “Grollier Hall Supervisor Gets 12 Months,” Northern News Services, 9 February
1998, http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/1998-02/feb9_98sex.html; R. v. Comeau[1998] N.W.T.J. No. 34 (NTSC).
186. R. v. Comeau [1998] N.W.T.J. No. 34 (NTSC).

730 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
187. Jennifer McPhee, “More Grollier Hall Charges,” Northern News Services, 21 April 2003, http://
www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/2003-04/apr21_03sex.html.
188. Andrew Raven, “Grollier Hall Case Goes to Trial,” Northern News Services, 1 March 2004,
http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/2004-03/mar1_04crt.html.
189. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Application for Employment as Teacher in Indian Schools, 18 October 1956, George Maczynski; [AANDC-358703]
TRC, ASAGR, George Maczynski to A. V. Parminter, 12 November 1958. [AANDC-358688]
190. TRC, NRA, “No Blame in Crash,” Whitehorse Yukon Star, 1 October 1964. [LOW-002200-0001]
191. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, Department of Social Welfare,Whitehorse, “Confidential Report on Mr. Maczynski,” 15 February 1966. [AANDC-358667]
192. TRC, NRA, Beaufort-Delta Education Council Warehouse, Inuvik, NWT, Payroll, 1959 to 1966
[box 1], M. Ruyant to Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources, Payroll list of
employees at the hostel for September 1966, September 1966. [GHU-002427]
193. TRC, NRA, Beaufort-Delta Education Council Warehouse, Inuvik, NWT, Payroll, 1967 to 1970[box 1], Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources, Northern Administration:
Payroll List – Hostel, May 1967. [GHU-002435]
194. TRC, NRA, No document location or source, E. Morriset to R. B. Kohls, 28 October 1974.
[OBG-002922]
195. TRC, NRA, Harry H. Lavallee to D. J. Lavin, 17 October 1974. [OBG-002921]
196. TRC, NRA, No document location or source, E. Morriset to R. B. Kohls, 28 October 1974.
[OBG-002922]
197. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, G. Maczynski to E. Morriset, 16 November 1974. [AANDC-358638]
198. “Accused of 22 Sex Offences.” Vancouver Province, 21 July 1993.
199. “Former Students File Suit Over Sexual, Physical Abuse,” Saskatoon StarPhoenix, 26 November 1996; Caroline Murray, “Abuse Victims Recall Atrocities,” Whitehorse Daily Star, 25
November 1996; Shea, Institutional Child Abuse, 2.
200. R. v. Maczynski, 1997 CanLII 2491 (BC CA); Lawson, “Yukon and Northwest Territories,” 245.
201. Richard Gleeson, “Four Years for Sex Assault,” Northern News Services, 8 August 1997, http://
www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/1997-08/aug8_97jail.html; Shea, Institutional Child
Abuse, 9.
202. TRC, ASAGR, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, E-Div NIRS task force Final Report, “Final
Report of the Native Indian Residential School Task Force,” 34, 37. [AGCA-564517]
203. “Assault Charges Go Back 40 Years.” Vancouver Sun, 24 June 1993; Douglas Todd, “Compensate Victims, Bishop Says: Financial Settlements with Native Victims of Abuse Are Necessary,
Says Catholic Bishop Thomas Lobsinger. Says the Church Must Show It Is Serious about
Reconciling with Native Victims of Abuse,” Vancouver Sun, 14 December 1998; “Man Accusedof Child Sex Abuse Dies in Jail,” Vancouver Sun, 2 June 1995; LeBeuf, Role of the RCMP, 456.
204. Sarah Elizabeth Brown, “Ex-residential School Student Files Suit,” Whitehorse Star, 21 April
2003; Elizabeth Asp, Jackie McLaren, Jim Sheldon, Michelle Tochacek , Ruby Van Bibber,“Bishop’s comments invalided any apology,” Letter to the Editor, Whitehorse Star, 11 August
1999.
205. TRC, NRA, Beaufort-Delta Education Council Warehouse, Inuvik, NWT, Payroll, 1959 to 1966
[box 1], M. Ruyant to Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources, Payroll list of
employees at the hostel for September 1966, September 1966; [GHU-002427] Beaufort-Delta
Education Council Warehouse, Inuvik, NWT, Payroll, 1967 to 1970 [box 1], Department ofNotes • 731
Northern Affairs and National Resources, Northern Administration: Paylist – Hostel, May
1967. [GHU-002435]
206. Glenn Taylor, “Grollier Man Pleads Not Guilty to Sex Offences,” Northern News Services, 28
November 1997, http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/1997-11/nov28_97sex.html.
207. Hannah Spray, “Dorm Supervisor Guilty of Molesting Boys,” Saskatoon StarPhoenix, 6November 2013, http://www.thestarphoenix.com/Dorm+supervisor+guilty+molesting+boys/9131431/story.html.
208. Glenn Taylor, “Grollier Man Pleads Not Guilty to Sex Offences,” Northern News Services, 28
November 1997, http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/1997-11/nov28_97sex.html.
209. Justice J. Vertes, “In the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories, Between Her Majesty
the Queen and Paul Leroux,” 10 August 1998; Glenn Taylor, “Arrest in Grollier Hall Sex Case:
Former Boys Supervisor Faces 32 Counts of Sexual Assault on His Student,” Northern News
Services, 16 June 1997, http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/1997-06/jun16_97sex.html.
210. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Paul Leroux to Ken
King, 15 December 1980. [AANDC-759052]
211. Glenn Taylor, “Grollier Man Pleads Not Guilty to Sex Offences,” Northern News Services, 28
November 1997, http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/1997-11/nov28_97sex.html.
212. Glenn Taylor, “Arrest in Grollier Hall Sex Case: Former Boys Supervisor Faces 32 Counts of
Sexual Assault on His Student,” Northern News Services, 16 June 1997, http://www.nnsl.com/
frames/newspapers/1997-06/jun16_97sex.html.
213. Dawn Ostrem, “Back to Court: Paul Leroux Challenges Convictions, Sentence,” Northern News Services, 26 June 2000, http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/2000-06/
jun26_00back.html.
214. Jennifer McPhee, “More Grollier Hall Charges,” Northern News Services, 21 April 2003, http://
www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/2003-04/apr21_03sex.html.
215. TRC, ASAGR, Royal Canadian Mounted Police files, Noel Sinclair to Sidney Gray, 7 September
2004, pages 2–5 of 117-page portable document file. [RCMP-907781]
216. Dawn Ostrem, “Hung Jury in [Name redacted] Trial: New Trial Expected in Inuvik Sex Case,”
Northern News Services, 26 May 2000, http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/2000-05/
may26_00trial.html; Dawn Ostrem, “Inuvik Teacher Back on Trial,” Northern News Services, 8 December 2000, http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/2000-12/dec8_00trial.
html; Dawn Ostrem, “End of the [Name redacted] Trials: Crown Will Not Go to Jury a Third
Time,” Northern News Services, 22 December 2000, http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/2000-12/dec22A_00crt.html.
217. Glenn Taylor, “Grollier Victims Form Support Group,” Northern News Services, 19 December
1997, http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/1997-12/dec19_97grol.html.
218. Andrew Raven, “Grollier Hall Supervisor Sentenced,” Northern News Services, 20 August 2004,
http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/2004-08/aug20_04crt.html.
219. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG85, Perm. volume 1483, file 311/118-B,
part 2, School Buildings – Fort Macpherson, N.W.T. [Construction and Maintenance] December 1955–June 1958, FA 85-4, John I. Nicol to Edgar Hyett, 23 April 1958. [FHU-002024]
220. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, file 600-1-6, part 1, Hostel Management Policy, 1962–1963, Archival box 204-3, Archival Acc. G-1979-003, R. A. Hodgkinson
to Gillie, 18 September 1962. [FHU-002049]

732 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
221. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, file 630-118/12-1, 2, 3, part 1,
Fleming Hall, General Reports, Supplies 1961–1968, Archival box 239-3, Archival Acc. G-1979003, Superintendent’s Hostel Report, 1 May 1963. [FHU-001740]
222. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, file 630-118/10-1, 2, 3, part 1A,
Fort McPherson Reports, General and Supplies, 1963–1967, Archival box 239-1, Archival Acc.
G-1979-003, O. G. Tucker to H. Darkes, 26 March 1963. [FHU-001914]
223. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Crown Personnel File,
06-334000 – Perdue, Donald Arthur, Department of Transport, Application for Employment,
Donald Perdue, 24 June 1965. [AANDC-765693]
224. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG22, Perm. volume 1074, file 250-26-17,
part 2, Fort McPherson – School, 1959, FA 22-3, David Searle to D. M. Christie, 23 April 1964.
[FHU-001380-0001]
225. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, file 630-118/12-1, 2, 3, part 1,
Fleming Hall, General Reports, Supplies 1961–1968, Archival box 239-3, Archival Acc. G-1979003, B. Thorsteinsson to B. C. Gillie, 7 May 1964. [FHU-001758]
226. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG22, Perm. volume 1074, file 250-26-17,
part 2, Fort McPherson – School, 1959, FA 22-3, David Searle to D. M. Christie, 23 April 1964.
[FHU-001380-0001]
227. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Crown Personnel File,
06-334000– Perdue, Donald Arthur, T. E. Jones to B. Thorsteinsson, 24 June 1964. [AANDC-765642]
228. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Crown Personnel File,
06-334000 – Perdue, Donald Arthur, Department of Transport, Application for Employment,
Donald Perdue, 24 June 1965. [AANDC-765693]
229. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, CR #71-602-000 Pupil Residence– General, 04/1968–12/71, Archival box 266, Archival Acc. G1999-046, G. Devitt to Director of
Education, 5 December 1969. [CIU-001807]230. Peterson, Sir Joseph Bernier Federal Day School, 1–2; Irniq, “Mending the Past,” 48.
231. Gregoire, “Marius Tungilik,” http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/article/65674marius_
tungilik_inuit_leader_whistleblower_and_public_servant_dead_at/.
232. Tungilik, “Marius Tungilik,” 150.
233. Irniq, “Mending the Past,” 48.
234. Peterson, Sir Joseph Bernier Federal Day School, 1–2, 39. For closing date of Turquetil Hall,
see: TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, file 630.116, part 1, Hostel
Facilities – Chesterfield Inlet, 1963, Archival box 37, Archival Acc. W. G. Devitt to Mr. Mowatt,
25 July 1969. [CIU-001804]
235. Peterson, Sir Joseph Bernier Federal Day School, 1–2, 12.
236. Peterson, Sir Joseph Bernier Federal Day School, 5.
237. Peterson, Sir Joseph Bernier Federal Day School, 5.
238. Peterson, Sir Joseph Bernier Federal Day School, 6.
239. Peterson, Sir Joseph Bernier Federal Day School, 6–7.
240. Peterson, Sir Joseph Bernier Federal Day School, 7.
241. Peterson, Sir Joseph Bernier Federal Day School, 6.
242. Peterson, Sir Joseph Bernier Federal Day School, 7.
243. Peterson, Sir Joseph Bernier Federal Day School, 29–31.

Notes • 733
244. Ross Howard, “Probes Document Abuse at NWT Church Schools Inuit Students Were Powerless to Stop Assaults 25 Years Ago by Clergy, Teachers,” Globe and Mail, 28 June 1995.
245. Peter Moon, “Hundreds of Cree and Ojibwa Children Violated,” Globe and Mail, 19 October
1996.
246. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, St. Anne’s Residential
School Reunion and Conference, Report of the Testimonial/Panel Component, Fort Albany
First Nation, 20 August 1992. [AGCA-154140]
247. Peter Moon, “Hundreds of Cree and Ojibwa Children Violated,” Globe and Mail, 19 October
1996.
248. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, St. Anne’s Residential
School Reunion and Conference, Report of the Testimonial/Panel Component, Fort Albany
First Nation, 20 August 1992. [AGCA-154140]
249. TRC, AVS, Edmund Metatawabin, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commissionof Canada, Fort Albany, Ontario, 28 January 2013, Statement Number: SP098. For details on
chair, see: Metatawabin, Up Ghost River, 63, 79, 80, 222.
250. Peter Moon, “School’s Electric Chair Haunts Natives,” Globe and Mail, 21 October 1996.
251. Lorraine O’Grady, “School’s Former Staff Face Assault Charges,” Toronto Star, 19 September
1997.
252. “Nun Forced Native Students to Eat Their Own Vomit,” Edmonton Journal, 25 June 1999.
253. Shea, Institutional Child Abuse, 12.
254. Shea, Institutional Child Abuse, 10.
255. Shea, Institutional Child Abuse, 14–15.
256. Shea, Institutional Child Abuse, 12.
257. Shea, Institutional Child Abuse, 10.
258. For Hands’s employment record at La Tuque, which consists only of information regarding
his salary and the number of days he functioned as a substitute teacher, see: TRC, NRA, INAC
– Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 371/25-13-024, volume
1, Audit Services Branch, Department of Citizenship and Immigration, “La Tuque Indian
Residential School: Analysis of Salaries, Room and Board,” s.d. [1964]; [LTR-001004] TRC,
NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8604, file 301/1-13, part 1, Memorandum
from A. R. Jolicoeur, Regional Superintendent of Indian Schools, Quebec Regional Office to
DIAND, Ottawa, 15 February 1966. [PTB-000758]
259. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Winnipeg, RG10, Acc. W95-96/120, box 002, file494/17/14/1, volume 1, Chest X-ray Survey, Pelican Residential school, 19 October 1966, page
2. [PLK-003046-0002]
260. TRC, ASAGR, L. P. Hands to whom it may concern, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development Canada, 6 September 1971. [AANDC-586475]
261. Angeconeb, “Speaking My Truth,” 302.
262. “Twenty Other Victims Came Forward,” Anglican Journal, 2 May 2000, http://www.anglicanjournal.com/articles/twenty-other-victims-came-forward-6863; Angeconeb, “Speaking My
Truth,” 302–305.
263. R. v. Hands [1996] O.J. No. 264.
264. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, R776-0-5 (RG55), volume 21216, T.B. #693304, Treasury Board, “Discharge of Employee, Indian Affairs and Northern Development,” 12 November 1969. [ NPC-523500]

734 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission265. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, R776-0-5 (RG55), volume 21280, T.B. #705706, Roger Michaud, Regional Superintendent of Personnel, Quebec to I. Harlock, Personnel Adviser,
DIAND, 21 May 1971. [NPC-523762-0005]
266. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, R776-0-5 (RG55), volume 21280, T.B. #705706, Rev.
J. M. Bonnard, Administrator, DIAND to [Name redacted], La Tuque Student Residence, 19
May 1971. [NPC-523762-0006]
267. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 377/251-006, volume 1, locator 58-7, J. Serre to Whom it May Concern, 20 May 1970. [IRC-0482960004]
268. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 372/2513-024, volume 1, G. D. Cromb, Director, Education Branch, DIAND, Ottawa to the Regional
Superintendent of Education, Regional Director, DIAND, Quebec. [LTR-001176-0000]
269. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 372/25-13024, volume 1, Memorandum from C. T. Blouin, Regional Supervisor of Welfare, DIAND and
L. Poulin, Regional Counsellor in Education to A. R. Jolicoeur, Regional Superintendent of
Education, DIAND, 13 October 1970. [LTR-001178-0001]
270. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 645-1, part 3, R. S. Davis,
excerpt from Quarterly Report Ending March 1945, on Touchwood Agency; [IRC-047128]
TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 3, Philip Phelan
to M. Christianson, 30 January 1945; [GDC-011650] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada,
RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 3, Philip Phelan to Reverend E. H. Knowles, 24 September
1945. [GDC-026958]
271. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, Document file source unknown, J. H. Corkhill to F. E. R. Badham, 25 January 1945. [GDC-007325]
272. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 645-1, part 3, R. S. Davis,
excerpt from Quarterly Report Ending March 1945, on Touchwood Agency. [IRC-047128]
273. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 3, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Constable A. Zimmerman, 28 July 1945. [GDC-010369-0001]
274. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 3, R. S. Davis to
Indian Affairs, 13 February 1947. [GDC-010362-0001]
275. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 2, E. H. Knowles
to A. F. MacKenzie, 6 December 1920; [GDC-005931] RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 3, F.
E. R. Badham to H. McGill, 2 September 1944. [GDC-017576]
276. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, file 645-1, volume 6309, part 3, H. A. Alderwood to R. A. Hoey, 15 February 1947. [IRC-040091]
277. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
4A, file 27, [Name redacted] to Mr. Kerley, 26 June 1955. [GDC-000495]
278. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8754, file 654/25-1, volume 1, Henry
G. Cook to R. F. Davey, 2 December 1955. [IRC-047015]
279. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
1A, file 22, [Name redacted] to My Lord Bishop, 9 January 1956. [IRC-040117]
280. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
1A, file 22, Head Teacher [Illegible] to My Lord Bishop, 10 January 1956. [IRC-040120]
281. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
1A, file 22, [Name redacted] to My Lord Bishop, 9 January 1956. [IRC-040118]

Notes • 735
282. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files,
box 3A, Pupils Health and Welfare, 54–60, [Name redacted] to Dr. Perth and Miss Meade, 31
January 1956. [IRC-047233]
283. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
16A, file 7, Reverend Cook to [Name redacted], 6 June 1957. [GDC-004810]
284. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
15A, file 28, J. J. Johnstone to F. C. Jackson, 28 September 1961. [IRC-040043]
285. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
15A, file 28, J. J. Johnstone to F. C. Jackson, 28 September 1961. [IRC-040043]
286. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
3A, file 7, Pupils Health and Welfare, 54–60, J. J. Johnstone to Dr. Porth, 10 September 1958.
[IRC-047235]
287. Mandryk, Uneasy Neighbours, 210.
288. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8798, file 371/25-13-019, part 2, R.
F. Davey to William Starr, 19 July 1962; [FGA-001179] TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada,
General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103, series 2:15, box 24, file 3, Extract from Reporton Visit of Major-General G. R. Turner to St. Paul’s Anglican Indian Residential School, Cardston, Alberta, 6–8, 1958. [AAC-090593]
289. TRC, NRA, INAC, 595/1-13, volume 1, 05/51–05/77, W. P. E. Pugh to R. F. Davey, 9 April 1956.
[IRC-040068]
290. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2:15, box 24, file 1, Superintendent’s Visit to Old Sun School, June 11, 14 & 15, 1954.
[13a-c000033-d0017-001]
291. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2:15, box 24, file 1, Superintendent’s Visit to Old Sun School, Gleichen, December
13–14–15, 1954. [AAC-090540]
292. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files,
Advisory Board Reports, 1984, Minutes Gordon Student Residence Advisory Board Meeting,
11 December 1984. [GDC-000025]
293. Mandryk, Uneasy Neighbours, 210.
294. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
L1, file 2, “Pressline: Sexual Abuse Charges – Former Employee,” 5 March 1992. [GDC-065139]
295. TRC, NRA, Trevor Sutter, “Starr Admits to Sexual Assaults,” Regina Leader-Post, 3 February
1993. [GDC-026641]
296. Mandryk, Uneasy Neighbours, 210.
297. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
148, [Name redacted] 71–73, M. Dickinson to P. Woods, 15 September 1972. [IRC-047240]
298. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files,
box 6A, Employee File – [Name redacted], W. P. Starr to [Name redacted], 2 September 1975.
[IRC-047018-0001]
299. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
146, Moose, Peggy, 88–90, Gerry Worth, undated. [IRC-047020]
300. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
7, Employee File, Cyr, Henry, 84–88, Gerry Worth to Henry Cyr, 19 October 1988; [IRC-047061]
GRS Files, box L34A, G. Worth/Adm GRS, 88–89, Subpoena to witness, 2 January 1989; [ IRC047062] LeBeuf, Role of the RCMP, 457.

736 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
301. TRC, NRA INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
R2, volume 1, Ronald Pratt and Herman Blind to [Name redacted], 14 March 1991. [IRC047201]
302. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
L27B, file 7, Major Incidents, Current Students, 90–91, Tom Pratt to Herman Blind, 9 April
1991. [IRC-047290]
303. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files,
box L27B, file 7, Major Incidents, Current Students, 90–91, Dinner Duty, 16 April 1991. [IRC047195]
304. Marceau-Kozicki, “Onion Lake Indian Residential Schools,” 198–199.
305. Gerry Klein, “Priest Jailed for Sex Assaults,” Saskatoon StarPhoenix, 10 January 2004.
306. Gerry Klein, “Priest Jailed for Sex Assaults,” Saskatoon StarPhoenix, 10 January 2004.
307. For date of Dufault’s departure, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files
Collection – Ottawa, file 676/23-16-005, volume 1, Principal’s Monthly Report, June 1965,
signed N. Dufault; [BVL-003363] R. F. Davey to Staff, 16 July 1965. [BVL-001100] For Dufault’slater work, see: Gregoire, “Norbert Dufault.”
308. Gerry Klein, “Priest Jailed for Sex Assaults,” Saskatoon StarPhoenix, 10 January 2004.
309. Gregoire, “Norbert Dufault.”
310. Hannah Spray, “Dorm Supervisor Guilty of Molesting Boys,” Saskatoon StarPhoenix, 6November 2013, http://www.thestarphoenix.com/Dorm+supervisor+guilty+molesting+boys/9131431/story.html.
311. “Beauval Indian Boys,” The Boy Choir & Soloist Directory, http://www.boysoloist.com/artist.
asp?VID=3448 (accessed 7 November 2013).
312. “Former Residential School Official Facing New Charges Had Prior Convictions,” CanadianPress, 30 September 2011, http://globalnews.ca/?s=former+residential+school+official+facing+new+charges+had+prior+convictions.
313. “Ex-residential School Worker Convicted of Abusing Boys,” CBC News, 5 November 2013,
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/ex-residential-school-worker-convicted-of-abusing-boys-1.2415810.
314. “Paul Leroux Gets 3 Years for Residential School Abuse,” CBC News, 12 December 2013,
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/paul-leroux-gets-3-years-for-residential-schoolabuse-1.2461629.
315. “Paul Leroux Gets Parole after Serving 1 Year for Residential School Abuse,” CBC News, 10
February 2015, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/paul-leroux-gets-parole-after-serving-1-year-for-residential-school-abuse-1.2952615.
316. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. E-1996-97/415, box 31/56, file 25-1,
Confidential Report, Reverend E. Turenne, 24 May 1965. [SPR-000722]
317. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, file 117/24-4, K. Kerr to Regional Supervisor, Saskatchewan, 27 May 1965. [SPR-000721]
318. LeBeuf, Role of the RCMP, 458.
319. Windspeaker Staff, “Man Sentenced to Five Years.”
320. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 1/25-13,
volume 12, R. D. Ragan to D. Kogawa, 8 December 1967. [CJC-003244]
321. R. v. Frappier [1990] YJ No 163 (Territorial Court) (Frappier).
322. Shea, Institutional Child Abuse, 17.

Notes • 737
323. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file E6575-18, volume 10, 05/90–12/90, “Frappier Case in Yukon: Press
Line,” Bill Van Iterson, 20 July 1990. [AEMR-019499B]

Student victimization of students: 1940–2000
1. “Data for the TRC – October 7, 2014,” electronic document received from the Indian
Residential Schools Adjudication Secretariat attached to email from Shelley Trevethan to Kim
Murray, 10 October 2014.
2. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Distribution of IAP Claims with
Student-to-Student Abuse Map, Data from September 19, 2007, to December 31, 2012.
3. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6209, file 468-10, part 2, M. W.
McCracken to Indian Affairs, 20 February 1940. [MER-001130]
4. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 3, Royal
Canadian Mounted Police Report Re: [name redacted], (Juv) Treaty Indian, Grievous Bodily
Harm (274) C.C. 1 May 1945. [IRC-047229-0001]
5. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6589, file 494/25-2-015, volume 3, J. F.
Orman to F. Shaw, 5 January 1961. [PLK-002760-0001]
6. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 487/25-2-014, volume 3, Ctrl #31-1, Residential School Records Office,
G. S. Lapp to Indian Affairs Branch, Ottawa, 16 October 1962. [IRC-048031-0000]
7. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/25-2014, volume 3, Stephen T. Robinson to F. M. Shaw, 3 October 1962. [CJC-001425-0001]
8. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 487/25-2-014, volume 3, Ctrl #31-1, Residential School Records Office,
G. S. Lapp to Indian Affairs Branch, Ottawa, 16 October 1962. [IRC-048031-0000]
9. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/252-014, volume 3, [Ctrl #31-1], Stephen T. Robinson to G. Swartman, 7 January 1963. [IRC048113-0002]
10. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, file 988/25-008, volume 4, Admissions
and Discharges – FA 10-136, Archival Acc. V1984-85/316, Archival box 49, [name redacted] to
Mr. Larson, 16 August 1965. [KUP-266221]
11. TRC, NRA, Beaufort-Delta Education Council Warehouse, Inuvik, NWT, Grollier Hall 1965–66[box 12], Max Ruyant to Russell M. Buie, 6 February 1967. [GHU-001292]
12. Richard Gleeson, “Four Years for Sex Assault,” Northern News Services, 8 August 1997, http://
www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/1997-08/aug8_97jail.html; Shea, Institutional Child
Abuse in Canada, 9.
13. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa RG10, Acc. 2003-00196-4, box 4, file AQR
250-5/304, part 1, Jani Innukpak, 30 July 1968. [PHQ-007470-0003]
14. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11539, file 677/25-2, Reverend N. D.
Pilcher to J. A. Davis, 13 January 1955; [SPR-002517] J. A. Davis to E. S. Jones, 17 January 1955.
[SPR-002516]
15. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 773/25-4, 01/1968–10/1968, E. O. Drouin, 30 March
1968. [IRC-048254]
16. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, Admissions and Discharges, Yukon Hostel, file25-2-012, volume 1, Jan/65–Mar/67, box 37, K. W. Johnson to A. E. Fry, 7 November 1966.
[YKS-003027]

738 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
17. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 97-98/311, file 111/25-2, 1962–1969, P.
Kaweski to Regional Director, Indian Affairs, 7 November 1967. [SMD-002625]
18. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, RG10, Acc. E2003-01593-0, box 5, file671/25-8, part 4, David Seesequasis to George Larocque, 2 October 1973. [SMD-003832]
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton RG10, Acc. E1996-97/407, box 10, file4721-1, part 3, Application for educational assistance, 11 October 1973. [SMD-003850]
20. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, 4810-D32, volume 2, 07/1983–11/1985,
G. M. Buffalo, 28 March 1984. [IRC-048256]
21. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
L-27B, Incident Report 90-91. Student Incident Report, 14 September 1990. [IRC-047285]
22. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 773/18-24, part 1, 01/1940–03/1943, Mounted
Police Report regarding Complaint of [name redacted], 9 February 1949. [IRC-048194]
23. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 773/25-1-004, volume 1, 1936–1956, S. H. Middleton
to J. H. Pugh, 19 March 1940. [IRC-042018]24. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 5, Microfilm reel
C-7933, W. J. Zimmerman to B. F. Neary, 6 December 1947. [IRC-042002]
25. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6200, file 466-1, part 5, Microfilm reel
C-7933, B. F. Neary to W. J. Zimmerman, 15 December 1947. [IRC-042003]
26. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, [1858], FA 10-25, file 772/25-1-010, 1949–
1961, John E. Pugh to Indian Affairs Branch, 22 March 1950. [IRC-048022]
27. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, [1858], FA 10-25, file 772/25-1-010, 1949–
1961, W. Barr Murray to John Pugh, 23 March 1950. [IRC-048023-0001]
28. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8942, file 26/25-2, part 1, R. E. Lauder
to C. R. Nadeau, 16 November 1955. [IRC-047232]
29. TRC, NRA, Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, 25-2-764, 11/1961–05/1963, volume 6, J.
E. DeWolf to K. R. Brown, 3 July 1962. [IRC-048247]
30. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, file 51/25-4, volume 8542, R. E. Lauder to F. A.
Dunsworth, 3 May 1956. [IRC-042013]
31. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, series C-IV-8, Yukon Regional Office –Whitehorse, 1940–1982, v.1989-90/10, boxes 1-58, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report,
Re: [name redacted] (Indian) [date of birth redacted] 17 June 1958; [IRC-049035] J. T. Parsons
to N. C. O. Tac, 25 July 1958; [IRC-049027-0000] Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, Re:,
29 July 1958; [IRC-049025] Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, Carcross Outpost Case, 17
September 1958. [IRC-049029]
32. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, 988/25-2-030, part 2, 1/61 to /65, D. L.
Jampolsky to J. C. Lawrance, 19 December 1962. [IRC-042012]
33. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 42/25-2461, volume 1, [names redacted] 8 August 1961. [CJC-001420-0001]
34. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 42/25-2461, volume 1, J. F. Lockhart to A/Regional Supervisor, 23 August 1961. [CJC-001419]
35. Verdict of Coroner’s Jury, Charles Wenjack, 17 November 1966.
36. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, PAA 71.220 B160 2329, E. O. Drouin, to Principal
Levaque, 3 October 1966. [OGP-021773]
37. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B54 2304, 1966–67, School Population
as of February 8, 1967, 5, 13. [OGP-021539]

Notes • 739
38. TRC, NRA, INAC – AB Regional Records Office – Edmonton, file 773/3-8, volume 1, 08/1964–
09/1969, Interview Record Form, 21 March 1968; [IRC-048253] Interview Record Form, 21
March 1968. [IRC-048252]
39. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, ACC. 71.220 B160 2313, Father Levaque, 29 April
1968. [IRC-049045]
40. TRC, NRA, INAC – AB Regional Records Office – Edmonton, 773/3-8, volume 1, 08/64–09/69,
CR-ALB, E. O. Drouin to Jerry Dawson, 26 November 1968. [MRY-010767-0011]
41. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa,
Muskowekwan Residential School, box 25, file 5, Month End Report, Head Child Care Worker,
March 16–April 27, 1989. [IRC-048266-0002]
42. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
L-27A, file 6, Gordon Student Residence, Ronald Pratt, Carol Flaman and Melinda McNab, 7April 1990. [IRC-047274]
43. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
L-27B, file 6, Brief Report on the Meeting at Regina Child and Youth, 6 July 1990. [IRC-047279]

Sports and the arts: 1940–2000
1. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “Excerpts from two letters
received at the Christie Indian School, Kakawis, B.C.” [CIS-000161] For Ian Eisenhardt’s
position, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, 879-1, part 2, West Coast
Agency – Christie Residential School, General Admission, 1930–1947, FA 10-17, Microfilm
reel C-8764, volume 6439, National Archives of Canada – Ottawa, R. A. Hoey to G. Forbes, 4January 1941; [CST-008096] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6189, file461-5, part 8, R. A. Hoey to J. Florence Lang, 11 January 1941.[ CJC-000762]
2. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Ian Eisenhardt to Brooke
Claxton, 17 May 1945; [OMS-000626] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume
821C, file ‘Scrapbooks of Major Ian Eisenhardt,’ The Grotto, Number 3, April 1945, 2. [NPC601235]
3. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Ian Eisenhardt to R. A. Hoey, 18
May 1945. [OMS-000627]
4. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6446, file 882-1, part 3, George Beete
to Father O’Grady, 25 June 1950. [KAM-000151]
5. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6431, file 877-1, part 4, Microfilm reel
C-8759, A. E. Caldwell to B. F. Neary, 8 July 1950. [ABR-000140]
6. TRC, AVS, Christina Kimball, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 17 January 2011, Statement Number: 03-001-10-020.
7. TRC, AVS, Noel Starblanket, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Regina, Saskatchewan, 16 January 2012, Statement Number: 2011-3314.
8. TRC, AVS, Geraldine Shingoose, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 19 June 2010, Statement Number: 02-MB-19JU10-033.
9. TRC, AVS, Paul Andrew, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Inuvik, Northwest Territories, 30 June 2011, Statement Number: NNE202.
10. TRC, AVS, John Kistabish, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
26 April 2013, Montreal, Québec, Statement Number: 2011-6135.

740 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
11. TRC, AVS, Pierre Papatie, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
23 June 2012, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Statement Number: 2011-1794.
12. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6316, file 656-5, part 7, T. B. R.
Westgate to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 18 August 1941. [PAR-008548]
13. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6189, file 461-5, part 8, R. A. Hoey to
J. Florence Lang, 11 January 1941. [CJC-000762]
14. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6470, file 890-5, part 6, Microfilm reel
C-8787, R. A. Hoey to Major D. M. Mackay, 24 June 1944. [MIS-004501]
15. Morton, Military History of Canada, 185.
16. TRC, NRA Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6220, file 472-5, part 6, Quarterly
Report Ending March 1945, On Sioux Lookout Agency. [MCI-005293]
17. TRC, NRA, DIAND, file 6-21-1, volume 1, Indian Work Investigation Commission, Report to
the General Synod, Winnipeg, 1946, 7. [AEMR-016149]
18. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6470, file 890-5, part 7, Microfilm reel
C-8788, W. S. Arneil to Indian Affairs Branch, 29 September 1948. [MIS-004272]
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6470, file 890-5, part 7, Microfilm reel
C-8788, P. Phelan to W. A. Arneil, 4 October 1948. [MIS-004273]
20. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6278, file 584-5, part 14, Philip Phelan
to W. Gowans, 22 November 1949. [SBR-001486]
21. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6220, file 472-5, part 7, Philip Phelan
to G. Swartman, 30 November 1949. [MCI-005609]
22. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8610, file 655/1-13, part 1, P. Piché toBernard F. Neary, 28 July 1950. [PLD-008512]
23. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7188, file 411/25-1-010, Bernard
Neary to I. Eisenhardt, 9 May 1950. [AGA-001462]
24. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6429, file 875-5, part 13, H.
G. Cook to B. F. Neary, 18 July 1950. [MIK-000640]
25. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, RG10, Acc. 1984-85/316, volume 27(500325), file 988/6-1-885-1, part 1, School Buildings – Kuper Island Indian Residential
School, 1941–1950, I. Eisenhardt to J. Camirand, 20 July 1950; [KUP-014088] TRC, NRA,
Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8645, file 651/6-1, part 1, Bernard F. Neary to J. P.
B. Ostrander, 27 October 1950. [PAR-000505]
26. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG22, Perm. volume 803, file 6-25-16,
part 1, Recreational and Sport Facilities for Indians – Indian Athletes, February 1938–October
1971, FA 22-1, Hugh Keenleyside to D. M. MacKay, 13 October 1048. [RCN-007390]
27. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “Physical Education, Adult
Education, Recreation,” Indian School Bulletin, Volume 4, Number 4, March 1950, 18–19.
[GMA-001452]
28. Kidd, Struggle for Canadian Sport, 247–250.
29. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “Physical Education, Adult
Education, Recreation,” Indian School Bulletin, Volume 4, Number 4, March 1950, 18–19.
[GMA-001452]
30. Kidd, Struggle for Canadian Sport, 253–254.
31. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Ian Eisenhardt to R. A. Hoey, 18
May 1945. [OMS-000627]

Notes • 741
32. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “Physical Education, Adult
Education, Recreation,” Indian School Bulletin, Volume 4, Number 4, March 1950, 18–19.
[GMA-001452]
33. Forsyth and Heine, “‘Higher Degree of Social Organization,’” 268. See, for example: TRC,
NRA, Library and Archives Canada, Ontario Regional Service Centre – Toronto, file 129/234, volume 1, Norman Paterson to F. Matters, 3 July 1950; [CJC-001721] TRC, NRA, Libraryand Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6429, file 875-5, part 13, H. G. Cook to B. F.
Neary, 18 July 1950; [MIK-000640] TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical
Files Collection – Ottawa, 779/24-4, volume 1, 1950–1974, RCAP, Bernard F. Neary to Ian
Eisenhardt, 27 September 1950. [BQL-004158]
34. Forsyth and Heine, “‘Higher Degree of Social Organization,’” 264.
35. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 779/24-4,
volume 1, 1950–1974, RCAP, “Report on Blue Quills School,” 19 October 1950. [BQL-004157]
For snow snakes, see: Parker, “Snow-Snake.”
36. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 779/24-4,
volume 1, 1950–1974, RCAP, Ian Eisenhardt to Bernet Rollande, 13 November 1950. [BQL004156]
37. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 779/24-4,
volume 1, 1950–1974, RCAP, Ian Eisenhardt to W. K. Taylor, 13 November 1950. [BQL-004155]
38. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B92 3899, G. M. Latour to Ian
Eisenhardt, 29 January 1951. [OGP-030732]
39. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8788, file 487/25-10-014, part 1, T. C.
Ross to Ian Eisenhardt, 26 August 1950. [CJC-000935]
40. TRC, NRA, INAC, file 487/24-4, volume 1, Ian Eisenhardt to T. C. Ross, 8 September 1950.
[CJC-006792]
41. TRC, NRA, INAC, file 487/24-4, volume 1, I. Eisenhardt to T. C. Ross, 8 June 1950. [CJC006793]
42. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 1363, file 6, Eisenhardt, Ian, “TheCanadian Red Man of Today: Physical Fitness and Recreation among the Canadian Indians,”in The Journal of the American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation,
June 1951, 9–10. [NPC-601192]
43. Forsyth and Heine, “‘Higher Degree of Social Organization,’” 272.
44. Forsyth and Heine, “‘Higher Degree of Social Organization,’” 272, 277; TRC, NRA, No
document location, no document file source, “The Supervisor of Physical Education Resigns,”
Indian School Bulletin, Volume 6, Number 2, November 1951, 10; [GMA-001506] TRC, ASAGR,
Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Ian Eisenhardt to J. F. Lockhart, 29
November 1951. [AANDC-199951]
45. Scher, Un-Canadians; Forsyth and Heine, “‘Higher Degree of Social Organization,’” 277.
46. Forsyth, “Power to Define,” 87–88.
47. TRC, NRA, INAC – Departmental Library – Ottawa, “Annual Trophies for Indian Athletes,” The
Indian Missionary Record, January 1952, 3. [IMR-000365]
48. Forsyth, “Power to Define,” 93–94.
49. Forsyth, “Power to Define,” 114.
50. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 2-15, box
23, “Visit to Sioux Lookout Indian Residential School by Major-General G. R. Turner, 31st May
and 1st and 2nd June, 1951,” 2. [PLK-000297-0000]

742 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
51. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
15, file 5, Eric Barrington to Frieda Matthews, 23 November 1953. [CJC-007752]
52. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/18-24,
volume1, A. Lacelle to Norman Paterson, 30 November 1954. [CJC-004016-0003]
53. TRC, NRA, National Archives of Canada – Burnaby, FA 10-138, 07/1956, Perm. volume 13528,
C. G. Brown, G. J. Buck, B. O. Filteau, “Report of the Educational Survey Commission on the
Educational Facilities and Requirements of the Indians of Canada,” July 1956, 10. [120.18398]
54. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 8703, file 962/6-1, part 7,
NAC – Ottawa, L. K. Poupore to H. M. Jones, 14 October 1957. [JOE-063234]
55. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton [118]779/6-1-751, volume V, 09/61–
03/65, NAC – Edmonton, P. H. Lyonnais to T. R. Kelly, 29 March 1963. [BQL-003405-0002]
56. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, P. H. Lyonnais to R. F. Battle, 6August 1965. [OGP-130070]
57. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, 779/6-1-009, volume 1, 04/65–12/66,
NAC – Edmonton, “Indians Deplore Conditions at Blue Quills,” St. Paul Journal, 16 September
1965. [BQL-004831-0001]
58. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 779/2, 03/60–
12/70, volume 2, D., Arthur Laing to Frank Fane, 29 August 1967. [BQL-002187]
59. TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, 779/6-1-009, volume 10, 04/68–12/69, CRHQ, S. R. Gagnon to R. F. Davey, 29 April 1969. [BQL-000840]
60. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 577/6-1583, volume 2, J. O. Harris to D. A. H. Nield, 8 November 1963; [PLP-003440] A. G. Leslie to J.
O. Harris, 2 December 1963. [PLP-003435]
61. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Excerpt from report of Principalof St. Mary’s School, from internal evidence 1967 [the document itself is undated but it speaksof the forty-two years that have passed since the school was built in 1925]. [OGP-140149]
62. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, box 2, Acc. 1999-01431-6, file 1/1-2-2-21, part2, Comments Regarding Specific Complaints in Brief Presented by Father Levaque, undated.
[NCA-003015-0003]
63. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file 6-21-1, volume 4, 03/1966–05/1968, Further Comments on the
Brief, undated. [120.01644A]
64. TRC, NRA, INAC – Archival Unit – Ottawa, file 774/25-1, volume 1 (H-72-340), W. I. Turnbull
to Jean Chrétien, 28 October 1970. [NCA-013075-0000]
65. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, 774/6-1-019, volume 2, 01/72–07/75,
NAC, Edmonton, M. G. Jutras to District Supervisor, Edmonton/Hobbema, 14 December
1970. [ERM-007242]
66. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
2A, file 40, Indian School Administration Newsletter, November 1962, unpaginated, pages 11,
14, 17 of 22-page portable document format file. [GDC-005398]
67. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 853/25-13,
01/65–09/70, volume 3, R. F. Davey to G. Michaud, 21 October 1968. [YKS-000425]
68. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives, Ottawa, HR 6116.C73R 18, J. F. Ryan to J. P. Mulvihill, 21
January 1964. [OMI-035127]
69. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, RG10, Acc. E1998-00792-8, box 1 of 7,
file 601/13-7, volume 2, D. Lawson to F. Misiurski, 18 April 1972. [PAR-019266-0000]

Notes • 743
70. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, M. F. Frank to
G. Gauthier, 22 March 1972. [SMD-002376]
71. TRC, NRA, INAC – Departmental Library – Ottawa, “St. Michael’s Indian School Wins Service
Club Trophy,” The Indian Record, April 1946. [SMD-002822]
72. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8610, file 652/1-13, part 1, George
Roussel to B. F. Neary, 25 March 1949. [SMD-001575-0001]
73. TRA, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8610, file 652/1-13, part 1, Geo.-L.
Roussel to B. F. Neary, 25 March 1949. [SMD-001575-0001]
74. Marks, They Call Me Chief, 31. Sasakamoose played with the Chicago Blackhawks in the
1952–53 season. He was born on the Sandy Lake, Saskatchewan, reserve in 1933. TRC, NRA,
INAC – Departmental Library – Ottawa, “Saskatchewan Midget Hockey Champions,” Indian
Record, Volume 12, Number 5, May 1949. [SMD-002829]
75. Zeman et al., Hockey Heritage, 237.
76. Zeman et al., Hockey Heritage, 239–240. Piché’s name is erroneously given as Piechet.
77. TRC, NRA, INAC – Departmental Library – Ottawa, Indian Missionary Record, No. 2, February
1949, “Qu’Appelle Valley News,” Indian Missionary Record, February 1949, 4. [IMR-000098]
78. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, “Qu’Appelle Indian School Won Numerous Awards
in 1948,” Indian Missionary Record, April 1949, 4. (Information on skiing and Arthur Obey inphotograph captions.) [IMR-000411]
79. Saskatoon Public Library, “Prairie Gold: Sports Heroes from Saskatchewan,” http://
spldatabase.saskatoonlibrary.ca/ics-wpd/exec/icswppro.dll?AC=MENU_QUERY&XC=/icswpd/exec/icswppro.dll&TN=LH_SHOWS&SN=pg+Biography+opq&RF=www_PG%20Full%20
Record&EF=&DF=&MR=20&RL=0&EL=0&DL=0&NP=255&MF (accessed 28 January 2014).
80. Zeman et al., Hockey Heritage, 240.
81. TRC, NRA, Grey Nuns Archives, St. Boniface, Manitoba, M6/04/17, “Sports,” Teepee Tidings,
Indian School Lebret, Saskatchewan, Volume 3, Number 4, 1955, page 16 of 22-page portable
document format file. [GNB-000558]
82. TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives, Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Ottawa, “Sports Leaders
Honoured: Arthur Obey and Tony Cote,” Saskatchewan Indian, February–March 1980,
Volume 10, Number 2–3, 6. [PLD-030530]
83. Zeman et al., Hockey Heritage, 240–243.
84. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, RG10, Acc. E1996-97/435, box 7 of 48,
Flimsies – May 1973, J. P. Woods to Art Obey, 8 May 1973. [PLD-009041]
85. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7190, file 493/25-1-001, H. A.
Overwood to R. A. Hoey, 7 March 1947. [SWK-000391]
86. TRC, NRA, Presbyterian Church of Canada, Residential Schools Name Index, 2009, file 19887004-12-2, N. M. Rusaw to Frieda Matthews, 25 February 1949. [BIR-002765]
87. TRC, NRA, no document location, no document file number, Indian Schools Bulletin, Volume
4, Number 5, items 36–48, 13–14. [OKM-000393]
88. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 494/25-1015, volume 1, David Beaver, “A Trip To Sioux Lookout, 1950”; [MCI-004071-0003] J. Brachet
to G. Swartman, 6 May 1950. [MCI-004070-0001]
89. “All Indian Bantam Team to Play Here,” Ottawa Citizen, 4 April 1951, 24, http://news.google.
com/newspapers?nid=2194&dat=19510404&id=pHgvAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ltwFAAAAIBAJ&pg=7119,552644.

744 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
90. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 792, file 344, “12 Indian Puck-Toters
Here for Bantam Series,” n.d., no paper cited. A photo story on the players appeared in the 12
April 1951 issue of an Ottawa newspaper. [120.12345]
91. Wilf Bell, “All Indian Bantams Beat Ottawa East Six: Polish off City Champs in Fast and Clean
Clash,” Ottawa Citizen, 14 April 1951, 22, http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2194&dat=19510414&id=q3gvAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ltwFAAAAIBAJ&pg=7062,2641413.
92. “Sioux Lookout Indians Nosed out by Combines,” Ottawa Journal, 16 April 1951, 17.
93. “Sioux Black Hawks’ Trip Successful,” Ottawa Journal, 17 April 1951, 17.
94. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 2-15, box
23, “Report by Major-General G. R. Turner on Visit to Sioux Lookout Anglican Indian School,
16th and 17th June, 1950,” 4–5. [PLK-000296]
95. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta PAA, 71.220 B94 3985, “Hobbema Juniors andErmines Deadlocked”; “Our Intra-Mural Hockey League,” Moccasin News, Ermineskin School,
Hobbema, no date. [OGP-032616]
96. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta PAA, 71.220 B94 3985, F. R. Littlechild, “Hockey,” The
Moccasin News: Hobbema Indian School, unpaginated. [OGP-032614]
97. TRC, NRA, Soeurs Grises de Montreal, Prov. S. Albert Archives, Blue Quills School Moccasin
Telegram, Alex Janvier, “More Hockey,” Moccasin Telegram, Volume 9, Number 3, Jan–Feb
1952, 10–11. [GNA-000531]
98. TRC, NRA, Glenbow Museum Archives – Alberta, Call no. M-2022, St. Paul’s Anglican
Residential School School Newspaper ‘Sokapi Aginixin’ [Good News], 1955–1957, James
Gladstone Family Fonds, Oliver Soop, “Hockey Season 1954–55,” Sokapi Aginixin of St. Paul’sAnglican Indian Residential School, Easter 1955. [PUL-800349]
99. TRC, NRA, no document location, no document file source, “Hockey Season Roundup?”
Moccasin Telegram, Volume 16, Number 2, January–June 1959, Blue Quills School, St. Paul,
Alberta, unpaginated.
100. Littlechild, “INSPOL,” 247.
101. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220 B161 2440, M. St. Jacques, “St. Mary’s
Residential School Wins Hockey Tournament,” Indian Record, Volume 21, Number 2,
February 1958, 4. [OGP-023540]
102. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, file 630-105/10, 12-2, Report andReturns, Yellowknife Vocational and High School, 1957–1959, Archival box 228-11, Archival
Acc. G-1979-003, “Welfare Report, Sir John Franklin School, Yellowknife, N.W.T., January
1959.” [YKU-000209-0000]
103. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 2002-00101-4, box 74, file 87/24-1, part
1, R. L. Boulanger to Director of Information, 15 March 1961. [PTB-001144-0000]
104. Littlechild, “INSPOL,” 247–249; Littlechild, “Native Hockey Council,” 249–250; Wetaskiwin
and County Sports Hall of Fame, Inductee 2007, Athlete Builder, J. Wilton Littlechild, http://
wetaskiwinsportsfame.com/inductees/Inductees%202007/athlete_builder07_littlechild.htm(accessed 18 March 2015).
105. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 792, file 344, Pratt, Gerry, “Little
Indians Are Big Fighters,” Vancouver Sun Magazine Supplement, 31 March 1951. [NPC600625]
106. TRC, NRA, INAC – Departmental Library – Ottawa, “First Winner of the Tom Longboat
Trophy,” The Indian Missionary Record, Volume 15, Number 3, March 1952, 3. [IMR-000400]

Notes • 745
107. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, FA 10-379, 1999-01431-6, box 405,
987/25-1-018, part 1, Indian Education – Squamish Students Residence, Fraser District,
1950–1969, NAC, Ottawa, I. Eisenhardt to W. S. Arneil, 20 November 1950; [SQU-000617] I.
Eisenhardt to W. S. Arneil, 2 January 1951. [SQU-000619]
108. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, file 987/1-13, part 1, South Coast
Education District – [Fraser Agency] – School Establishment – General, 1952–1966, FA 10-27,
Perm. volume 8615, Microfilm reel C-14234, P. Phelan to W. S. Arneil, 21 November 1952;[SLT-200092] Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, RG10, FA 10-332, v1998-00325-6, box
3, file 153/24-4, part 1, Sports, 1951/08–1967/10, NAC – Burnaby, Genevieve Mussell to Mr.
Dunn, 3 November 1959. [MIS-009240]
109. “Nuns Are Sponsoring Amateur Boxing Show,” Tuscaloosa News, 15 April 1952, 6, http://news.
google.com/newspapers?nid=1817&dat=19520415&id=zQwdAAAAIBAJ&sjid=LpgEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6037,4490842; “Nuns Staging Ring Tourney in Vancouver,” Ottawa Citizen, 15 April
1952, 21, http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2194&dat=19520415&id=ttc-AAAAIBAJ&sjid=3UwMAAAAIBAJ&pg=7314,2918004.
110. Rod Mickleburgh, “Proud Leader Ernie Campbell Helped Musqueam Stand Tall,” Globe andMail, 29 November 2013, http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/proudleader-ernie-campbell-helped-musqueam-stand-tall/article15699081/?service=mobile.
111. TRC, NRA, O.M.I. House – Vancouver, box 44 – Mission [Kelleher] – Mission [Abbey], folder
2 – Mission Newspaper Clippings, 1865–1997, Series One Plus Finding Aid, B.C./Yukon
Local Community of O.M.I. Lacombe Canada Province [formerly St. Paul’s Province], “JuniorGolden Glovers Start Swapping Punches Here Tonight,” Trail Times, 16 April 1956. [MIS800035]
112. Zeman, Run with Longboat, 82–83, 91–93; “Chief Goes to Jail for Fishing,” Indian World, July
1982, 7.
113. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, R776-0-5 (RG55), volume 21412, T.B. #733124,
704920, Hobbema Rodeo School, undated. [120.11935B]
114. Wall, Game Plan, 216.
115. For an example from the 1940s, see: TRC, NRA, Grey Nuns Archives, St. Boniface, Manitoba,
M6/04/03, Sister Claire Sauve to Reverend Mother Anna Trottier, 12 April 1946. [GNB-000078]
For an example from the 1950s, see: TRC, NRA, Sisters of Charity [Grey Nuns] Edmonton
Archives – Alberta, file L59-N09, Blood Reserve, The Voice of St. Mary’s Newsletter, 12/1954,“St. Mary’s Boys Switch From Softball to Baseball,” and “St. Mary’s Girls Are the Queens of theSoftball Diamonds,” 18, The Voice of St. Mary’s, June 1954. [GNA-001725] For an example fromthe 1960s, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa,
GRS Files, box 1A, file 17, Gordons Boys Baseball Team 1962. [GDC-009075]
116. Johnston, Indian School Days, 200–206.
117. Johnston, Indian School Days, 207.
118. Canadien, From Lishamie, 257–258.
119. Forsyth, “Power to Define,” 10, 102.
120. Forsyth, “Power to Define,” 100.
121. TRC, NRA, Presbyterian Church of Canada, Residential Schools Name Index, 2009, 19887004-13-3, N. M. Rusaw to Frieda Matthews, 22 February 1959. [BIR-001251]
122. TRC, NRA, Presbyterian Church of Canada, Residential Schools Name Index, 2009, 19887004-13-3, N. M. Rusaw to Frieda Matthews, 16 March 1959. [BIR-001250]

746 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
123. TRC, NRA, Anthony Shaw’s Personal Collection, “Lower Post Teams Visit Whitehorse,” 23
April 1969. [LOW-002634]
124. Coates, “Father J. M. Mouchet,” 285–286.
125. Cross Country Ski de Fond, “The History of Test,” http://www.cccski.com/About/History/
Photos-and-Stories/The-History-of-T-E-S-T--%281%29.aspx#.UvukJV6Lnv0 (accessed 12
February 2014).
126. Cross Country Ski de Fond, “The Firth Sisters: Northern Lights,” 10 January 2011, http://www.
cccski.com/About/History/Our-Olympians/The-Firth-Sisters--Northern-Lights-%281%29.
aspx?lang=fr-CA#.UvugsV6Lnv0 (accessed 12 February 2014).
127. Cross Country Ski de Fond, “The Firth Sisters: Northern Lights,” 10 January 2011, http://www.
cccski.com/About/History/Our-Olympians/The-Firth-Sisters--Northern-Lights-%281%29.
aspx?lang=fr-CA#.UvugsV6Lnv0 (accessed 12 February 2014).
128. Cross Country Ski de Fond, “The Firth Sisters: Northern Lights,” 10 January 2011, http://www.
cccski.com/About/History/Our-Olympians/The-Firth-Sisters--Northern-Lights-%281%29.
aspx?lang=fr-CA#.UvugsV6Lnv0 (accessed 12 February 2014); Ian Stewart, “Skiing Legend
Shares Secrets of Success,” Yukon News, 14 May 2006, http://www.yukon-news.com/news/
skiing-legend-shares-secrets-of-success.
129. Zeman, Run with Longboat, 103.
130. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Excerpts from Oblate Fathers’
Codex Historiens and Grey Nuns Chronicles, Grollier Hall, 9, page 14 of 19-page portable
document format file. [GNN-000179]
131. Cross Country Ski de Fond, “The Firth Sisters: Northern Lights,” 10 January 2011, http://www.
cccski.com/About/History/Our-Olympians/The-Firth-Sisters--Northern-Lights-%281%29.
aspx?lang=fr-CA#.UvugsV6Lnv0 (accessed 12 February 2014).
132. Cross Country Ski de Fond, “The Firth Sisters: Northern Lights,” 10 January 2011, http://www.
cccski.com/About/History/Our-Olympians/The-Firth-Sisters--Northern-Lights-%281%29.
aspx?lang=fr-CA#.UvugsV6Lnv0 (accessed 12 February 2014).
133. Grollier Hall Year Book, 1970–1971, unpaginated, page 23 of 58-page portable document
format file, https://archives.algomau.ca/main/sites/default/files/2012-21_002_016.pdf(accessed 12 February 2014).
134. Ian Stewart, “Skiing Legend Shares Secrets of Success,” Yukon News, 14 May 2006, http://
www.yukon-news.com/news/skiing-legend-shares-secrets-of-success.
135. Glenn Taylor, “Grollier Victims Form Support group,” Northern News Service, 19 December
1997, http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/1997-12/dec19_97grol.html; Manning, Guts
and Glory, 133.
136. Phil Fontaine, quoted in Jaine, Residential Schools, 51.
137. See, for example: Graham, Mush Hole, 390.
138. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11325, file 6-39-3, The Club Star,
Garnier Residential School, Spanish, Ontario, Volume III, Number 12, December 1947. [AGA000437]
139. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “Excerpts from two letters
received at the Christie Indian School, Kakawis, B.C.”; [CIS-000161] TRC, NRA, Library andArchives Canada – Ottawa, 879-1, part 2, West Coast Agency – Christie Residential School,
General Admission, 1930–1947, FA 10-17, Microfilm reel C-8764, volume 6439, National
Archives of Canada – Ottawa, R. A. Hoey to G. Forbes, 4 January 1941. [CST-008096]
140. MacGregor, Chief, 34–35.

Notes • 747
141. “Everybody Wants Place on Team When Singing Indians Audition,” Winnipeg Tribune, 20
October 1969. [PLP-003416-0001]
142. “Beauval Indian Boys,” The Boy Choir and Soloist Directory, http://www.boysoloist.com/
artist.asp?VID=3448 (accessed 17 February 2014).
143. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “Kamloops Indian School Loses
Dance Instructor,” newspaper article, no publication cited. [OKM-000712]
144. TRC, NRA, “K.I.R.S. Dancers Score Top Marks in Festival,” Indian Record, June 1960, 8. [BVT001818]
145. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “Kamloops Indian School Loses
Dance Instructor,” newspaper article, no publication cited. [OKM-000712]
146. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2-15, box 30, file 3, “Residential Schools & Hostels, Division of M.S.C.C., Newsletter
Spring – 1963. [AAC-084493]
147. Cruikshank, Life Lived Like a Story, 71.
148. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
14A, file 10, John J. T. Johnstone to W. M. Green, 24 January 1959. [GDC-016040]
149. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files,
box C21, file 19, “The Gordon Indian Dancers,” undated; [GDC-007680-0001] TRC, NRA,
INAC, file 675/25-13, volume 1, W. P. Starr to E. Korchinski, 17 March 1972; [GDC-085829]
TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/2513, volume 5, J. B. Freeman to J. D. Leask, 7 April 1978; [GDC-005579] TRC, NRA, INAC –Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box 9A, file 21, Gerry
Worth to District Superintendent of Education, DIAND, 16 July 1979. [GDC-042619-0000]
150. Canadien, From Lishamie, 253–254.
151. Canadien, From Lishamie, 264–265.
152. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Esther Tervo to Chairman, Boardof Home Missions, United Church of Canada, 2 November 1963. [UCB-005579]
153. Tseshaht First Nation, “George Clutesi,” http://www.tseshaht.com/history-culture/
influential-figures/george-clutesi (accessed 12 February 2014). For Clutesi’s connection toCarr, see: “Carr Brushes Go East,” The Province, 4 January 1967, Vancouver Art in the Sixties,
http://vancouverartinthesixties.com/archive/133 (accessed 12 February 2014).
154. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, EEMJ to John Andrews, 6
November 1963. [UCB-005585] For reports on Clutesi’s earlier criticisms, see: TRC, NRA, No
document location, no document file source, Robert Hall to R. W. Henderson, 15 September
1961. [UCB-005393]
155. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, J. A. Andrews to E. E. M. Joblin,
12 November 1963. [UCB-005587]
156. TRC, NRA, R. T. Sullivan, “Visit to the Alberni Valley,” 28 February 1965. [UCB-005689]
157. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “Alberni Indian Students Fully
Integrated in Fall,” The Sun, 21 June 1965. [UCB-005731]
158. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, 958/25-13, volume 3, J. A.
Andrews to R. F. Davey, 28 June 1966. [ABR-000402]
159. Clutesi, Son of Raven, 10. For Clutesi’s two other books, see: Tseshaht First Nation, “George
Clutesi,” http://www.tseshaht.com/history-culture/influential-figures/george-clutesi(accessed 12 February 2014).

748 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
160. “Carr Brushes Go East,” The Province, 4 January 1967, Vancouver Art in the Sixties, http://
vancouverartinthesixties.com/archive/133 (accessed 12 February 2014).
161. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1967–68, 80.
162. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “Education Week at Blue Quills:
Open House for Parents and Visitors,” St. Paul Journal, 18 May 1951, page 5 of 110-page
portable document format file. [GNA-000409]
163. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 779/24-4,
volume 1, 1950–1974, RCAP, Ian Eisenhardt to Bernet Rollande, 13 November 1950. [BQL004156]
164. Chau, “Profile of Alexandre (Alex) Simeon Janvier,” 380; Janvier, “Biography,” http://www.
alexjanvier.com/aa1.html (accessed 17 February 2014).David Staples, “I Went Right into the
Jugular Vein,” Edmonton Journal, 31 January 1988. [GNA-000409]
165. Hughes and Beardy, Jackson Beardy, 4–6.
166. Hughes and Beardy, Jackson Beardy, 6–7.
167. Hughes and Beardy, Jackson Beardy, 7.
168. Hughes and Beardy, Jackson Beardy, 8.
169. Hughes and Beardy, Jackson Beardy, 10.
170. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6431, file 877-1, part 4, “17-Year-Old
Girl Wins Arts Scholarship,” Victoria Daily Times, 9 July 1947. [ABR-001417]
171. “Judith Morgan,” British Columbia Archives, http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/exhibits/
timemach/galler03/frames/morgan.htm (accessed 12 February 2014); “Judith Morgan,”
Vancouver Art in the Sixties, http://vancouverartinthesixties.com/people/70 (accessed 12
February 2014).
172. Art Magazine (1974): 29, quoted in Hughes and Beardy, Jackson Beardy, 7.
173. Morrisseau, “My Name Is Norval Morrisseau,” 41–42.
174. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, GARDD, FA 10-63, volume 13464, file 901/25-1, part4, 1968, A. H. Friesen to Regional Director, Social Affairs, 29 November 1968. [MIS-002514]
175. TRC, CAR, 10a Les Oeuvres Oblates de l’Ontario (Deschatelets Archive), PC 101 K15C 28 I,“Outstanding Display of Indian Handicraft: Fine Work of Indian Residential School Pupils
Will Be Shown at Vancouver,” undated newspaper article, name of newspaper unknown.
[10a-c902189-d0028-010]
176. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, file 630-105/10, 12-2 Report andReturns, Yellowknife Vocational and High School 1957–1959, Archival box 228-11, Archival
Acc. G-1979-003, “Welfare Report, Sir John Franklin School, Yellowknife, N.W.T., January
1959.” [YKU-000209-0000]
177. TRC, NRA, DIAND, Residential Schools Records Office, file 501/25-13-067, volume 3, J. R.
Wright, District Superintendent of Schools, Dauphin to the Regional Superintendent of
Schools, Manitoba, 10 February 1969. [PLP-000088]
178. Haig-Brown, Resistance and Renewal, 77.
179. Val Werier, “Norway House Indians See City for First Time on Trip to Join Army,” Winnipeg
Evening Tribune, 10 August 1942; TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume6269, file 581-10, J. D. Sutherland to P. G. Lazenby, 2 December 1936; [NHU-002018] TRC,
NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6269, file 581-10, R. T. Chapin to P. G.
Lazenby, 8 July 1937; [NHU-080211-0001] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10,
volume 6269, file 581-10, R. T. Chapin to P. G. Lazenby, 25 March 1938; [NHU-080235-0001]
TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6269, file 581-10, P. G. Lazenby

Notes • 749
to Secretary, Indian Affairs, 25 April 1935; [NHU-080175] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada, RG10, volume 6269, file 581-10, W. W. Shoup to Indian Affairs, 30 June 1934. [NHU080158]
180. Poulin, Invisible Women, 57, 79, 109, 117.
181. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, Elizabeth Atwater to Mrs.
Knowles, 27 October 1944. [GDC-008724] For her position as teacher, see: TRC, NRA, INAC
– Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/23-5-018, volume 1,
Department of Indian Affairs, Inspector’s Report on Gordon’s Indian Residential School, 22
October 1940. [GDC-005536-0001]
182. Sheffield, Red Man’s on the Warpath, 45.
183. Sealey and Van de Vyvere, Thomas George Prince, 1, 6, 9, 13–14, 18–25, 25; Veterans’ Affairs,“Military Medal,” http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/medals-decorations/ordersdecorations/mm (accessed 14 February 2014); Historica Canada, “Tommy Prince,” https://www.historicacanada.ca/content/heritage-minutes/tommy-prince (accessed 14 February2014).
184. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG24, Acc. 83-84/215, box 170, file 2001-12/1103,
The Secretary, Department of National Defence, Ottawa to R. O. Alexander, 20 November
1940; [GDC-064072-0000] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6308, file653-17, part 1, M. Christianson to Secretary, Indian Affairs Branch, 15 April 1941; [FHR000800-0000] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6195, file 463-17, part 1,
Director to Deputy Minister, 15 October 1945; [FFR-000404] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada, RG10, volume 6216, file 470-5, part 6, “Quarterly Report Ending March, 1945, on
Sioux Lookout Agency, G. Swartman. [PLK-000220]
185. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, S. H. Middleton to R. A.
Hoey, 2 March 1944. [AANDC-935913]
186. Candy, “History of the Royal Canadian Army Cadets,” The Greater Vernon Museum andArchives, http://www.vernonmuseum.ca/ex_cadets.html (accessed 14 February 2014).
187. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/25-1020, volume 1, Philip Phelan to V. de Varennes, 17 September 1945. [MDD-000565-0001]
188. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/25-1020, volume 1, V. de Varennes to Philip Phelan, 21 September 1945. [MDD-000565-0002]
189. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, C. A. F. Clark to Bernard
Neary, 13 February 1947. [AANDC-935768]
190. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, R. A. Hoey to C.
Foulkes, 28 March 1947; [AANDC-935762] W. J. F. Pratt to Director Indian Affairs, 1 May 1947.
[AANDC-935763]
191. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8788, file 487/25-10-014, part 1, D. S.
Pitts to A. G. Hamilton, 27 February 1947. [CJC-000934]
192. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, A. J. Coulter to Deputy
Minister, Indian Affairs, 28 March 1947; [AANDC-935614] Bernard Neary to Norman Paterson,
22 April 1947. [AANDC-935617]
193. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada RG24, Acc. 83-84/215, box 170, file 2001-12/1103,
C. Vokes to Army Headquarters, Department of National Defence, Ottawa, 19 February 1952.
[GDC-064055]
194. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, J. M. Delamere, 26
October 1959; [AANDC-936394] TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files

750 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box 13A, file 9, G. G. Vickers to Sirs, 30 April 1962. [GDC014929]
195. TRC, NRA, INAC – Departmental Library – Ottawa, Indian Record, Sept. 1967, “Red Letter Day
at Duck Lake,” Indian Record, September 1967, 5. [SMD-000465]
196. TRC, NRA, Quebec Regional Service Centre – LAC – Quebec City, file 371/25-1-Reports,
volume 2, Simonne Minvielle to District School Superintendent, Abitibi Indian District, 30
June 1969. [NCA-001520-0003]
197. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG24, Acc. 1983-1984/232, box 7, file 1086-11-7225,
Arthur Macdonald to Director of Cadets, Canadian Forces Headquarters, Ottawa, 2 November
1970; [PAR-019156] Arthur Macdonald to Director of Cadets, National Defence Headquarters,
Ottawa, 26 March 1975; [PAR-019164-0000] J. W. Bordon to TCHQ, 2 April 1975. [PAR-019165]
198. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG24, Acc. 1983-1984/232, box 7, file 1086-11-7225,
C. L. Fox, to A. Macdonald, 2 February 1977. [PAR-019170]
199. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG22, Perm. volume 859, file 40-2-17, part7, Schools ... N.W.T. ... General, January 1962–December 1962, FA 22-1, “Memorandum to
Deputy Minister,” B. G. Sivertz, 21 November 1962. [RCN-009081-0001]
200. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG22, Perm. volume 1019, file 40-2-17,
part 8, Schools – NWT – General Building ... Maintenance of ... Personnel of ... January 1963–
December 1963, FA 22-3, G. Rowley to Sivertz, 23 April 1963. [IKU-000573]
201. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, Pupil Residence – General, 1973–
1978, Archival box 4-2, Archival Acc. G1995-004, Gary Black, 28 February 1973. [FNU-001748]
202. TRC, TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, G. P. Dunlop to R.
F. Davey, 28 June 1955. [AANDC-935595]
203. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 956/25-1,
11/50–02/62, volume 1, RCAP-R, C. F. Hives to W. S. Arneil, 18 September 1958. [GRG-001396]
204. St. Paul Journal, 13 May 1954, quoted in Persson, “Blue Quills,” 153.
205. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, 773/25-10-004, volume 10316, 1925–1958,
NAC, J. G. McGilp to K. R. Brown, 21 January 1958. [PUL-003084-0001] The Air Cadet League
was established in 1940. See: Air Cadet League of Canada, “History,” http://aircadetleague.
com/about-us/history/ (accessed 14 February 2014).
206. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 672/1-13-016, part 1,
G. R. Turner, to R. F. Davey, 31 October 1958. [PAR-017892-0001]
207. TRC, CAR, Les Oeuvres Oblates de l’Ontario (Deschatelets Archive), The Indian School
Bulletin, Volume 9, Number 5, May 1955, 2. [10a-c902220-d0002-001] A Navy League
Cadet program was organized in 1948. See: Navy League, “Significant Dates,” http://www.
navyleague.ca/en/about-us/our-history/significant-dates/ (accessed 14 February 2014).
208. TRC, NRA, DIAND Library, The Indian School Bulletin, Volume 11, Number 4, March 1957,
1–2. [AEMR-010999]
209. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, “Gordon Cadet Corp
Wins Top Honours,” no date. [AANDC-935677]
210. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files,
box 13A, file 9, “Gordon’s Indian Residential School, Punnichy, Saskatchewan, Permission toCamp Form,” 1960. [GDC-014937]
211. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, PAA 71.220 B93 3924, G. M. Latour to Hunter, 3 July
1961. [OGP-031726]

Notes • 751
212. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG85, Acc. 1997-98/076, box 131, file 680-1-15,
volume 1, Director to Administrator of the Arctic, 10 February 1967; [CVC-001824] Director to
Mr. Gordon, 25 August 1967. [CVC-001770]
213. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, FA 10-28, volume 8788, Microfilm
reel C-9715, file 976/25-10, part 1A, 1955–1957, Kootenay Agency – Correspondence
Regarding Cadets at the Kootenay Residential School [Newspaper Clippings], NAC, Ottawa, J.
S. Dunn to W. S. Arneil, 29 January 1957. [EGN-004732]
214. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, FA 10-28, volume 8788, Microfilm
reel C-9715, file 976/25-10, part 1A, 1955–1957, Kootenay Agency – Correspondence
Regarding Cadets at the Kootenay Residential School [Newspaper Clippings], NAC, Ottawa, J.
S. Dunn to W. S. Arneil, 18 February 1957. [EGN-004739]
215. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, FA 10-28, volume 8788, Microfilm
reel C-9715, file 976/25-10, part 1A, 1955–1957, Kootenay Agency – Correspondence
Regarding Cadets at the Kootenay Residential School [Newspaper Clippings], NAC, Ottawa,
W. S. Arneil to J. S. Dunn, 24 January 1957. [EGN-004733]
216. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, FA 10-28, volume 8788, Microfilm
reel C-9715, file 976/25-10, part 1A, 1955–1957, Kootenay Agency – Correspondence
Regarding Cadets at the Kootenay Residential School [Newspaper Clippings], NAC, Ottawa, J.
S. Dunn to W. S. Arneil, 29 January 1957. [EGN-004732]
217. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, FA 10-28, volume 8788, Microfilm
reel C-9715, file 976/25-10, part 1A, 1955–1957, Kootenay Agency – Correspondence
Regarding Cadets at the Kootenay Residential School [Newspaper Clippings], NAC, Ottawa,
D. H. Christie to Director, Indian Affairs Branch, 1 March 1957. [EGN-004740]
218. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, FA 10-28, volume 8788, Microfilm
reel C-9715, file 976/25-10, part 1A, 1955–1957, Kootenay Agency – Correspondence
Regarding Cadets at the Kootenay Residential School [Newspaper Clippings], NAC, Ottawa,
H. M. Jones to W. S. Arneil, 4 March 1957. [EGN-004741]
219. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Canadian Forces Cadet
Annual Inspection Report, for the training year ending 31 May 1972. [AANDC-935665]
220. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Canadian Forces Cadet
Annual Inspection Report, for the training year ending 7 June 1973. [AANDC-935978]
221. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Canadian Forces Cadet
Unit Visit Report, G. S. Doucette, 6 December 1976. [AANDC-935822]
222. TRC, NRA, Report of Junior Red Cross, School Year 1957–58 [from internal evidence, this is
the report for the Saskatchewan Branch of the Junior Red Cross], 1. [MRS-000337-0001]
223. McCallum, “Make Good Canadians,” 58–59, 90, 102–104, 140–141.
224. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, PAA 71.220 B94 3988, “Girl Guiding,” Amy Dion,
unpaginated, Moccasin News, Volume 6, Number 2, May 1956, page 16 of 20-page portable
document format file. [OGP-032633]
225. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, NAC – Ottawa, RG22, 772/2, volume 1207,
1937–1971, “Junior Red Cross,” Elsie Black, unpaginated, Old Sun Rays, undated, page 19 of
20-page portable document format file. [The publication is undated, but information on page
12 indicates that it is from 1953.] [BSS-001326]
226. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta, PAA 71.220 B132 5770, “Red Cross Club,” Elizabeth
Cardinal, Moccasin Telegram, Volume 8, Number 1, September–October, unpaginated, page 7
of 143-page portable document format file. [OGP-010021]

752 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
227. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6036, file 150-92, part 1, Constance
Fraser to Bernard F. Neary, 3 March 1947. [PAR-017328-0000]
228. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, file 4, All Saints School –Aklavik – Historical Notes 1941–08/46, page 006985-007028, Accession GS 75-103, series 2:15,
box 27, Report by Mabel Jones. [ASU-002800]
229. TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, 772/24-6, volume 1, 1958–1964, CR-HQ, L.
C. Hunter to Indian Affairs, 16 July 1963. [BSS-002325-0000]
230. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG85, Perm. volume 1470, file 630/1023-1,
part 1, Govt. School – Broughton Island N.W.T., 1959–June 1967, FA 85-4, “Principal’s HalfYearly Progress Report,” Orland Larsen, 31 January 1965. [BIS-000174-0001]
231. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG85, box 12, Acc. 1985-86/220, file A6606, part 1, Girl Guide Association, January 1967–October 1969, FA 85-15, Mrs. D. Ouchterlony
to A. Stevenson, 7 April 1967. [CVC-002789]
232. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG85, box 12, Acc. 1985-86/220, file A6606, part 1, Girl Guide Association, January 1967–October 1969, FA 85-15, R. A. Graves to Mrs. D.
Ouchterlony, 28 April 1967. [CVC-002465]
233. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2.15, box 25, file 5, H. G. Cook to All Principals, 5 May 1950. [AAC-083489]
234. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file, T. W. S. Parsons to Coudert, 12 December 1951. [OBG-000927] For Coudert’s initials, see: Archives Canada, “Roman Catholic
Church, Whitehorse Diocese collection,” http://www.archivescanada.ca/english/search/
ItemDisplay.asp?sessionKey=1143412449030_206_191_57_196&l=0&lvl=2&v=0&coll=1&itm=268856&rt=1&bill=1 (accessed 17 February 2014).
235. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, FA 10-138, Perm. volume 13348, 208/12-1-1, Provincial Advisory Committee on Indian Affairs, part 2, 1956/01–1957/10, “Native
Indian in Scouting,” The Boy Scout Association, British Columbia Provincial Council, 23
October 1956. [125.00391E]
236. McCallum, “Make Good Canadians,” 145–148.
237. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, file 773/24-1-2, volume 1, Social
Activities, 06/1965–07/1975, Archival Acc. E-1994-95/653, Archival box 47, R. D. Ragan to H.
B. Holloway, 20 March 1967; [PUL-200219] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10,
volume 9082, file 521/25-1, Jack Strong to Garth Crockett, 27 April 1967. [DRS-122499-0001]
238. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, RG10, FA 10-138, Perm. volume 13462,
901/24-6, Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, part 1, 1964/05–1968/01, R. M. Hall to RSVT, 6 June 1967.
[125.02528]
239. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, R. F. Battle to all Superintendents, Alberta Region,
Principals and Teachers of Indian Day and Residential School, 19 November 1958; [OGP031492] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG85, volume 643, file 630/101-1,
part 3, Government School – Fort Resolution, N.W.T., 1953–1960, W. G. Brown to Kathleen
Herman, 20 August 1959; [FRU-001575] TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, PAA 71.220
B160 2316, L. C. Hunter, to M. J. Lafrance, 14 June 1961. [OGP-021711]
240. Graham, Mush Hole, 390.
241. Graham, Mush Hole, 422.
242. For an example of Starr’s involvement in the cadet corps at the Anglican school in Cardston,
Alberta, see: TRC, NRA, Glenbow Museum Archives – Alberta, Call No. M-2022, St. Paul’sAnglican Residential School School Newspaper ‘Sokapi Aginixin’ [Good News], 1955–1957,

Notes • 753
James Gladstone Family Fonds, “St. Paul’s Kainai Cadet Corps,” Alex Good Striker, Sokapi
Aginixin, June 1957, 7. [PUL-800351-0001]
243. TRC, NRA, INAC, file 675/25-13, volume 1, W. P. Starr to E. Korchinski, 17 March 1972; [GDC085829] TRC, NRA, INAC – Departmental Library – Ottawa, “Bantams European Tour,” Ivan
McNab, The Saskatchewan Indian, Volume 5, Number 1, 31 January 1975, 8; [TSI-000020]
TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, Acc. 88-89/057, file 675/25-13-018, W. P. Starr
to O. N. Zakreski, 21 August 1974. [GDC-085834]
244. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/25-13,
volume 5, J. B. Freeman to J. D. Leask, 7 April 1978. [GDC-005579]
245. Mandryk, “Uneasy Neighbours,” 210.
246. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
C21, file 17A, Gordon Cadet Corps, 16th Annual Inspection, 14 May 1986, page 10 of 11-page
portable document format file; [GDC-007742] A. (M.) v. Canada (Attorney General) 2001,
SKQB 504 (CanLII).
247. Dawn Ostrem, “Back to Court: Paul Leroux Challenges Convictions, Sentence,” Northern News
Services, 26 June 2000, http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/2000-06/jun26_00back.
html; “Paul Leroux Gets 3 Years for Residential School Abuse,” CBC News, 12 December 2013,
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/paul-leroux-gets-3-years-for-residential-schoolabuse-1.2461629.
248. TRC, AVS, Fred Sasakamoose, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, 2 February 2012, Statement Number: SP043.
249. Chau, “Profile of Alexandre (Alex) Simeon Janvier,” 380; Janvier, “Biography,” http://www.
alexjanvier.com/aa1.html (accessed 17 February 2014).
250. Kelm, Wilder West, 166, 211.

The staff experience: 1940–2000
1. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1955, 51.
2. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 1/25-13-2,
volume 1, R. F. Battle to Minister, Indian Affairs, 30 December 1966. [MRS-001464]
3. For example, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, NCR-E4974-1 (Encl 1), volume 3 (Ctrl #446-19), “Saskatchewan Region, Student Residences: An Issue Management Discussion Paper,” 8 February 1994. [NCA-016023-0002]
4. TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Cariboo Archives, section #205, St. George Indian Residential
School, Card D.C. 2C11, Lytton-St.-George’s School, #88.44, “All Saints Indian Residential
School Staff Manual 2nd Revision, 1967,” A. W. Harding, Vice-Principal, 22–23. [AEMR177341]
5. For examples, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection –Ottawa, NCR-E4974-1 (Encl 1), volume 3 (Ctrl #446-19), “Saskatchewan Region, Student
Residences: An Issue Management Discussion Paper,” 8 February 1994. [NCA-016023-0002]
6. For evidence of the Catholic schools’ ability to employ more staff due to the “lower scale ofremuneration paid to religious orders,” see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10,
volume 8795, file 1/25-13, part 2, H. M. Jones to Deputy Minister, 2 January 1957. [AEMR011022]

754 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
7. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG55, FA 55-22, Acc. 1980-1981/069, box 118, file1105, part 1, 1964–1972, Rates of Pay & Contributions of Employment of Teachers, “Authority
to Revise Teachers’ Salaries,” submission to Treasury Board, 14 May 1965. [AEMR-150661]
8. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 2-15, box
24, “Visit to Sioux Lookout Anglican Indian Residential School, 11th and 12th September
1955, Major G. R. Turner.” [PLK-000960]
9. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document files source, Commission to Study IndianWork, The United Church of Canada, 1958, 28–29. [UCB-005240]
10. TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Cariboo Archives, section #205, St. George Indian Residential
School, Card D.C. 2C11, Lytton-St.-George’s School, #88.44, “All Saints Indian Residential
School Staff Manual 2nd Revision, 1967, Mr. A. W. Harding,” Vice-Principal, 26–27. [AEMR177341]
11. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, R776-0-5 (RG55), volume 22001, DIAND 1970, part
1, T.B. #664524, Treasury Board Minute, “Acceptance of Transfer of Administration and Control of Land,” 6 January 1967. [120.11069]
12. TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Cariboo Archives, section #205, St. George Indian Residential
School, Card D.C. 2C11, Lytton-St.-George’s School, #88.44, “All Saints Indian Residential
School Staff Manual 2nd Revision, 1967, A. W. Harding,” Vice-Principal, 16–19. [AEMR177341]
13. TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, 963/16-1, volume 3, Audit Reports – Kamloops Student Residence, 1960–1970, HQ-CR, M. J. Horrocks to J. B. Currier, 28 April 1967,
Statement No. 3, Kamloops Indian Residential School, Kamloops, B.C., Salaries, Room andBoard for the year ended December 31, 1966, page 10 of 15-page portable document format
file. [KAM-004130] For enrolment, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa,
PARC 963/1-13, 11/51–1974, volume 2, HQ,: “Kamloops Budget 1967, Authorized 1966.”[KAM-001082]
14. For Sechelt enrolment, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 955/23-6, volume 1, 1953–1968, RCAP [67-1], Principal’s Monthly Report,
Sechelt Residential School, November 1966. [SLT-002516] For Sechelt staff, see: TRC, NRA,
INAC – BC Regional Records Office – Vancouver, 955/16-2, volume 1, 09/1935–04/1967, CRBC, R. G. S. Yates to J. B. Currier, 29 March 1967. [SLT-009725-0001] For Cardston enrolment,
see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 773/2316-755, 09/66–02/68, volume 1, RCAP, “Principal’s Monthly Report, St. Paul’s Residential
School,” January 1967. [PUL-002356] For Cardston staff, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records
Office – Ottawa, 773/16-2-004, 1935–1967, volume 1, CR-HQ, G. H. Cheney to Chief Treasury
Officer, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, 4 May 1967, Statement No.
3, St. Paul’s Anglican Indian Residential School, Cardston, Alberta, Salaries, Room and Boardfor the year ended December 31, 1966, page 10 of 18-page portable document format file.
[PUL-002640]
15. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 985/2, part 1, Stuart Lake District, B.C., School File,
03/1937–09/1971, FA 22-2, Perm. volume 1209, National Archives of Canada – Ottawa, Robert
Howe to R. A. Hoey, 18 March 1942. [LEJ-015079]
16. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, box 5604, 08, A6, Fol., Church of England in Canada,
2 May 1946. [AEMR-177258]
17. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6040, file 160-2, part 4, R. F. Davey to
H. G. Cook, 31 October 1952. [AEMR-014535]

Notes • 755
18. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1954, 58.
19. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8843, file 709/16-2-001, part 1, C. H.
Birdsall to Dr. Dorey, 2 June 1948. [EDM-000371]
20. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file number, “Minutes of the Indian School
Committee of the Edmonton Presbytery of the United Church Held at St. Stephen’s College,
December 18, 1961, at 8 P.M.” [UCA-080553]
21. Anglican Church of Canada Archives, MSSC-GS 103, box 24, file 1, “Superintendent’s Visit toPrince Albert Indian School, June 16–18, 1954.”
22. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Commission to Study IndianWork, The United Church of Canada, 1958, 14–15. [UCB-005240]
23. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 2-15, box
21, Quarterly Report of the Superintendent, Indian School Administration to the Executive
Committee M.S.C.C., 15 February 1949. [GDC-007261]
24. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG55, FA 55-22, Acc. 1980-1981/069, box 118, file1105, part 1, 1964–1972, Rates of Pay & Contributions of Employment of Teachers, “Authority
to Revise Teachers’ Salaries,” submission to Treasury Board, 14 May 1965. [AEMR-150661]
25. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 2-15, box
24, “Superintendent’s Visit to Sioux Lookout Indian School,” 31 October 1956. [PLK-000818]
26. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2.15, box 22, file 3, “Report of the Superintendent, Indian School Administration to
the M.S.C.C. Executive, Toronto, February 12th, 1957.” [AAC-090809] For Godwin’s initials,
see: TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Athabasca Fonds, Provincial Archives of Alberta, file
A320/413, Godwin, Rev. A. E. W. – [Wabasca Indian School], [Official Correspondence ofBishop Sovereign] 1950–1956, Archival Acc. PR1970.0387/1482, Archival box 36, Bishop to A.
E. W. Godwin, 22 June 1956. [JON-800492]
27. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. [Illegible].050C,
box 112, file 1[Illegible], Edmonton IRS – Correspondence 1958–60/UCC Docs Toronto, “Minutes of Meeting of Indian School Committee of Edmonton Presbytery Held at St. Stephen’sCollege Board Room,” 3 December 1958. [UCA-080191]
28. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file number, “Minutes of Meeting of the
Indian School Committee of Edmonton Presbytery Held at the School at 8 p.m., Friday, March
11th, 1960.” [UCB-005314]
29. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. [Illegible].050C,
box 112, file [Illegible], Edmonton IRS – Correspondence 1958–60/UCC Docs Toronto, “Minutes of Meeting of Indian School Committee of Edmonton Presbytery Held at St. Stephen’sCollege at 2:30 p.m., May 11th, 1960.” [UCA-080205]
30. Elliott, Briefcase Boys; TRC, AVS, Mark DeWolf, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 22 and 27 February 2011, Statement Number:2011-0217.
31. TRC, AVS, Lorraine Arbez, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Winnipeg, Manitoba, 18 June 2010, Statement Number: 02-MB-18JU10-007.
32. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number 2011-1506.
33. TRC, AVS, Noreen Fischbuch, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Beaver Mines, Alberta, 3 August 2011, Statement Number: 2011-1692.

756 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
34. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: 2011-0259.
35. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: 2011-1649.
36. TRC, AVS, Eleanor Jackson, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, 2 December 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0054.
37. TRC, AVS, George Takashima, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Lethbridge, Alberta, 3 August 2011, Statement Number: 2011-1700.
38. TRC, AVS, Mary Hamilton, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, 26 February 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0219.
39. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: 2011-2033.
40. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: 2011-0254.
41. TRC, AVS, Noreen Fischbuch, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Beaver Mines, Alberta, 3 August 2011, Statement Number: 2011-1692; TRC, AVS, Bernice
Logan, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Tangier, Nova
Scotia, 24 February 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0227.
42. TRC, AVS, Gladys Ellis, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,Campbell River, British Columbia, 30 September 2011, Statement Number: 2011-1520; TRC,
AVS, George McMillan, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Kenora, Ontario, 9 July 2011, Statement Number: 2011-2035.
43. TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Cariboo Archives, section #205, St. George Indian Residential
School, Card D.C. 2C11, Lytton-St.-George’s School, #88.44, “All Saints Indian Residential
School Staff Manual 2nd Revision, 1967,” A. W. Harding, Vice-Principal, 26–27. [AEMR177341]
44. TRC, AVS, James Fiori, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Vancouver, British Columbia, 19 May 2010, Statement Number: S-BC-01-007.
45. TRC, AVS, Lawrence Brennan, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Pickering, Ontario, 30 May 2011, Statement Number: 2011-1641.
46. Shanahan, Jesuit Residential School, 210.
47. Jesuit Archives Upper Canada, Correspondence, 1855–1958, Maurice to Provincial, 14 July
1955, quoted in Shanahan, Jesuit Residential School, 215.
48. TRC, NRA, The Archives of the Jesuits of Upper Canada, Regis College, Toronto, ON, Jesuit
Fathers of Upper Canada Archives, Raymond Oliver to Father Provincial, 31 July 1946. [AGA000341]
49. TRC, AVS, Isobel Lee, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Winnipeg, Manitoba, 26 November 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0060.
50. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 2, “Norway
House Indian Residential School operated by the United Church of Canada,” 4 February 1960.
[120.16249]
51. TRC, NRA, No document location, no file location, H. to L. A. Dixon, 29 October 1952. [CGY081872]
52. TRC, AVS, Mark DeWolf, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Halifax, Nova Scotia, 22 and 27 February 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0217; Elliott, Briefcase Boys, 65, 77.

Notes • 757
53. TRC, AVS, Bernice Logan, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Tangier, Nova Scotia, 24 February 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0227.
54. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: 2011-0221.
55. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: 2011-0259.
56. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: 2011-0043.
57. TRC, AVS, Lawrence Brennan, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Pickering, Ontario, 30 May 2011, Statement Number: 2011-1641.
58. TRC, AVS, Theresa Reid, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Powell River, British Columbia, 28 September 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0263.
59. TRC, AVS, George Takashima, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Lethbridge, Alberta, 3 August 2011, Statement Number: 2011-1700.
60. TRC, AVS, Olive Saunders, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Thunder Bay, Ontario, 7 and 8 March 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0042.
61. TRC, AVS, Danny Saunders, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Thunder Bay, Ontario, 7 and 8 March 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0041.
62. Anglican Church of Canada Archives, MSSC-GS 103, box 24, file 1-5, “Superintendent’s Visit
to Moose Factory School, (Bishop Horden), September 8–15th, 1954.”
63. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
4A, file 27, W. J. D. Kerley to Principals, Residential Schools, Touchwood Indian Agency, 28
November 1955. [RCS-000147]
64. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2:15, box 24, file 1, “Superintendent’s Visit to St. Paul’s School, Cardston, January 14th
to 16th, 1954.” [AAC-090555] For Ellcome’s first name, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada – Ottawa, 773/6-2-004, part 1, 1956–1958, NAC, “Information Re: Quarters for Teachers (Form QT),” St. Paul’s School, Blood Agency, 1956, page 6 of 6-page portable document
format file. [PUL-006469]
65. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSSC-GS 75-103, box 24,
file 1, “Superintendent’s Visit to St. Philip’s School, Fort George, PQ, September 9–12, 1954.”[13a-c000033-d0012-001]
66. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 2:15, box
24, file 1, Visit Reports of the Superintendent 02/54–12/54, pg. 004126-004227, “Superintendent’s Visit to Chooutla School, Carcross, Y.T., December 3th–6th, 1954.” [DYK-201620]
67. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, file 801/6-1-940, volume 2, School
Building Carcross Res., 1952–1956, FA 10-151, Archival Acc. V198990/101, Archival box 10, R.
J. Meek to W. S. Arneil, 8 October 1954. [CAR-013738]
68. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSSC-GS 75-103, box 24,
file 1, “Superintendent’s Visit to St. Philip’s School, Fort George, PQ, September 9–12, 1954.”[13a-c000033-d0012-001]
69. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: 2011-005.
70. TRC, AVS, Larry McMahon, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 16 June 2010, Statement Number: 02-MB-16JU10-149.

758 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
71. TRC, AVS, John Tritschler, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Deroche, British Columbia, 19 January 2010, Statement Number: 2011-5060.
72. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: S-BC-01-004.
73. TRC, AVS, Merle Nisly, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Thunder Bay, Ontario, 14 December 2011, Statement Number: 2011-4199.
74. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Tyler Bjornson File,‘Presbyterian Research,’ “Cecilia Jeffrey Presbyterian Indian Residential School Staff Handbook,” 9. [IRC-041206]
75. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Tyler Bjornson File,‘Presbyterian Research,’ “Presbyterian Indian Residential School Staff Handbook,” 5. [IRC041206]
76. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8610, file 654/1-13, part 1, J. T. Warden to R. F. Davey, 3 November 1953. [GDC-020142]
77. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8274, file 494/6-1-014, part 3, Henry
Cook to R. F. Davey, 12 April 1954. [PLK-000353]
78. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2:15, box 24, file 1, “Superintendent’s Visit to St. Paul’s School, Cardston, January 14th
to 16th, 1954.” [AAC-090555]
79. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8796, file 1/25-13, part 7, Bernard Lee
to R. F. Davey, 28 April 1960. [NCA-018648-0002]
80. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2989, file 851-6-4, part 2, “Norway
House Indian Residential School operated by the United Church of Canada,” 4 February 1960.
[NPC-620114]
81. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: 2011–3475.
82. TRC, AVS, Elizabeth Pearson, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Richmond, British Columbia, 16 May 2011, Statement Number: 2011-1648.
83. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: S-BC-01-004.
84. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
sub-series number 2:15, box 24, file 5, “Superintendent’s Visit with Principal Dalton in Vancouver, October 8, 1960.” [13a-c000037-d0016-002]
85. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: 2011-1645.
86. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories Archives, Confidential, Hostels, 1971–1974,
Archival box 8-24, Archival Acc. G1995-004, “Ukkivik Residence, Frobisher Bay, Northwest
Territories: A Report and Recommendations,” 24 December 1973, 11, 12. [FBS-000431]
87. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 4, R. S. Davis to
Indian Affairs, 24 March 1949. [BRS-000551]
88. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
13, file 1, N. Rusaw to Frieda Matthews, 6 February 1956. [BIR-000492]
89. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6251, file 575-1, part 3, “Extract fromletter dated January 26, 1943, received from Miss J. Florence Lang, Indians Secretary, Women’s Missionary Society, Presbyterian Church in Canada,” 26 January 1943. [BIR-000283]

Notes • 759
90. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6281, file 604-1, part 2, “Report on
Pelly Indian Agency for the Month of September, 1944.” [CTS-000347]
91. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 3, Kyle, Ferguson& Hnatyshyn to Dominion Department of Indian Affairs, 17 September 1946. [GDC-0176340002]
92. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2:15, box 24, file 1, “Superintendent’s Visit to Sioux Lookout School, December 17,
1954.” [AAC-090539] For Salmon’s first name, see: TRC, NRA, Deschatelets Archives, Oblatesof Mary Immaculate, Ottawa, School File HR 6553.C73R. [BVL-000053]
93. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
14, file 9, T. C. Ross to Frieda Matthews, 13 February 1950. [NCA-009100]
94. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSSC-GS 75-103, box 24,
file 2 (1955–56), “Superintendent’s Visit to St. John’s Residential School, Wabasca, Alberta,
26th August, 1956.” [13a-c000034-d0002-022]
95. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2:15, box 24, file 1, “Superintendent’s Conversations with Principal DeWolf in Calgary
re St. Paul’s School, Cardston – November 30, 1954.” [AAC-090542]
96. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6443, file 881-1, part 2,
Statement of Alex R. Simpson, 1 March 1941; [LEJ-000800] Robert Howe to D. M. Mackay, 3
March 1941. [LEJ-000799]
97. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6443, file 881-1, part 2,
Philip Phelan to A. R. Simpson, 13 March 1941. [LEJ-000805]
98. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6443, file 881-1, part 2, R. A.
Hoey to J. Sherwin, 2 December 1940. [LEJ-000797]
99. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSSC-GS 103, box 24, file 1, “Superintendent’s Visit to Moose Factory School, (Bishop Horden), September 8–15th, 1954.”
100. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSSC-GS 75-103, “Superintendent’s Visit to Moose Fort Indian School – June 19th–23rd, 1959.” [13a-c000036-d0021-001]
101. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG85, Perm. volume 310, file 1010-7, part 1A, R.C.
Episcopal Corp. Mackenzie District – General Correspondence, 1921–1952, FA 85-1, V. Phillippe to R. A. Gibson, 18 January 1945. [RCN-004689]
102. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Sister Mary Mark to Reverend
Father Scannell, 14 November 1940. [OMS-000595]
103. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Tetrault to Henri Routhier, 9 October 1956. [GMA-001993] For Tetrault’s initial, see: TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives – Alberta,
PAA 71.220 B161 2435, “Residential Education for Indian Acculturation, Indian and Eskimo
Welfare Commission, Oblate Fathers in Canada, Ottawa, 1958,” 12. [OGP-023476]
104. TRC, NRA, O.M.I. House – Vancouver, box 39, Fort St. John – Kakawis Family Development,
folder 20, Kakawis Correspondence, 1942–1979, Series One Plus Finding Aid, B.C./Yukon
Local Community of O.M.I. Lacombe Canada Province [formerly St. Paul’s Province], Mary
Gemma to M. Kearney, 3 February 1958. [CST-800117] For background on the Benedictine
Sisters of Mount Angel, see: The Benedictine Sisters of Mount Angel, “About Us, A Brief
History of the Benedictine Sisters of Mt. Angel,” http://www.benedictine-srs.org/history.html(accessed 12 June 2014).
105. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, L. K. Poupore to M. Kearney, 22
April 1958. [CIS-000039]

760 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
106. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Mary Gemma to James M. Hill, 2
May 1958. [BVT-001684]
107. TRC, NRA, “Hollywood Nuns Joint Front Line in B.C.’s Toughest Missions,” Indian Record,
June 1960, 6. [BVT-001818]
108. TRC, AVS, Tom Cavanaugh, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, 19 May 2010, Statement Number: S-BC-01-005.
109. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, Edmonton, file 773(103)/6-2, volume 1, 07/1956–
04/1969, R. F. Davey to R. F. Battle, 28 November 1957. [AEMR-200969] For LaFrance’s initial,
see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, file 773(103)/6-2, volume 1,
07/1956–04/1969, M. LaFrance to R. F. Battle, 21 November 1957. [120.05902C]
110. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, Edmonton, file 773(103)/6-2, volume 1, 07/1956–
04/1969, R. F. Battle to Indian Affairs Branch, 20 November 1957. [AEMR-200957]
111. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103, series 2:15, box 24, file 2, “Report of Superintendent re his stay at St. Cyprian’s School, July 22nd
to July 28th, 1955.” [AAC-090560] For Waller’s initials, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada – Edmonton, NAC, 116/23-5, 05/50–05/61, Edmonton, “Department of Mines andResources, Indian Affairs Branch, Inspector’s Report, St. Cyprian’s Residential Indian School,”
12 May 1952, Leslie G. P. Waller. [SAC-001110-0003]
112. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 116/6-1-763,
01/54–03/57, volume 2, RCAP, H. N. Woodsworth to R. F. Battle, 1 August 1955. [CYP-000132]
113. TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, 777/6-2-009, 1950–1966, volume 1, CR-HQ,
R. F. Battle to Indian Affairs Branch, 1 April 1959. [MOR-000768-0001]
114. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 774[112]/6-2, volume 1, 07/56–03/64 NAC, R. F.
Battle to Indian Affairs, 22 July 1959. [MOR-000732]
115. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 774[112]/6-2, volume 1, 07/56–03/64, NAC, J. A.
Coady to R. F. Davey, 6 January 1960. [ERM-002960-0001]
116. Anglican Church of Canada Archives, MSSC-GS 103, box 24, file 2, “Superintendent’s Visit to
Wabasca, March 26, 1955.”
117. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 2-15, box
24, “Superintendent’s Visit to Sioux Lookout School, July 1955.” [PLK-000959]
118. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
3A, file 27, Principal, Gordon’s Indian Residential School to Mr. Buckle, 14 May 1957. [GDC005459]
119. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8796, file 1/25-13, part 7, Bernard Lee
to R. F. Davey, 28 April 1960. [NCA-018648-0002]
120. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 9148, file 309-11 ACE, F. E. Spriggs, 1
December 1943. [PAR-000891]
121. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8451, file 655/23-5, B. F. Neary to J. P.
B. Ostrander, 16 December 1948. [PLD-008756]
122. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8757, file 674/25-1-001, “Indian
School Loss in Blaze Seen $6,000,” Prince Albert Herald, 24 January 1949. [PAR-001147]
123. It is not clear from the source document if the fire took place in late 1952 or early 1953. TRC,
NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8273, file 493/6-1-001, part 2, Indian Affairs to Geo. V. Harman, 23 January 1953. [SWK-001227]

Notes • 761
124. TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Cariboo Archives, section #205, St. George Indian Residential
School, Card D.C. 2C11, Lytton-St.-George’s School, #88.44, “All Saints Indian Residential
School Staff Manual 2nd Revision, 1967,” A. W. Harding, Vice-Principal, 20. [AEMR-177341]
125. TRC, AVS, Elizabeth Pearson, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Richmond, British Columbia, 16 May 2011, Statement Number: 2011-1648.
126. TRC, AVS, Trudy Parker, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Digby, Nova Scotia, 26 February 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0234.
127. TRC, NRA, Presbyterian Church of Canada, Residential Schools Name Index, 2009, 19887004-13-1, N. W. Rusaw to Frieda Matthews, 7 December 1956. [BIR-002866]
128. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2.15, box 20 A 3.1, Personnel card for Eva Lilley, undated. [AAC-082466]
129. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103, series 2.15, box 20 A 3.1, Personnel card for Berit Klaveness Rasmussen, undated. [AAC-082103]
130. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2.15, box 20 A 3.1, Personnel card for Lilian Page, undated. [AAC-082088]
131. For the Gleichen school, see: TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod
Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103, series 2.1.5, box 25-A-2, untitled document, staff lists. [AAC083517] For the Gordon’s School, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical
Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box 3A, file 23, “The Indian School Administration
MSCC, Principal’s Annual Report for the Year Ending 30 June 1954,” Gordon’s School. [GDC026827] For the Birtle school, see: TRC, NRA, Presbyterian Church of Canada, Residential
Schools Name Index, 2009, 1988-7004-13-1, N. W. Rusaw to Frieda Matthews, 7 December
1956. [BIR-002866]132. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2.15, box 20A, file 3.1, Personnel card for Enid Jubb, undated; [ANG-083059] TRC, NRA,
Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103, series 2.15, box
24, file 4 “Superintendent’s Visit to Blood School. March 27-28, 1955.” [ANG-090565]
133. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives GS 75-103, series 2-15, box
30, file 3, “Newsletter December 1967,” 17. [ACC-001851]
134. TRC, NRA, Headquarters 959/1-13, 05/51–05/77, volume 1, HQ, Phyllis Ursel to E. Fairclough,18 February 1960. [MIK-001000-0001]
135. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 8803, file 959/25-13, part 2,
Henry Cook to Frank Howard, 29 March 1960. [MIK-002122]
136. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 2-15, box
20-A-2, Lists staff at St. Michael’s, Alert Bay, from June 1952 to September 1959. [GDC-070001]
137. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa RG10, volume 8803, file 959/25-13, part 2,
Henry Cook to Frank Howard, 29 March 1960. [MIK-002122]
138. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2:15, box 24, file 5, “Superintendent’s Visit with Principal Dalton in Vancouver, October
8, 1960.” [13a-c000037-d0016-002]
139. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSCC-GS 75-103, box 23,
file number 5, 2:15, “Report of Visit of Acting Superintendent to St. Alban’s Residential School,
Prince Albert, January 19–20, 1948.” [13a-c000027-d0038-001]
140. TRC, NRA, Headquarters, 959/1-13, 05/51–05/77, volume 1, HQ, J. B. Dennys to R. F. Davey, 3
March 1960. [MIK-000996]

762 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
141. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSCC-GS 75-103, series
2:15, box 23, file 6, ”Visit of Major General G. R. Turner to All Saints & St. Alban’s Schools,
Prince Albert, Saskatchewan,” 10 January 1949. [13a-c000028-d0037-001]
142. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSSC-GS 103, series 2:15,
box 24, file 1, “Visit of Superintendent to the Shingwauk School, Sault Ste Marie, May 24–26,
1955.” [13a-c000033-d0029-001]
143. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSSC-GS-103, series 2:15,
box 24, file 1, “Visit to Shingwauk by Major General G. R. Turner, 16th–18th May, 1954.”[13a-c000033-d0022-001] For Phillips’s first name, see: TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103, series 2:15, box 29, file 8, H. G. C. to Roy
Phillips, 26 May 1954. [AAC-084442]
144. For A. L. Davis, principal in 1950, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 3388, file 804-1-7, part 1, E. L. Stone to Director, Indian Health Services, 19 June 1950.
[120.14972] For A. E. W. Godwin, principal in 1950, see: TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of
Athabasca Fonds, Provincial Archives of Alberta, file A320/576, Indian [School] Commission,[Official Correspondence of Bishop Sovereign] 1949–1952, Archival Acc. PR1970.0387/1645,
Archival box 41, H. G. Cook to the Bishop of Athabasca, 22 August 1950. [JON-800440] For
Captain Babcock, principal in 1957, see: TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103, series 2.15, box 22, file 3, “Report of the Superintendent,
Indian School Administration to the M.S.C.C. Executive, Toronto, February 12th, 1957.” [AAC090809] For L. G. Comley, principal in 1957, see: TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Athabasca
Fonds, Provincial Archives of Alberta, file A.330/63, Indian School Administration [Official
Correspondence of Bishop Pierce], 1955–1961, Archival Acc. PR1972.0285/46, Archival box
68, H. G. Cook to R. J. Pierce, 8 April 1957. [JON-800549] For Dean Thain, acting principal in
1957, see: TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS
75-103, series 2.15, box 22, file 3, “Report of the Indian School Administration Superintendent
to the M.S.C.C. Executive, November 12th, 1957.” [AAC-090778] For E. P. Williston, principal
in 1957, see: TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS
75-103, series 2.15, box 22, file 3, “Report of the Indian School Administration Superintendent to the M.S.C.C. Executive, November 12th, 1957.” [AAC-090778] For Eric Barrington,principal in 1961, see: TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Athabasca Fonds, Provincial Archivesof Alberta, file A.330/250, Wabasca [Official Correspondence of Bishop Pierce], 1961–1969,
Archival Acc. PR1972.0285/160, Archival box 71, Edward P. Williston to R. J. Pierce, 15 June
1961. [JON-800692] For R. Martin, principal in 1961, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada, 777/16-2-009, 1936–1965, volume 1, NAC, H. Oldring to G. H. Cheney, 22 February
1962. [JON-000676] For D. Lawson, principal in 1961, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada, 777/16-2-009, 1936–1965, volume 1, NAC, H. Oldring to G. H. Cheney, 22 February
1962. [JON-000676] For R. A. Mayling, principal in 1962, see: TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of
Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103, Series Minutes, file 3, A. H. Davisand Ivor Brandon to the Chairman and Members of the M.S.C.C. Executive, 21 August 1962.
[AAC-083395] For G. Wilkinson, principal in 1962, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 8802, file 777/25-13-009, part 1, R. F. Davey to G. Wilkinson,
15 January 1963. [JON-000917] For H. A. Reid, principal in 1964, see: TRC, NRA, Library andArchives Canada – Edmonton, RG10, file 701/29-8, volume 1, 01/58–12/66, H. A. Reid to L.
C. Hunter, 5 February 1964. [GDC-070684] For R. H. Purdy, principal in 1964, see: TRC, NRA,
Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 8802, file 777/25-13-009, part 1, Paul

Notes • 763
Deziel to R. H. Purdy, 15 December 1964. [JON-000956] For the leasing of the Wabasca school
to the Northlands School Division, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa,
777/36-4-009, volume 1, 01/34–11/66, CR-HQ, J. W. Chalmers to Indian Affairs Branch, Ottawa, 12 October 1966. [JON-003317]
145. TRC, NRA, No document location, no file location, H. to L. A. Dixon, 29 October 1952. [CGY081872]
146. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 772/25-1-002,[772/25-0002], 1950–1965, volume 1, RCAP, L. A. Dixon to Director, Indian Affairs Branch,
Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Ottawa, Ontario, 26 January 1955. [OLD-000943]
147. TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Athabasca Fonds, Provincial Archives of Alberta, file
A320/576, Indian [School] Commission, [Official Correspondence of Bishop Sovereign]
1949–1952, Archival Acc. PR1970.0387/1645, Archival box 41, H. G. Cook to the Bishop of
Athabasca, 22 August 1950. [JON-800440]
148. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 8613, file 772/1-13-002,
part 1, L. A. Dixon to Director, Indian Affairs Branch, Dept. of Citizenship and Immigration,
Ottawa, Ontario, 8 August 1956. [OLD-001542]
149. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “Minutes of the Indian School
Committee of the Edmonton Presbytery of the United Church Held at St. Stephen’s College,
December 18, 1961, at 8 P.M.” [UCA-080553] Don McBride, who eventually was hired, worked
in the Charles Camsell Indian Hospital in Edmonton. See: TRC NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria, University Archives, Acc. No. 83.050C, box 112, file 18, Edmonton IRS – Correspondence 1961–62/UCC Docs Toronto, Dwight Powell to E. E. M. Joblin, 30 December 1961.
[UCA-080555]
150. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6054, file 265-1, part 2, Philip Phelan
to B. F. Neary, 13 February 1947; [SRS-000132] J. T. McNally to R. A. Hoey, 28 July 1948. [SRS000145] For McNally’s initials, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume6054, file 265-1, part 2, R. A. Hoey to J. T. McNally, 22 December 1947. [SRS-000136]
151. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6054, file 265-1, part 2, J. P. Mackey toPhelan, 28 December 1943. [SRS-000124] For Mackey’s original appointment, see: TRC, NRA,
Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6054, file 265-1, part 1, D. C. Scott to J. L. Isley, 1March 1929. [SRS-000048]
152. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8538, file 51/2-32-265, part 1, H. C.
Rice to R. F. Davey, 25 April 1955. [SRS-001846]
153. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. 92.164C, box 33,
file 2, Personnel files for Principals J. F. Woodsworth and O. B. Strapp. [UCA-080521] Althoughsome documents state that Strapp was principal until 1961, he left office at the end of 1960.
See: TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada, “Rev. O. B. Strapp”; [UCA-080516] United Churchof Canada, Victoria University Archives, [Illegible], Edmonton IRS – Joblin Scrapbooks/UCC
Docs Toronto. [UCA-080256-0005]
154. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. 92.164C, box 33,
file 2, Personnel files for Principals J. F. Woodsworth and O. B. Strapp. [UCA-080521]
155. TRC, NRA, United Church Archives, Acc. 86.158C, box 1, file 3, Memorandum re Rev. Earl
Stotesbury and the Edmonton Residential School, 5 December 1960; [UCC-050079-0006]
Provincial Court of Alberta, “Conviction,” 28 September 1960, UCC – Document location to be
determined, Alberta Justice, Clerk of the Provincial Court of Alberta. [EDM-003354]

764 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
156. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, [Illegible], Edmonton IRS– Joblin Scrapbooks/UCC Docs Toronto. [UCA-080256-0005]
157. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada, “Rev. O. B. Strapp.” [UCA-080516]
158. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file number, “Minutes of the Indian School
Committee of the Edmonton Presbytery of the United Church Held at St. Stephen’s College,
December 18, 1961, at 8 P.M.” [UCA-080553] For Caldwell’s replacing Strapp, see: TRC, NRA,
United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. 8 [Illegible].050C, box 112,
file 17, Edmonton IRS – Correspondence 1958–60/UCC Docs Toronto, EEM. J. to A. E. Caldwell. [UCA-080231]
159. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6355, file 757-1, part 2, NAC, George
Dorey to Philip Phelan, 17 August 1946. [EDM-010018]
160. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8757, file 709/25-1-001, part 2, R. F.
Davey to M. C. MacDonald, 7 September 1955. [EDM-000200]
161. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7194, file 511/25-1-015, R. Ragan toR. F. Davey, 14 March 1957. [BRS-001006] For Inglis’s first name, see: TRC, NRA, Library andArchives Canada, RG10, [8758], FA 10-25, file 772/25-1-010, 1949–1961, NAC, R. F. Davey to M.
C. Macdonald, 5 August 1955. [EDM-002379] For Ragan’s first name, see: TRC, ASAGR, NAC
Personnel File, James Edward DeWolf, Call No. 01-36739, Emil Small Face and others to Ralph
Ragan, August 1952. [AANDC-530938]
162. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 501/23-16065, volume 1, “Principal’s Monthly Report, Brandon Indian Residential School, May 1957,”
Acting Principal Harry Atkinson. [BRS-002002]
163. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1909, 383; Canada, Annual Reportof the Department of Indian Affairs, 1917, 2:78.
164. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6211, file 469-1, part 3, S. Gould to D.
C. Scott, 7 August 1929. [SWK-001511]
165. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6462, file 888-1, V.5., R. A. Hoey to L.
A. Dixon, 12 September 1941. [GRG-006480]
166. TRC, NRA, Headquarters, 956/1-13 v.1 [51-67], H, E. L. Fairclough to E. D. Fulton, 13 June
1958. [GRG-006286-0003]
167. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 956/25-1,
11/50–02/62, volume 1, RCAP-R, C. F. Hives to W. S. Arneil, 18 September 1958. [GRG-001396]
168. TRC, NRA, Document location to be determined, Hance/Aleck/Michell – Anglican Churchof Canada and Anglican Church of Cariboo, List of Documents, Unknown to Winnifrith, 31
October 1958. [ANG-063281]
169. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
14, file 9, T. C. Ross to Frieda Matthews, 3 March 1950. [NCA-009101]
170. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
14, file 9, T. C. Ross to Frieda Matthews, 13 February 1950; [NCA-009100] Frieda Matthews to
T. C. Ross, 21 March 1950. [CJC-007790]
171. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
14, file 9, T. C. Ross to Frieda Matthews, 28 March 1950. [NCA-009104]
172. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2:15, box 24, file 1, “Superintendent’s Visit to St. Paul’s School, Cardston, January 14th
to 16th, 1954.” [AAC-090555]

Notes • 765
173. TRC, NRA, No document source, no document file location, H. G. Cook to A. E. W. Godwin,
21 April 1955. [CGY-081832]
174. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103, series 2:15, box 24, file 2, “Superintendent’s Conversation with Principal Crocker re: Old Sun at
Lethbridge – September 15, 1955.” [AAC-090557] For Crocker’s initials, see: TRC, NRA, Libraryand Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6871, file 772/25-2-002, part 1, 1955–1956, Microfilm reel
C-13732, 1955–1956, NAC – Ottawa, R. J. Crocker to J. R. Wild, 6 August 1956. [OLD-071622]
175. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, J. P. B. Ostrander to B. F. Neary, 14 July 1949. [IRC-041155]
176. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, Mrs. Joe Francis et al., to Crooked Lake Agency, 25 July 1949. [RLS-000512-0002]
177. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-1, part 2, J. P. B. Ostrander to Indian Affairs Branch, 12 August 1949. [IRC-041158]
178. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 11539, file 677/25-2, James D. Ormiston to Indian Agent, Kamsack, 31 August 1950. [RLS-001087]
179. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6332, file 661-2, part 1, Indian
Residential School Quarterly Return Round Lake, Saskatchewan, School, 30 June 1950. [RLS000589]
180. TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Athabasca Fonds, Provincial Archives of Alberta, file
A320/575, Indian [School] Commission, [Official Correspondence of Bishop Sovereign]
1946–49, Archival Acc. PR1970.0387/1644, Archival box 41, H. A. Alderwood to A. H. Sovereign, 11 July 1947. [JON-800412]
181. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 777/25-1-010,
volume 1, 10/01–09/65, RCAP, G. H. Gooderham to Indian Affairs Branch, 11 February 1948.
[MAR-000021]
182. TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Athabasca Fonds, Provincial Archives of Alberta, file
A320/575, Indian [School] Commission, [Official Correspondence of Bishop Sovereign]
1946–49, Archival Acc. PR1970.0387/1644, Archival box 41, “Quarterly Report of the Superintendent of the Indian School Administration to the Executive Committee, MSCC,” Henry
Cook, 11 May 1948, 3. [ JON-800438]
183. TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Athabasca Fonds, Provincial Archives of Alberta, file
A320/576, Indian [School] Commission, [Official Correspondence of Bishop Sovereign],
1949–1952, Archival Acc. PR1970.0387/1645, Archival box 41, Henry Cook to A. H. Sovereign,
20 August 1948; [WFL-800139] Anglican Diocese of Athabasca Fonds, Provincial Archivesof Alberta, file A320/575, Indian [School] Commission, [Official Correspondence of Bishop
Sovereign] 1946–49, Archival Acc. PR1970.0387/1644, Archival box 41, “Quarterly Report of
the Superintendent of the Indian School Administration to the Executive Committee, MSCC,”Henry Cook, 11 May 1948, 3. [JON-800438]
184. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2.15, box 21, file 3, “Quarterly Report of the Superintendent of the Indian School
Administration to the Executive Committee of the M.S.C.C., 9 September 1948,” Henry Cook.
[ANG-083489]
185. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 2-15, box
21, “Quarterly Report of the Superintendent, Indian School Administration to the Executive
Committee M.S.C.C.” Henry Cook, 15 February 1949. [GDC-007261]

766 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
186. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2.15, box 22, file 3, “Report of the Superintendent, Indian School Administration to the
M.S.C.C. Executive, Toronto, February 12th, 1957.” [AAC-090809]
187. TRC, NRA, Manitoba Regional Service Centre – LAC – Winnipeg, NAC Personnel File, James
Edward DeWolf, Call No. 01-36769, Emil Small Face and others to Ralph Ragan, August 1952;[PUL-009199-0001] G. H. Gooderham to H. Cook, 15 August 1952. [PUL-009196] For Pitts’s
initials, see: TRC, NRA, Manitoba Regional Service Centre – LAC – Winnipeg, NAC Personnel
File, James Edward DeWolf, Call No. 01-36769, George Calvert to L. Waller, 25 September
1952. [PUL-009204]
188. TRC, NRA, No document location, no file location, H. to L. A. Dixon, 29 October 1952. [CGY081872]
189. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
16A, file 10, C. Anne Baker to Residential Schools and Hostels, Child Care Counsellors, 30
April 1968; [GDC-043283] TRC, AVS, Christine Lynch, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, 25 February 2011, Statement Number:2011-0228.
190. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 3:3, box 70, file 3, H. A. Alderwood, “Memorandum Concerning Visit of Secretary toEastern Canada, February 14th to March 1st, 1946.” [AAC-092178]
191. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6358, file 758-1, part 2, L. A.
Dixon to R. A. Hoey, 13 February 1948. [OLD-002035]
192. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2:15, box 24, file 8, “Superintendents Visit to Old Sun School, April 3rd & 4th, 1951.”[13a-c000030-d0026-001]
193. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2:15, box 24, file 1, “Superintendent’s Visit to Old Sun School, Gleichen, December
12-13-14,” 1954. [AAC-090540] For Cole’s initials, see: TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada,
General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103, series 2:15, box 24, file 2, “Superintendent’s
Stay at Old Sun School, January 4–28th, 1955.” [AAC-090568]
194. TRC, NRA, Document file source, document location to be determined, Hance/Aleck/Michell– Anglican Church of Canada and Anglican Church of Cariboo List of Documents, unknown
author to E. S. W. Cole, 29 December 1955. [ANG-063199]
195. TRC, NRA, Document location to be determined, file source, Mowatt/Clarke – Anglican
Church First Consolidated List, to Horace G. Watts, 24 December 1955. [ANG-062348]
196. See earlier discussion in this chapter for Hives’s career.
197. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 8613, file 772/1-13-002, part
1, L. A. Dixon to Director of Indian Affairs Branch, 8 August 1956. [OLD-001542]
198. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
Series Minutes, “Report of the Indian School Administration Superintendent to the M.S.C.C.
Executive – Toronto, November 10th, 1958.” [AAC-083389]
199. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 901/25-1011, volume 2, 1957–1970, Ellen L. Fairclough to Erik Nielsen, 28 July 1958. [YKS-003808]
200. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103, series 2:15, box 24, file 2, “Superintendent’s Conversation with Principal Crocker re: Old Sun at
Lethbridge – September 15, 1955.” [AAC-090557] For Crocker’s initials, see: TRC, NRA, LibraryNotes • 767
and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6871, file 772/25-2-002, part 1, 1955–1956, Microfilm reel
C-13732, 1955–1956, NAC – Ottawa, R. J. Crocker to J. R. Wild, 6 August 1956. [OLD-071622]
201. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6871, file 772/25-2-002, part
1, Henry Cook to R. F. Davey, 5 July 1956. [OLD-007227]
202. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 772/25-1-002,[772/25-0002], 1950–1965, volume 1, RCAP, L. A. Dixon to Director, Indian Affairs Branch,
Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Ottawa, Ontario, 26 January 1955. [OLD-000943]
203. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 906/113-011, volume 1, School Establishment – Carcross Students Residence Yukon Education
District, Yukon Territory, 05/16/60–01/08/70, Control No. 48-9, H. M. Jones to J. Parker, 25
May 1962. [CAR-013811]
204. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 772/1-13002, volume 2, 1957–1971, Staff members of Old Sun to W. E. Frame, 2 March 1959. [PAR020019-0001]
205. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 772/1-13002, volume 2, 1957–1971, R. F. Battle to Chief, Education Division, Ottawa, 16 March 1959.
[PAR-020019-0000]
206. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2:15, box 24, file 3, “Superintendent’s Visit to Old Sun School – January 15, 16, 1958.”[AAC-090606]
207. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 772/1-13-002,
volume 2, 1957–1971, Henry Cook to L. Jampolsky, 4 May 1959. [IRC-048261]
208. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 772/25-1-002,[772/25-0002], 1950–1965, volume 1, RCAP, Lyman Jampolsky to W. E. Frame, 25 April 1959.
[OLD-000881]
209. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 772/25-1-002,[772/25-0002], 1950–1965, volume 1, RCAP, R. F. Battle to Indian Affairs Branch, Ottawa, Att.:
Chief Education Div., 30 April 1959. [OLD-000880]
210. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 772/6-2-010, part 2, 1959–1967, NAC, J. S. Hardy to
Indian Affairs, 4 September 1959. [MOR-002730]
211. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, [781]772/25-17, volume 1, 01/64–12/67, NAC – Edmonton, Richard Grovum to J. R. Muir, 14 April 1965. [BSS-002254]
212. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2.15, box 22, file 7, Henry G. Cook, Superintendent, Indian School Administration, “Report of the Indian School Administration Superintendent to the M.S.C.C. Executive, Toronto,
Ontario, May, 1962.” [AAC-083327] For McTaggart’s full name, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 371/25-1-019, volume 1, Henry
G. Cook, Superintendent, Indian School Administration of the Anglican Church of Canada,
Ottawa to R. F. Davey, 27 August 1962. [FGA-100125]
213. TRC, NRA, National Capital Regional Service Centre – LAC – Ottawa, file 401/25-1, volume 2(locator X-51-104), Henry G. Cook to R. F. Davey, 4 July 1962. [NCA-017240]
214. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 371/25-1019, volume 1, Henry G. Cook to R. F. Davey, 27 August 1962. [FGA-100125]
215. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 371/25-1019, volume 1, R. F. Davey to H. G. Cook, 31 August 1962. [FGA-000886]

768 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
216. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Tyler Bjornson File,‘Presbyterian Research,’ “Cecilia Jeffrey Presbyterian Indian Residential School Staff Handbook,” 7–8. [IRC-041206]
217. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Tyler Bjornson File,‘Presbyterian Research,’ “Cecilia Jeffrey Presbyterian Indian Residential School Staff Handbook,” 5–6. [IRC-041206]
218. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSCC–GS 75-103, box 23,
file 9, “Superintendent’s Visit to Bishop Horden School, Moose Factory, April 3rd–8th, 1952.”[13a-c000031-d0022-001]
219. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
3A, file 27, Principal, Gordon’s Indian Residential School to Mr. Buckle, 14 May 1957. [GDC005459] The letter is unsigned; for evidence that Southard was principal at this time, see: TRC,
NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box 40,
file 62, Albert Southard to Bernice Glazier, 4 June 1957. [GDC-020188]
220. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSCC-GS 75-103, box 24, file 4, “Superintendent’s Visit to the Prince Albert Indian School, December 3rd to 5th, 1959.”
221. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSCC-GS 75-103, series
2:15, box 24, file 5, “Superintendent’s Visit to St. Phillip’s Residential School, Fort George, PQ –June 28th to July 2, 1960.” [13a-c000037-d0022-001]
222. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2:15, box 24, file 1, “Superintendent’s Visit to Old Sun School, June 11, 14 & 15, 1954.”[13a-c000033-d0017-001]
223. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2:15, box 24, file 1, “Memorandum re Subjects to be discussed with Mr. Davey, Ottawa
20/10/54.” [13a-c000033-d0010-001]
224. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2:15, box 24, file 1, “Superintendent’s Visit to St. Paul’s School, Cardston, June 12 & 13,
1954.” [AAC-090546]
225. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103, series [Illegible], box [Illegible], file [Illegible], “Brocket,” undated. [AAC-085433] Although thisdocument is undated, it deals with issues discussed in other reports from the 1948–49 period.
See: TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2.15, “Superintendent’s Visit to Brocket, October 24 and 25, 1948”; [AAC-083346] Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103, “Superintendent’s
Visit to Brocket, April 4 1949.” [AAC-083362]
226. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 956/1-13,
volume 1, 01/51–05/67, Mildred Rae Beattie to C. F. Hives, 7 November 1957; [IRC-049011] G.
M. West to Mr. Parminter, 19 November 1957; [IRC-049012] Marian Hurley to E. D. Fulton, 13
December 1957; [IRC-049048] C. F. Hives to Marion Hurley, 28 November 1957. [IRC-049014]
227. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, P. J. Sheahan to Father Provincial,
24 December 1947. [CIS-000277]
228. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, J. R. Birch to Father Sheahan, 28
December 1947. [CIS-000276]
229. TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Cariboo Archives, section #205, St. George Indian Residential
School, Card D.C. 2C11, Lytton-St.-George’s School, #88.44, “All Saints Indian Residential

Notes • 769
School Staff Manual 2nd Revision, 1967, A. W. Harding, Vice-Principal,” 26–27. [AEMR177341]
230. TRC, AVS, Merle Nisly, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Thunder Bay, Ontario, 14 December 2011, Statement Number: 2011-4199.
231. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: 2011-2033; TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Statement Number: 2011-0268; TRC, AVS, Eleanor Jackson,
Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, 2 December 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0054.
232. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103, series 2:15, box 24, file 1, “Superintendent’s Visit to St. Paul’s School, Cardston, January 14th to
16th, 1954”; [AAC-090555] Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, file 801/6-1-940, volume
2, School Building Carcross Res., 1952–1956, FA 10-151, Archival Acc. V198990/101, Archival
box 10, R. J. Meek to W. S. Arneil, 8 October 1954. [CAR-013738] For James and Evelyn Ellcome’s first names, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, 773/6-2-004, part
1, 1956–1958, NAC. [PUL-006469]
233. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file number, “Minutes of Meeting of the
Indian School Committee of Edmonton Presbytery Held at the School at 8 p.m., Friday, March
11th, 1960.” [UCB-005314]
234. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2:15, box 24, file 3, “Superintendent’s Visit to I.A.B. Edmonton – January 20, 1958”;[AAC-090601] “Superintendent’s Visit to Old Sun School – January 15, 16, 1958.” [AAC-090606]
Although this document is unsigned, Henry Cook, the superintendent of the Indian School
Administration of the Anglican Church of Canada, was in southern Alberta in January 1958.
See, for example: TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, Henry Cook to
L. A. Dixon, 29 January 1958. [CGY-081786]
235. Anglican Church of Canada Archives, MSSC-GS 103, box 24, file 5, “Memorandum – re: Superintendent’s Visit to Winnipeg, Oct 19, 60,” 18 October 1960.
236. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7194, file 511/25-1-024, A. J. Scrase to
H. G. Cook, 27 November 1960. [DRS-000097]
237. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 7194, file 511/25-1-024, A. G. Leslie toR. F. Davey, 22 December 1960. [DRS-000096]
238. TRC, AVS, Olive Saunders, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Thunder Bay, Ontario, 7 and 8 March 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0042.
239. TRC, AVS, Jack Lee, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 18 June 2010, Statement Number: SC111.
240. TRC, AVS, Mark DeWolf, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Halifax, Nova Scotia, 22 and 27 February 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0217.
241. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, NAC, 116/23-5, 05/50–05/61, Edmonton, “Department of Mines and Resources, Indian Affairs Branch, Inspector’s Report, St.
Cyprian’s Residential Indian School,” 12 May 1952, Leslie G. P. Waller. [SAC-001110-0003]
242. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 4, O. B. Strapp to
Philip Phelan, 21 September 1949. [BRS-000442]
243. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, C. H. Best to George Dorey, 3
February 1950. [UCB-005207]

770 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
244. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6255, file 576-1, part 4, Bowser toBernard F. Neary 24 March 1949. [BRS-000550]
245. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8667, file 709/6-1-001, part 5, O. B.
Strapp to R. F. Davey, 19 March 1956; [BRS-005007] TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada,
RG10, volume 8667, file 709/25-1-001, 1951–1961, part 2, O. B. Strapp to R. F. Davey, 14 April
1956. [EDM-000611]
246. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No: 83.050C, box 112,
file 16, Edmonton IRS – 1955–1957/UCC Docs Toronto, Thos. Hart to M. C. Macdonald, 8 May
1956. [UCA-080326]
247. TRC, NRA, INAC – Main Records Office – Ottawa, file 774/25-1, volume 1, O. B. Strapp to G. S.
Lapp, 28 May 1956; [BRS-005044] TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files
Collection – Ottawa, 774/25-1, volume 1, 1952–1966, RCAP, R. F. Battle to Superintendent of
Education, Indian Affairs, 5 September 1956. [EDM-003308]
248. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSCC-GS 75-103, series
2-15, box 29, file 10, Anglican Document No. 52.63, Victoria Ketcheson and Patricia Watson,
29 November 1952. [PAR-001992]
249. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSCC-GS 75-103, series
2-15, box 29, file 10, A. J. Scrase to H. G. Cook, 3 December 1952; see also: “We, the membersof the whole staff …, undated. [ACC-000990-0000]
250. TRC, NRA, Provincial Archives of Alberta, Acc. 71.220 B252 2351, “Mrs. Marjorie Crews,” 14
April 1969; [IRC-049046] Marjorie Crews to E. R. Donsdale, 17 June 1969; [IRC-049047-0001]
E. O. Drouin to E. R. Daniels, 28 June 1969; [IRC-049047-0000] E. O. Drouin to Whom it May
Concern, 28 June 1969. [ IRC-049047-0002]
251. TRC, NRA, INAC, 772/25-1-011, volume 2, 06/61–07/68, Dave W. Gilholm to Mr. Davey, 8 May
1963. [IRC-040059]
252. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. 83.050C, box 111,
file 2, Morley IRS – Correspondence 1961–62/UCC Docs Toronto, Ron Campbell to Mr. Joblin,
12 December 1962. [UCA-081434]
253. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 772/25-1010, volume 2, G. Kent Gooderham to Assistant Director of Education, 10 May 1963. [IRC049052-0000]
254. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSCC-GS 75-103, series
2:15(c), box 23, file number 5, “Report of Visit of Acting Superintendent to St. Alban’s Residential School, Prince Albert, January 19–20, 1948.” [13a-c000027-d0038-001]
255. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSCC-GS 75-103, series
2:15, box 23, file 6, “Visit of Major General G. R. Turner to All Saints & St. Alban’s Schools,
Prince Albert, Saskatchewan,” 10 January 1949. [13a-c000028-d0037-001]
256. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSCC-GS 75-103, series
2:15, box 23, file 5, “Superintendent’s visit to St. Albans School, Prince Albert December 31049.” [13a-c000028-d0004-001]
257. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2:15, box 24, file 1, “Superintendent’s Visit to Old Sun School, Gleichen, December 1213-14 1954.” [AAC-090540]
258. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSSC-GS 103, box 24, file 1, “Superintendent’s Visit to Aklavik, NWT, July 28th–August 7, 1954.”

Notes • 771
259. Anglican Church of Canada Archives, MSSC-GS 103, box 24, file 1 and file 2, “Superintendent’s Visit to Aklavik, NWT, July 28th–August 7, 1954,” “Superintendent’s Visit to All Saint’s
Residential School, Aklavik, NWT, 20–25, 1956.”
260. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories – Education, Culture and Employment,
Kitchen Staff Meetings, 1970–1971, Transfer No. 1530, box 14, “Report – Meeting of Kitchen
Staff, Akaitcho Hall, July 10, 1970,” A. J. Boxer. [AHU-004956]
261. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories – Education, Culture and Employment,
Staff Meetings, 1990–1991, Transfer No. 1530, box 17, “Staff Meeting – Minutes – November 5,
1990.” [AHU-005115]
262. TRC, NRA, Government of Northwest Territories – Education, Culture and Employment, Staff
Meetings, 1991–1993, Transfer No. 1419, box 10, Minutes of Staff Meeting, 7 February 1992, 3.
[AHU-005121]
263. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG10, volume 6015, file 1-1-6-Alta, part1, “Indian Education in Alberta,” undated report of meeting held on 22 August 1946. [RCA000036]
264. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1960, 56.
265. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6443, file 881-1, part 2, “Lejac Indian
Residential School General Report for Quarter Ending December 31st, 1942.” [LEJ-000816]
266. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series [Illegible], box [Illegible], file [Illegible], “Brocket,” undated. [AAC-085433] Although
this document is undated, it deals with issues discussed in other reports from the 1948–49
period. See: TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS
75-103, series 2.15, Superintendent’s Visit to Brocket, October 24 and 25, 1948; [AAC-083346] ,NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103, Superintendent’s Visit to Brocket, April 4 1949. [AAC-083362]
267. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2:15, box 24, file 1, “Superintendent’s Visit to St. Paul’s School, Cardston, June 12 & 13,
1954.” [AAC-090546]
268. Anglican Church of Canada Archives, MSSC-GS 103, box 24, file 1, Henry G. Cook, “Superintendent’s Visit to Moose Factory School, (Bishop Horden), September 8–15th, 1954.”
269. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2.15, box 22, file 3, ”Report of the Superintendent, Indian School Administration to the
M.S.C.C. Executive, Toronto, February 12th, 1957.” [AAC-090809]
270. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 2-15, box
24, “Superintendent’s Visit to Sioux Lookout Indian School, October 30, 31, 1956.” [PLK000818]
271. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, “Superintendent’s Visit to Moose Fort Indian School – June 19th–23rd, 1959.” [13a-c000036-d0021-001]
272. Anglican Church of Canada Archives, MSCC-GS 75-103, box 24, file 4, H. G. Cook, Superintendent’s Visit to St. Philip’s Residential School, Fort George, June 3 to 6th, 1961.
273. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, file 1, Visit Reports of theSuperintendent 02/54–12/54, page 004126-004227, Accession GS 75-103, series 2:15, box 24,“Superintendent’s Visit to Chooutla School, Carcross, Y.T., December 3th–6th, 1954.” [DYK201620]

772 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
274. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSSC-GS 75-103, series
2:15, box 24, file 2, “Superintendent’s Visit to St. John’s Residential School, Wabasca, Alberta,
26th August, 1956.” [13a-c000034-d0002-022]
275. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSCC–GS 75-103, series
2:15, box 23, file 10, “Superintendent’s Visit to St. Philip’s School, Fort George – March 24–25,”
1953. [13a-c000032-d0025-001]
276. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103, series 2:15, box 24, file 2, “Superintendent’s Visit to St. Philip’s School, Fort George, P.Q. January
16 and 17 1956.” [13a-c000034-d0002-004]
277. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 2-15, box
24, “Superintendent’s Visit to Hostel, Fort McPherson, NWT, March 10th, 11th and 12th,
1960.” [13a-c000037-d0037-001]
278. King, School at Mopass, 63.
279. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 757-1, part 2, volume 6355, 1928–1948, NAC, C.
Pant. Schmidt to R. A. Hoey, 9 January 1945. [MOR-004315]
280. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 757-1, part 2, volume 6355, 1928–1948, NAC, G. L.
Wilson to Director, Indian Affairs, 9 January 1945. [MOR-004314]
281. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6355, file 757-1, part 2, 1928–1948, J.
A. Millican to R. A. Hoey, 15 December 1944. [IRC-048075]
282. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 757-1, part 2, volume 6355, 1928–1948, NAC, C.
Pant. Schmidt to R. A. Hoey, 9 January 1945. [MOR-004315]
283. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 757-1, part 2, volume 6355, 1928–1948, NAC, C.
Pant. Schmidt to R. A. Hoey, 9 January 1945. [MOR-004315]
284. TRC, AVS, Ida Ralph-Quisess, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Thunder Bay, Ontario, 24 November 2010, Statement Number: 01-ON-24NOV10-002.
285. TRC, AVS, Jeanne Rioux, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Vancouver, British Columbia, 18 September 2013, Statement Number: 2011-3207.
286. TRC, AVS, Mary Chapman, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, 4 October 2011, Statement Number: 2011-1529.
287. TRC, AVS, Ronalee Lavallee, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, 24 June 2012, Statement Number: 2011-1776.
288. TRC, AVS, Vitaline Elsie Jenner, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 16 June 2010, Statement Number: 02-MB-16JU10-131.
289. Vitaline Elsie Jenner, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 16 June 2010, Statement Number: 02-MB-16JU10-131.
290. Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1960, 56.
291. TRC, AVS, Stanley McKay, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Winnipeg, Manitoba, 13 July 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0269.
292. Moderators of the United Church of Canada, University of Toronto, Victoria University, E. J.
Pratt Library, http://library.vicu.utoronto.ca/emmanuel/research_resources/subject_guides/
moderators_united_church.html (accessed 2 July 2014).
293. Kirkness, Creating Space, 3–12, 29–40.
294. Kirkness, Creating Space, 29–30.
295. Kirkness, Creating Space, 31–32.
296. Kirkness, Creating Space, 34–40.

Notes • 773
297. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, 779/3-8, part 2, 1952–1962, RG10, 7150, NAC, Ellen
L. Fairclough to Frank J. W. Fane, 22 November 1961. [BQL-005531]
298. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 779/25-1-009,
05/63–11/70, volume 1, RCAP, Gerald W. Baldwin to Jean Chrétien, 30 July 1970. [BQL000158] For Linklater as Qu’Appelle student, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada,
RG10, volume 8775, file 655/25-8, part 1, “List of High School Pupils Attending the Qu’Appelle
Indian Res. School, Lebret, Sask. Term: 1952–1953.” [PLD-006041]
299. “N.I.B. Honours Indian Leaders,” 6.
300. TRC, NRA, R. T. Sullivan, “Visit to the Alberni Valley,” 28 February 1965. [UCB-005689]
301. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 2-15, box
30, file 3, “Newsletter December 1967,” 19. [ACC-001851]
302. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, FA 10-437, Acc. E-1997-98/161, box 5, file[205]701/1-13-6, volume 1, 01/1970–10/1970, Education Establishment, Kindergarten Teachers and Aides, 14 April 1970. [ERM-200196-0001] For Louttit as a residential school student,
see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6193, file 462-10, part 1, T. J.
Godfrey to Alf Vale, 5 July 1935. [CRS-000137]
303. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, file 494/1-13-014, volume 1, T. B. Jones to R.
F. Davey, 21 June 1963. [PLK-001867] For Spence as a residential school student, see: Canada,Special Joint Committee, 1947, 1066–1067.
304. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 144/25-7,
volume 1 (locator 180-1), Ahab Spence to Superintendent, Sioux Lookout Agency, 16 April
1964. [NCA-007457-0004]
305. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 494/251-014, volume 2, “The Anglican Indian Residential School, Sioux Lookout, Ontario,” 10 June
1965. [PLK-000304-0001]
306. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 494/25-1014, volume 2, The Anglican Indian Residential School, Sioux Lookout, Ontario, 10 June 1965.
[PLK-000304-0001]
307. “Ahab Spence,” Obituary, Winnipeg Free Press, 7 April 2001, http://passages.winnipegfreepress.
com/passage-details/id-60169/name-Ahab_Spence/.
308. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 487/25-1014, R. F. Davey to Giollo Kelly, 10 June 1966. [CJC-000308]
309. TRC, NRA, The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Toronto, ON, Acc. 1988-7004, box
43, file 4, Giollo Kelly to Mrs. Colin Wasacase, 8 July 1966. [NCA-009161-0002]
310. For Mission, see: TRC, NRA, “Historic Transfer of Authority,” Fraser Valley Record, 5 September 1973. [OMS-000307] For Kamloops, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, RG10, FA 10-138, Acc. v85-86/353, file 963/1-13, Perm. volume 6 [502372], part 1, Student
Residence Establishment, 1969–78, NAC – Burnaby, A. H. Friesen to A. H. Noonan, 18 April
1973. [KAM-008144] For Blue Quills, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 779/25-2-009, volume 1, Ctrl #55-4, “Confidential: Notes:
Re Blue Quills,” undated. [NCA-007302] For Prince Albert, see TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution
Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 601/25-13-1, J. B. Freeman to James
A. Roberts, 2 April 1973. [PAR-019374] For Duck Lake, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution
Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box 8A, file 15, D. Seesequasis to
H. Kolakowski, 3 February 1982. [GDC-014654-0004] For Qu’Appelle, see: LaRose, “Wrecker’sBall,” http://www.ammsa.com/publications/saskatchewan-sage/wreckers-ball-claims-white-774 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
calf-collegiate-0. For Fort George, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical
Files Collection – Ottawa, file 371/25-1-019, volume 2, Right Rev. James A. Watton to A. Gill, 7September 1971. [FGA-000225-0001]
311. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, NCR-E4974-1(Encl 1), volume 3, Ctrl #446-19, Saskatchewan Region, Student Residences: An Issue Management Discussion Paper, 8 February 1994. [NCA-016023-0002]
312. Anglican Church of Canada Archives, MSSC-GS 103, box 24, file 1, “Superintendent’s Visit to
Aklavik, NWT, July 28th–August 7, 1954.”
313. Anglican Church of Canada Archives, GS 103, box 24, file 2 (1955–56), “Superintendent’s Visit
to Wabasca, March 26, 1955.”
314. TRC, AVS, Phyllis Molyneux, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Edmonton, Alberta, 4 May 2011, Statement Number: 2011–1644; TRC, AVS, Ruth
Millward, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Coquitlam,
British Columbia, 5 October 2011, Statement Number: 2011–1527; TRC, AVS, Mark DeWolf,
Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 22
and 27 February 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0217; TRC, AVS, Christine Lynch, Statement
to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, 25 February
2011, Statement Number: 2011-0228.
315. TRC, AVS, Mavis Gould, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Mayerthorpe, Alberta, 28 November 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0050.
316. TRC, AVS, Jack Lee, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 18 June 2010, Statement Number: SC111.
317. TRC, AVS, Mark DeWolf, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Halifax, Nova Scotia, 22 and 27 February 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0217; Christine
Lynch, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Wolfville, Nova
Scotia, 25 February 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0228.
318. TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Cariboo Archives, section #205, St. George Indian Residential
School, Card D.C. 2C11, Lytton-St.-George’s School, #88.44, “All Saints Indian Residential
School Staff Manual 2nd Revision, 1967,” A. W. Harding, Vice-Principal, 22–23. [AEMR177341]
319. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103, series 2:15, box 24, file 1, “Superintendent’s Visit to Sioux Lookout School, December 17, 1954.”[AAC-090539]
320. TRC, AVS, George Takashima, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Lethbridge, Alberta, 10 October 2013, Statement Number: SP128.
321. TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file source, “Commission to Study IndianWork, The United Church of Canada, 1958,” 28. [UCB-005240]
322. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. [Illegible].050C,
box 112, file [Illegible], Edmonton IRS – Correspondence 1958–60/UCC Docs Toronto,”Minutes of Meeting of the Indian School Committee of the Edmonton Presbytery Held at St.
Stephen’s College on Thursday, November 24th, 1960, at 7:30 p.m.” [UCA-080218]
323. TRC, NRA, United Church of Canada/Victoria University Archives, Acc. No. 83.050C, box 112,
file 18, Edmonton IRS – Correspondence 1961–62/UCC Docs Toronto, “Minutes of the Indian
School Committee of the Edmonton Presbytery held at the School May 11th, 1961, 8 p.m.”[UCA-080535]

Notes • 775
324. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 371/2513-024, volume 2, “Is it Wrong to Force Kids into Church?” John Beaufoy, Globe and Mail,
10 September 1973; [LTR-001190] TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files
Collection – Ottawa, file 1/25-13, volume 19, Scott Honeyman, “Dismissal Means Denial of
Rights,” Ottawa Citizen, 21 March 1973, 48. [LTR-001254]
325. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 371/25-1024, volume 2, J. V. Jacobson to Gooderham, 18 January 1973. [LTR-000497-0001]
326. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 1/25-13,
volume 20, “Freedom of Religion for Indians,” Toronto Star, 14 September 1973. [LTR-000256]
327. TRC, CAR, Anglican Church of Canada, Diocese of the Arctic, Diocese of the Arctic fonds,
1850–1999, John Reginald Sperry Records, [textual; architectural drawings; graphic], 1955–
1991, predominantly 1974–1989; 4-4 Diocesan files, 1935–1994, predominantly 1974–1989.
accession M96-7, box 151, file 6, Fardella v. the Queen, [1974] 2 F.C. [39b-c000876-d0001-002]
328. TRC, AVS, James Fiori, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Vancouver, British Columbia, 19 May 2010, Statement Number: S-BC-01-007.
329. TRC, AVS, Vincent LaPlante, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, 19 May 2010, Statement Number: S-BC-01-002.
330. TRC, AVS, Tom Cavanaugh, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, 19 May 2010, Statement Number: S-BC-01-005.
331. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: 2011-0254.
332. 333 TRC, AVS, Olive Saunders, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Thunder Bay, Ontario, 7 and 8 March 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0042.
333. 334 TRC, AVS, James Fiori, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Vancouver, British Columbia, 19 May 2010, Statement Number: S-BC-01-007.
334. TRC, AVS, A. I. Avery, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Victoria, British Columbia, 1 October 2011, Statement Number: 2011-1696.
335. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: 2011-2033.
336. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: 2011-2033.
337. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: 2011-0055.
338. TRC, AVS, Joe Aleck, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Rosedale, British Columbia, 30 November 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0049.
339. TRC, AVS, Mary Chapman, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, 4 October 2011, Statement Number: 2011-1529.
340. TRC, AVS, Vincent LaPlante, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, 19 May 2010, Statement Number: S-BC-01-002.
341. TRC, AVS, John Fitzgerald, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Vancouver, British Columbia, 19 May 2010, Statement Number: S-BC-01-003.
342. TRC, AVS, Terrance McNamara, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, 19 May 2010, Statement Number: S-BC-01-006.
343. TRC, AVS, Tom Cavanaugh, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, 19 May 2010, Statement Number: S-BC-01-005.

776 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
344. Larry Kusch, “‘How Cold and Uncaring Can This Get?’ Pilot Recounts Anguish of Kids Wrested
from Parents,” Winnipeg Free Press, 18 June 2010, http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/
how-cold-and-uncaring-can-this-get-96636974.html.
345. TRC, AVS, Lynn Bishop, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Winnipeg, Manitoba, 16 June 2010, Statement Number: SC093.
346. TRC, AVS, Dorothy McKay, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 13 July 2011, Statement Number: 2011-2036.
347. TRC, AVS, Elizabeth Pearson, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Richmond, British Columbia, 16 May 2011, Statement Number: 2011-1648.
348. TRV, AVS, Anonymous, Written Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Statement Number: 2011–3457.
349. TRC, AVS, Mary Hamilton, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, 26 February 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0219.
350. TRC, AVS, Marion Adams, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Ottawa, Ontario, 13 June 2011, Statement Number: 2011-1630.
351. TRC, AVS, Richard Nerysoo, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Inuvik, Northwest Territories, 30 June 2011, Statement Number: NNE202.
352. TRC, AVS, Nellie Ningewance, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, 1 July 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0305.
353. TRC, AVS, Daniel Andre, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Whitehorse, Yukon, 23 May 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0202.
354. TRC, AVS, Cameron Reid, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Powell River, British Columbia, 28 September 2011, Statement Number: 2011-1509.
355. TRC, AVS, Mary Hamilton, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, 26 February 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0219.
356. TRC, AVS, George Takashima, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Lethbridge, Alberta, 10 October 2013, Statement Number: SP128.
357. TRC, AVS, George Takashima, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Lethbridge, Alberta, 10 October 2013, Statement Number: SP128.
358. TRC, AVS, Donald Hepburn, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Red Deer, Alberta, 4 August 2011, Statement Number: 2011-1693.
359. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG85, volume 1338, file 600-1-1, part 19, “Northern
Education – Façade for Failure,” D. W. Hepburn, February 1963, 19, 21. [NCA-005960] For
Hepburn’s resignation, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Ottawa, RG85, Perm.
volume 1436, file 610-1, part 17, School Teachers and Welfare Teachers – N.W.T. [General File]
1960–1961, FA 85-4, D. W. Hepburn to B. Thorsteinsson, 30 May 1961. [IKU-000488-0002]
360. TRC, AVS, Mary Hamilton, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, 26 February 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0219.
361. TRC, AVS, Terri Welsh, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Winnipeg, Manitoba, 16 June 2010, Statement Number: SC093.
362. TRC, AVS, George McMillan, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Kenora, Ontario, 9 July 2011, Statement Number: 2011-2035.
363. TRC, AVS, Danny Saunders, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Thunder Bay, Ontario, 7 and 8 March 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0041.
364. TRC, AVS, George Takashima, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Lethbridge, Alberta, 10 October 2013, Statement Number: SP128.

Notes • 777
365. TRC, AVS, Elizabeth Pearson, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Richmond, British Columbia, 16 May 2011, Statement Number: 2011-1648. For principal’s name, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG29, volume 2767, file 822-1-A978,part 1, J. Edwin Allsopp to M. S. Todd, 2 November 1950. [120.15014B]
366. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: S-BC-01-004.
367. TRC, AVS, James Fiori, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Vancouver, British Columbia, 19 May 2010, Statement Number: S-BC-01-007.
368. TRC, AVS, Lawrence Brennan, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Pickering, Ontario, 30 May 2011, Statement Number: 2011-1641.
369. TRC, AVS, Merle Nisly, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Thunder Bay, Ontario, 14 December 2011, Statement Number: 2011-4199.
370. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Written Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Statement Number: 2011–3478.
371. TRC, AVS, Betty Ann Caldwell, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Clear Lake, Manitoba, 7 July 2011, Statement Number: 2011-1647.
372. TRC, AVS, George Takashima, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Lethbridge, Alberta, 10 October 2013, Statement Number: SP128.
373. Kirkness, Creating Space, 30.
374. Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, MSSC-GS 103, box 24, file 1, G. R. Turner, “Visit to Shingwauk by Major General G. R. Turner, 25th and 26th November, 1954.”
375. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103,
series 2:15, box 24, file 1, “Superintendent’s Visit to St. Paul’s School, Cardston, January 14th
to 16th, 1954.” [AAC-090555] For Buckle’s full name, see: TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector– IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 773/23-5-004, 01/54–05/57, volume 2, RCAP, “Department of Citizenship and Immigration, Indian Affairs Branch, Inspector’s Report, St. Paul’sResidential School, Cardston, Alberta,” 20 January 1954. [PUL-002222]
376. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: S-BC-01-004.
377. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: 2011-1636.
378. TRC, AVS, Terrance McNamara, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, 19 May 2010, Statement Number: S-BC-01-006.
379. TRC, AVS, Tom Cavanaugh, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, 19 May 2010, Statement Number: S-BC-01-005.
380. TRC, AVS, John Fitzgerald, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Vancouver, British Columbia, 19 May 2010, Statement Number: S-BC-01-003.
381. For an example of this sort of rule dating back to 1940, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives
Canada, RG10, volume 6422, file 869-1, part 3, Gerald H. Barry to D. M. McKay, 24 June 1940.
[IRC-041351-0000]
382. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
16A, file 10, “Staff Manual, Gordon’s Indian Residential School, Anglican Church of Canada,”
undated, unpaginated, 13 of 17. [GDC-043268]
383. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, ACC-MSCC-GS 75-103, series 2:15, box 24, file 2, “Conversation at Fort Macleod re: Brocket School, March 29th, 1955.”[AAC-090564] For Woods’s initials, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton,

778 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
116/23-4, 03/47–12/63, NAC – Edmonton, Superintendent’s Quarterly Report – April 1st–June
30th, 1955, H. N. Woodsworth. [BPD-000847]
384. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Edmonton, 116/23-4, 03/47–12/63, NAC – Edmonton, Superintendent’s Quarterly Report – April 1st–June 30th, 1955, H. N. Woodsworth.
[BPD-000847]
385. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box
3A, file 27, Principal, Gordon’s Indian Residential School to Mr. Buckle, 14 May 1957. [GDC005459] The letter is unsigned; for evidence that Southard was principal at this time, see: TRC,
NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, GRS Files, box 40,
file 62, Albert Southard to Bernice Glazier, 4 June 1957. [GDC-020188]
386. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, file 675/25-1018, volume 2 (locator 11-10), R. F. Davey to H. B. Rodine, 4 July 1957; [IRC-040040] Anglican
Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 2-15, box 22, file 3, Henry Cook
to M.S.C.C. Executive Committee, 9 September 1957. [GDC-007195]
387. TRC, NRA, Anglican Diocese of Athabasca Fonds, Provincial Archives of Alberta, file
A320/575, Indian [School] Commission, [Official Correspondence of Bishop Sovereign]
1946–49, Archival Acc. PR1970.0387/1644, Archival box 41, “Quarterly Report of the Superintendent of the Indian School Administration to the Executive Committee, MSCC,” Henry
Cook, 11 May 1948, 3; [JON-800438] Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS
75-103, series 2-15, box 21, file 2, “Superintendent’s Visit to Gordon’s School, March 20–21,
1955.” [ACC-001151]
388. TRC, AVS, Delores Pflanz, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Courtney, British Columbia, 1 December 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0053.
389. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: 2011-2033.
390. TRC, AVS, Tom Cavanaugh, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, 19 May 2010, Statement Number: S-BC-01-005.
391. TRC, AVS, Tom Cavanaugh, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, 19 May 2010, Statement Number: S-BC-01-005.
392. TRC, AVS, Donald Hepburn, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Red Deer, Alberta, 4 August 2011, Statement Number: 2011-1693.
393. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: 2011-5004.
394. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: 2011-1645.
395. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 8542, file 51/25-1, part 2, Philip Phelan, 14 April 1953. [FAR-000067]
396. TRC, AVS, Marianne Kingma, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Township of Adelaide, Ontario, 1 June 2011, Statement Number: 2011-1631.
397. TRC, AVS, Eleanor Jackson, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, 2 December 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0054.
398. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: 2011-1697.
399. TRC, AVS, Tom Cavanaugh, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, 19 May 2010, Statement Number: S-BC-01-005.

Notes • 779
400. For example, see: TRC, AVS, Donald Hepburn, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada, Red Deer, Alberta, 4 August 2011, Statement Number: 2011-1693;
TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: 2011-1649; TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Written Statement to the Truth andReconciliation Commission of Canada, Statement Number: 2011-3482.
401. TRC, AVS, Tom Cavanaugh, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, 19 May 2010, Statement Number: S-BC-01-005.
402. Eleanor Jackson, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, 2 December 2011, Statement Number: 2011-0054.
403. TRC, AVS, Anonymous, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Statement Number: 2011-2033.
404. TRC, AVS, Edward Lynch, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Vancouver, British Columbia, 19 May 2010, Statement Number: S-BC-01-004.
405. TRC, NRA, “A Dinner at Oblate House,” Ideas Transcript, Program conceived and presented
by Jim Carney and Keith Watt, produced by Don Mowatt, CBC RadioWorks, 30 January 1995,
10. [MIS-001144] For date of Lorne Mackey’s appointment as principal of the Christie school,see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada – Burnaby, RG10, FA 10-138, Perm. volume13463, file 208/25-1, Education – General, part 1, folder 2 of 3, 1962/06–1965/12, G. E. Cousineau to R. F. Davey, 25 June 1964. [125.02031A] For Lascelles’s publication, see: Lascelles,
Roman Catholic Indian Residential Schools.
406. E. B. v. Order of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in the Province of British Columbia, 2001
BCSC 1783.
407. TRC, NRA, INAC – Resolution Sector – IRS Historical Files Collection – Ottawa, 951/25-13,
1957–1964, volume 1, RCAP, Inspection of Food Services, Indian Residential School, Christie
Residential School, M. E. Lock, 22 September 1964. [CST-000376-0003]
408. E. B. v. Order of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in the Province of British Columbia, 2001
BCSC 1783, 4, 4041, 65–67.
409. TRC, NRA, “A Dinner at Oblate House,” Ideas Transcript, Program conceived and presented
by Jim Carney and Keith Watt, produced by Don Mowatt, CBC RadioWorks, 30 January 1995,
10. [MIS-001144] For the date of Dunlop’s appointment as principal of the Mission school,see: TRC, NRA, No document location, no document file number, G. E. Cousineau to R. F.
Davey, 28 June 1963. [OKM-000691] For his transfer from the position, see; TRC, NRA, Headquarters, 957/25-13, 1965–1973, volume 3, HQ, J. W. Hennessy to R. F. Davey, 23 November
1968. [MIS-002019-0001]
410. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Walter Rudnicki to
Director, Indian Affairs, 17 August 1962; [AANDC-234696] Aboriginal Affairs and Northern
Development Canada, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Report, Western Arctic Division, Division file number 628-626-1, code 0559, re: Martin Houston, 29 August 1962. [AANDC-234684]
411. TRC, NRA, DIAND, Residential Schools Records Office, file 1/25-1-7-6, volume 1, 03/1953–
12/1970, J. P. Mulvihill to S. W. Kaiser, 6 July 1962. [120.06002]
412. TRC, NRA, No document location, no file location, Indian and Eskimo Welfare Oblate Commission, Missionary Information Bulletin, March 1966. [OBG-002431]
413. TRC, ASAGR, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, Keavin Amyot to Dear
Sir, 9 July 1969. [AANDC-589314]

780 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
414. Karen Mackenzie, “Sex Assault Victims Launch Lawsuit,” Northern News Services, 13 October
2008, http://www.nnsl.com/frames/newspapers/2008-10/oct13_08sex.html; Sherri Barron,“Man Jailed for Abusing Inuit Boys,” Ottawa Citizen, 30 July 1987.
415. Tonda MacCharles, “Crown Urges Long Jail Term for Social Worker Who Abused Inuit Boys,”
Ottawa Citizen, 25 July 1987.
416. TRC, ASAGR, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, “Final Report of the Native Indian Residential
School Task Force, Project E-NIRS, Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” M. W. Pacholuk, nodate, 39, 40. [RCMP-564517]
417. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 645-1, part 3, R. S. Davis to
Indian Affairs Branch, 6 February 1947. [IRC-040084] For the engineer’s conviction, see: TRC,
NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 3, Royal Canadian
Mounted Police, Constable A. Zimmerman, 28 July 1945. [GDC-010369-0001] For the supervisor’s conviction, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1,
part 3, R. S. Davis to Indian Affairs, 6 February 1947. [GDC-010362-0001]
418. TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada, RG10, volume 6309, file 654-1, part 3, Bernard
Neary to R. S. Davis, 13 February 1947. [GDC-017641]
419. TRC, NRA, Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, GS 75-103, series 2-15,
box 24, file 2, “Visit to Gordon’s School, 11th–13th July, 1955, Major-General G. R. Turner.”[GDC-007228] For details of the scandals, see: TRC, NRA, Library and Archives Canada,
RG10, volume 8754, file 654/25-1, volume 1, Henry G. Cook to R. F. Davey, 2 December 1955.
[GDC-005039]
420. TRC, AVS, Vincent LaPlante, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, 19 May 2010, Statement Number: S-BC-01-002.
421. TRC, AVS, John Tritschler, Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada,
Sto:lo, British Columbia, 19 January 2010, Statement Number: 2011-0245.

Getting to the Settlement Agreement
1. Canada, Department of Aboriginal Affairs, Indian Residential Schools – Key Milestones,
https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1332939430258/1332939552554 (accessed 4 February2015).
2. Canada, House of Commons Debates (11 June 2008), number 110, 39th Parliament,
2nd Session, http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication
aspx?Docid=3568890&Language=E.
3. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, They Came for the Children, 83.
4. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 318–319.
5. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 322–323.
6. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 329–330.
7. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 339, 351.
8. Marshall et al., “Assembly of First Nations,” http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/m/
article/assembly-of-first-nations/ (accessed 29 October 2014).
9. Métis National Council, “What Is the MNC?,” http://www.metisnation.ca/index.php/whoare-the-metis/mnc (accessed 25 June 2015).
10. Posluns, “Congress of Aboriginal Peoples,” http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/
article/congress-of-aboriginal-peoples/ (accessed 25 June 2015).

Notes • 781
11. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 331–341.
12. Freedman, “Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami,” http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/
inuit-tapiriit-kanatami-itk/ (accessed 8 December 2014).
13. Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, ITK Origins, https://www.itk.ca/about-itk/itk-origins (accessed 9
December 2014).
14. These organizations and associations include: the Qikiqtani Inuit Association, Governmentof Nunatsiavut, Kivalliq Inuit Association, Kitikmeot Inuit Association, Inuvialuit Regional
Corporation, Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada, Makivik Corporation, Nunavut TunngavikInc., and National Inuit Youth Council.
15. Stern, “Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami,” 90.
16. Agreement Between the Inuit of the Nunavut Settlement Area and Her Majesty the Queen in
Right of Canada, 1993.
17. Freedman, “Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami,” http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/
inuit-tapiriit-kanatami-itk/ (accessed 8 December 2014).
18. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 342–344.
19. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 349–350.
20. Canada, House of Commons, Special Committee on Indian Self-Government, Report (Ottawa,1983), quoted in Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 352.
21. Coates, Global History of Indigenous Peoples, 244–245.
22. Assembly of First Nations, Redress for the Harms Inflicted.
23. Grant, Moon of Wintertime, 209.
24. Porter, “Anglican Church and Native Education,” 222.
25. TRC, CAR, Hendry, Beyond Traplines, 21. [13d-c000314-d0001-001]
26. TRC, CAR, Hendry, Beyond Traplines, 23. [13d-c000314-d0001-001]
27. TRC, CAR, Hendry, Beyond Traplines, 79. [13d-c000314-d0001-001]
28. Barker, “Tangled Reconciliations,” 435–436.
29. Project North, “A Call for a Moratorium,” 155–167. For an example of public education work
carried out by Project North, see: McCullum, McCullum, and Olthuis, Moratorium.
30. Kairos Canada, Ethical Reflections, 6.
31. TRC, NRA, Project North, Aboriginal Rights Coalition, Letter to the Honourable Tom Siddon,
August 1992. [120.06583]
32. TRC, NRA, DIAND HQ, file E4974-1, volume 3, 11/1990, T. Siddon to E. Metatawabin, 14
December 1992. [AEMR-019449]
33. Carney, “Native-Wilderness Equation,” 76.
34. Gregersen, Dialogue at the Boundaries, 22.
35. United Church of Canada, Reverend Robert Smith, Apology to First Nations People, http://
www.united-church.ca/beliefs/policies/1986/a651 (accessed 23 October 2014).
36. The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Reverend Doug Crosby, Apology to the First
Nations of Canada, http://www.cccb.ca/site/images/stories/pdf/oblate_apology_english.pdf(accessed 27 October 2014).
37. Anglican Church of Canada, Archbishop Michael Peers, Apology to Native People, http://
www.anglican.ca/relationships/files/2011/06/Apology-English.pdf (accessed 27 October2014).
38. Presbyterian Church in Canada, Confession of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, http://
presbyterian.ca/?wpdmdl=92& (accessed 27 October 2014).

782 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
39. The United Church of Canada, Reverend Bill Phipps, Apology to Former Students, http://www.
united-church.ca/beliefs/policies/1998/a623 (accessed 27 October 2014).
40. “Phil Fontaine’s Shocking Testimony of Sexual Abuse,” interview with Barbara Frum, The
Journal, CBC, http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/politics/parties-leaders/phil-fontainenative-diplomat-and-dealmaker/shocking-testimony-of-sexual-abuse.html.
41. Assembly of First Nations, Breaking the Silence, 178–180; Million, Therapeutic Nations, 96, 97.
42. Assembly of First Nations, Breaking the Silence, Executive summary.
43. Assembly of First Nations, Breaking the Silence, Executive summary.
44. Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision, 7.
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46. “Bernard’s Lawsuit Helped Natives Nationwide,” Halifax Daily News, 30 December 2007,
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47. National Residential Schools Survivors Society, Raymond Mason: Autobiography, http://
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48. Sellers, They Called Me Number One, 169.
49. Factum of the Applicants/IAP Claimants in Request for Directions Returnable December 17,
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50. TRC, ASAGR, Fort Albany First Nation, St Anne’s Residential School Reunion and Conference– Report of the Testimonial/Panel Component, St Anne’s Residential School Reunion and
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51. Metatawabin, Up Ghost River, 276, 287.
52. Indian Residential School Survivor Society, Who We Are, http://irsss.ca/irsss/about/who-weare/ (accessed 25 October 2014).
53. Indian Residential School Survivor Society, Who We Are, http://irsss.ca/irsss/about/who-weare/ (accessed 24 June 2015).
54. Miller, Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, 380–384.
55. Canada, Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Report, volume 1, chapter 1, “Getting
Started.”56. White et al., Aboriginal Policy Research, 3:138.
57. Canada, Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Report, volume 1, chapter 10, “Residential
Schools.”
58. Canada, Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Report, volume 1, chapter 10, “Residential
Schools,” 365.
59. Canada, Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Report, volume 1, chapter 10, “Residential
Schools,” 367.
60. Canada, Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Report, volume 1, chapter 10, “Residential
Schools,” 365.
61. Canada, Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Gathering Strength, 2.
62. Aboriginal Healing Foundation, Aboriginal People, 1.
63. Canada, Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Gathering Strength, 5.
64. Legacy of Hope Foundation, About Residential Schools, http://www.legacyofhope.ca/aboutresidential-schools/healing-reconciliation (accessed 24 October 2014).

Notes • 783
65. Affidavit of Brian O’Reilly sworn on 27 July 2006 in Court file No. L051875, Quatell v. Canada(Attorney General), 2006 BCSC 1840 at para 6.
66. Lleweyn, “Dealing with the Legacy,” 253, 261.
67. Assembly of First Nations, Assembly of First Nations Report, 11.
68. Roach, Blaming the Victim, 568.
69. T. W. N. A. v. Clarke, 2001 BCSC 1177 at para 305.
70. Feldthusen, “Civil Liability,” 68, 69.
71. Feldthusen, “Civil Liability,” 68.
72. For original filing, see: W. R. B. v. Plint, [1998] BCJ No. 1320. For final disposition, see:Blackwater (WRB) v. Plint, 2005 SCC 58.
73. Moran, “Role of Reparative Justice,” 533.
74. Assembly of First Nations, Assembly of First Nations Report, 11.
75. See, for example: G. S. v. Canada (Attorney General), 2001 SKQB 427.
76. F. S. M. v. Clarke, [1999] BCJ No. 1973 at para 2.
77. F. S. M. v. Clarke, [1999] BCJ No. 1973 at para 183.
78. F. S. M. v. Clarke, [1999] BCJ No. 1973 at paras 196–197.
79. F. S. M. v. Clarke, [1999] BCJ No. 1973 at para 184.
80. T. W. N. A. v. Clarke, 2001 BCSC 1177 at para 290.
81. For Williamson’s decision, see: T. W. N. A. v. Clarke, 2001 BCSC 1177 at para 291. For appeal
court decision, see: T. W. N. A. v. Clarke, 2003 BCCA 670 at paras 63, 78.
82. D. A. v. Canada (Attorney General), [1998] SJ No. 691 at paras 3–4. For Starr’s conviction, see:
TRC, NRA, Trevor Sutter, “Starr Admits to Sexual Assaults,” Regina Leader-Post, 3 February
1993. [GDC-026641]
83. V. P. v. Canada (Attorney General), 1999 SKQB 180 at paras 46, 55, 61–64, 113.
84. D. B. v. Canada (Attorney General), 2000 SKQB 574.
85. D. B. v. Canada, 2000 SKQB 574 at paras 63–65.
86. H. L. v. Canada, 2001 SKQB 233.
87. H. L. v. Canada, 2001 SKQB 233 at paras 79–80.
88. H. L. v. Canada, 2001 SKQB 233 at paras 79–80.
89. H. L. v. Canada, 2002 SKCA 131 at para 258.
90. H. L. v. Canada, 2005 SCC 25.
91. W. R. B. v. Plint, [1998] BCJ No. 1320 at paras 11, 14.
92. W. R. B. v. Plint, [1998] BCJ No. 1320 at paras 126, 140.
93. W. R. B. v. Plint, 2001 BCSC 997 at paras 933, 938.
94. W. R. B. v. Plint. 2003 BCCA 671 at paras 49–50; rev’d Blackwater (WRB) v. Plint, 2005 SCC 58
at para 73.
95. Smith, Voisine, and Choquette, “Catholicism,” http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/
article/catholicism/ (accessed 20 January 2015).
96. Re Residential Schools, 2001 ABCA 216.
97. Re Residential Schools, 2002 ABQB 667 at paras 10, 24.
98. Blair, “Diocese of Cariboo Plans Own Shutdown: Bishop Will Be out of a Job,” Anglican
Journal, 1 September 2000, 3, http://www.anglicanjournal.com/articles/diocese-of-caribooplans-own-shutdown-1049.
99. TRC, CAR, Harvey, Bob, “Catholic Forced to Pay Twice for Native Lawsuit, Negotiator Says,”
Ottawa Citizen, 12 Nov 2001. [13c-c000043-d0016-001]

784 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
100. TRC, CAR, Letter from UCC Moderator B. Phipps, ACC Primate M. Peers, PCC Moderator
G. Davis, OMI, President Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, G. Wiesner, toPrime Minister Jean Chrétien, Phipps Residential School correspondence, 29 June 2000.
[13a-c003175-d0048-001]
101. Lleweyn, “Dealing with the Legacy,” 265.
102. TRC, CAR, Press Release, “Church Organizations Renew Call for Mediator,” dated 11 January
2002; [13c-c001424-d0044-001] TRC, CAR, Letter from J. Stagg to M. Zarowny, July 23, 2001;[13c-c001431-d0002-001] TRC, CAR, Letter from J. Stagg to M. Zarowny, J. Boyles, D. Iverson
and S. Kendall, August 21, 2001. [13c-c000050-d0060-001]
103. TRC, CAR, Press Release, “Residential Schools Update #12,” J. D. Cruickshank, J. Boyles, A.
Whittingham. [38d-c001840-d0012-001]
104. General Synod Communications, Government of Canada and Anglican Church, http://
www.anglican.ca/news/government-of-canada-and-anglican-church-reach-agreement-inprinciple/3001866/ (accessed 31 October 2014).
105. Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Brief Administrative History, 6–7, http://
presbyterian.ca/?wpdmdl=94& (accessed 31 October 2014).
106. The United Church of Canada, Response to the Government, http://www.united-church.ca/
communications/news/general/011030 (accessed 6 February 2015).
107. Affidavit of James Vincent Scott sworn on 14 June 2006 in Court File No. 00-CV-192059CP,
Baxter v. Canada (Attorney General) at para 12.
108. TRC, CAR, Letter from Deputy Prime Minister J. Manley to M. Zarowny, 24 May 2002.
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109. Canadian Bar Association, Logical Next Step, 4.
110. Nova Scotia, Kaufman, Searching for Justice (Kaufman Report), 384–385.
111. Nova Scotia, Kaufman, Searching for Justice (Kaufman Report), 385.
112. Regan, Unsettling the Settler, 121.
113. Assembly of First Nations, Assembly of First Nations Report, 14–15.
114. Affidavit of David Russell sworn on 25 July 2006 in Court File No. 00-CV-192059CP, Baxter v.
Canada (Attorney General) at para 39.
115. Affidavit of David Russell sworn on 25 July 2006 in Court File No. 00-CV-192059CP, Baxter v.
Canada (Attorney General) at paras 40–42.
116. Assembly of First Nations, Assembly of First Nations Report, 2, 11.
117. Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada, Performance Report for the Period Ending
March 31, 2004, 2, 6, and 16, http://www.nrsss.ca/Resource_Centre/IndianAffairs/IRSRC_
DPR_31March2004_FINAL_wm.pdf (accessed 5 February 2015).
118. Assembly of First Nations, Assembly of First Nations Report, 2.
119. Assembly of First Nations, Assembly of First Nations Report, 2–3.
120. Assembly of First Nations, Assembly of First Nations Report, 11.
121. Assembly of First Nations, Assembly of First Nations Report, 3–4.
122. Assembly of First Nations, Assembly of First Nations Report, 3–5.
123. Canadian Bar Association, Logical Next Step, 6.
124. Canadian Bar Association, Logical Next Step, 6.
125. Canada, House of Commons, Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern
Development, Minutes of Meetings 1, 18, 19, 20, 25, and 30, http://www.parl.gc.ca/
CommitteeBusiness/CommitteeMeetings.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=38&Ses=1&Stac=1119424(accessed 5 February 2015).

Notes • 785
126. Canada, House of Commons, Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern
Development, Evidence, http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.
aspx?DocId=1648068&Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=38&Ses=1#Int-1137136 (accessed 2
November 2014).
127. Canada, House of Commons, Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern
Development, Study on the Effectiveness.
128. Canada, House of Commons, Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern
Development, Study on the Effectiveness.
129. Eizenga et al., Class Actions Law and Practice.
130. Jones, Theory of Class Actions, 110.
131. Class Proceedings Act, 1992 SO 1992, c 6.
132. Class Proceedings Act, 1996 RSBC, c 50.
133. Saskatchewan: The Class Actions Act, SS 2001, c C-12.01; Newfoundland and Labrador: Class
Actions Act, SNL 2001, c C-18.1; Manitoba: Class Proceedings Act, CCSM c C-130; Alberta:
Class Proceedings Act, SA 2003, c C-16.5; New Brunswick: Class Proceedings Act, RSNB 2011,c 125; Nova Scotia: Class Proceedings Act, SNS 2007, c 28. (All statutes cited are the provincialclass proceedings act in their contemporary form.)
134. Federal Court Rules, 1998, SOR 98/106, as amended by Rules Amending the Federal Court
Rules, 1998, SOR 2002-417, s. 17.
135. Eizenga et al., Class Actions Law and Practice, 1–5; Western Canadian Shopping Centres Ltd v.
Dutton, [2001] 2 SCR 534; Anderson v. Bell Mobility Inc, 2010 NWTSC 65 at para 2.
136. Affidavit of Darcy Merkur sworn on 28 July 2006 in Court File No. 00-CV-192059CP, Baxter v.
Canada (Attorney General) at para 28.
137. Affidavit of Darcy Merkur sworn on 28 July 2006 in Court File No. 00-CV-192059CP, Baxter v.
Canada (Attorney General) at para 30.
138. Affidavit of Darcy Merkur sworn on 28 July 2006 in Court File No. 00-CV-192059CP, Baxter v.
Canada (Attorney General) at para 34.
139. Re Indian Residential Schools, 1999 ABQB 823.
140. Re Indian Residential Schools, 2002 ABQB 308 at para 4.
141. Affidavit of Darcy Merkur sworn on 28 July 2006 in Court File No. 00-CV-192059CP, Baxter v.
Canada (Attorney General) at para 51.
142. Statement of Claim, in Court File No. 29762, Cloud v. Canada (Attorney General).
143. Cloud v. Canada (Attorney General), [2001] OJ No 4163 at para 7.
144. Statement of Claim, in Court File No. 29762, Cloud v. Canada (Attorney General).
145. Affidavit of Darcy Merkur sworn on 28 July 2006 in Court File No. 00-CV-192059CP, Baxter v.
Canada (Attorney General) at paras 19–21.
146. For Federal Court, see: Court File No. T-848-05, Sparvier v. Canada (Attorney General); Court
File No. T-1620-05, Lalibertie v. Canada (Attorney General). For Québec, see: Court File No.
550-06-0000210-056, House v. Canada (Attorney General); Court File No. 550-06-000308-502,
Cardinal v. Canada (Attorney General). For Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British
Columbia, see: Affidavit of Donald I. M. Outerbridge sworn on 8 August 2006 in Court File No.
00-CV-192059-CP, Baxter v. Canada (Attorney General) at paras 75–76.
147. Statement of Claim issued 13 June 2000, in Court File No. 00-CV-192059CP, Baxter v. Canada(Attorney General).
148. Joint Factum of the Plaintiffs, Motion for Settlement Approval – Returnable August 29–31 2006,
in Court File No. 00-CV-192059CP, Baxter v. Canada (Attorney General) at para 256.

786 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
149. Affidavit of Darcy Merkur sworn on 28 July 2006 in Court File No. 00-CV-192059CP, Baxter v.
Canada (Attorney General) at paras 30, 72.
150. Spirit Wind, “Spirit Wind Signs Agreement,” http://www.turtleisland.org/resources/
spiritwind.pdf (accessed 3 November, 2014).
151. Baxter v. Canada (Attorney General), [2005] OJ No 2165.
152. Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada, Notice of Class Actions, http://web.archive.
org/web/20060531010518/http://www.irsr-rqpi.gc.ca/english/dispute_resolution_class_action_notice.html (accessed 24 June 2015).
153. Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada, Notice of Class Actions, http://web.archive.
org/web/20060531010518/http://www.irsr-rqpi.gc.ca/english/dispute_resolution_class_action_notice.html (accessed 24 June 2015).
154. Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada, Notice of Class Actions, http://web.archive.
org/web/20060531010518/http://www.irsr-rqpi.gc.ca/english/dispute_resolution_class_action_notice.html (accessed 24 June 2015).
155. Cloud v. Canada (Attorney General), [2001] OJ No 4163 at paras 63, 74, 80.
156. Cloud v. Canada (Attorney General), [2003] OJ No 2698 at paras 18–36.
157. Cloud v. Canada (Attorney General), [2004] OJ No 4924.
158. Cloud v. Canada (Attorney General), [2004] OJ No 4924 at para 47.
159. Cloud v. Canada (Attorney General), [2004] OJ No 4924 at para 87.
160. Cloud v. Canada (Attorney General), [2004] OJ No 4924 at para 92.
161. Cloud v. Canada (Attorney General), [2005] SCCA No 50.
162. Baxter v. Canada (Attorney General), [2005] OJ No 2165 at para 20.
163. Political Agreement, Agreement between the Assembly of First Nations and Her Majesty the
Queen in Right of Canada (represented by Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan) dated May
30, 2005, https://web.archive.org/web/20070319141417/http://www.afn.ca/cmslib/general/
IRS-Accord.pdf (accessed 3 November 2014).
164. Letter to Lorenzo Girones from Frank Iacobucci dated 1 June 2005, Exhibit “B” to the Affidavit
of Frank Iacobucci sworn on 28 July 2006 in Court File No. 00-CV-192059CP, Baxter v. Canada(Attorney General).
165. Letter to the Honourable Frank Iacobucci, Federal Government Representative dated 10 August
2005, Exhibit “A” to the Affidavit of Nellie J. Cournoyea sworn on 19 November 2012 in Court
File No. 00-CV-192059CP, Fontaine v. Canada (Attorney General), 2014 ONSC 4585.
166. Letter to the Honourable Frank Iacobucci, Federal Government Representative dated 10 August
2005, Exhibit “A” to the Affidavit of Nellie J. Cournoyea sworn on 19 November 2012 in Court
File No. 00-CV-192059CP, Fontaine v. Canada (Attorney General), 2014 ONSC 4585.
167. Précis of meeting between Inuit Leadership Iacobucci, 1 September 2005, Exhibit “B” to theAffidavit of Nellie J. Cournoyea sworn on 19 November 2012 in Court File No. 00-CV-192059CP,
Fontaine v. Canada (Attorney General).
168. Kuptana v. Canada (Attorney General), 2007 NWTSC 1; Ammaq v. Canada (Attorney
General), 2006 NUCJ 24.
169. Affidavit of Frank Iacobucci sworn on 28 July 2006 in Court File No. 00-CV-192059CP, Baxter v.
Canada (Attorney General) at para 12.
170. Affidavit of Frank Iacobucci sworn on 28 July 2006 in Court File No. 00-CV-192059CP, Baxter v.
Canada (Attorney General) at para 13.
171. Affidavit of Phil Fontaine sworn on 28 July 2006 in Court File No. 05-CV-294716CP, Fontaine v.
Canada (Attorney General) at para 3.

Notes • 787
172. Agreement in Principle, 10 November 2005, 1, http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/
AIP.pdf (accessed 3 November 2014).
173. Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/
settlement.html.
174. Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/
Schedule_J-CommemorationPolicyDirective.PDF.
175. Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/
Schedule_J-CommemorationPolicyDirective.PDF.
176. Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, s. 3.03,
http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/settlement.html.
177. Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, s. 3.02, schedule M, s. 3.03, and quote from
Funding Agreement (p. 5), http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/settlement.html.
178. Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/
Schedule_J-CommemorationPolicyDirective.PDF.
179. Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, schedules O-1 (Part III), O-2 (Part III), O-3(Part III), O-4 (Part IV), http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/settlement.html.
180. Baxter v. Canada (Attorney General), [2006] OJ No 4968 at para 4.
181. Quatell v. Canada, 2006 BCSC 1840 at para 7.
182. Quatell v. Canada, 2006 BCSC 1840 at para 9.
183. Baxter v. Canada (Attorney General), [2006] OJ No 4968 at para 85; Bosum v. Canada (Attorney
General), 2006 QCCS 5794 at para 17; Fontaine v. Canada (Attorney General), 2006 YKSC
63 at para 63; Northwest v. Canada (Attorney General), 2006 ABQB 902 at para 87; Quatell v.
Canada, 2006 BCSC 1840 at paras 4, 38; Semple v. Canada (Attorney General), 2006 MBQB
285 at para 34; Sparvier v. Canada (Attorney General), 2006 SKQB 533 at para 83.
184. Ammaq v. Canada (Attorney General), 2006 NUCJ 24; Kuptana v. Canada (Attorney General),2007 NWTSC 1.
185. Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, ss. 4.06(e) and 4.14, http://www.
residentialschoolsettlement.ca/settlement.html.
186. Canada, House of Commons Debates, Official Report, Ottawa: Mclean, Roger (9May 1883), 5th Parliament, 1st Session, 1107–1108, http://eco.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.9_07186_1_2/369?r=0&s=1 (accessed 6 February 2015).
187. Canada, House of Commons Debates (11 June 2008), number 110, 39th
Parliament, 2nd Session, http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.
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188. Canada, House of Commons Debates (11 June 2008), number 110, 39th
Parliament, 2nd Session, http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.
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189. Canada, House of Commons Debates (11 June 2008), number 110, 39th
Parliament, 2nd Session, http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.
aspx?Docid=3568890&Language=E.
190. Canada, House of Commons Debates (11 June 2008), number 110, 39th
Parliament, 2nd Session, http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.
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191. Canada, House of Commons Debates (11 June 2008), number 110, 39th
Parliament, 2nd Session, http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.
aspx?Docid=3568890&Language=E.

788 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
192. Canada, House of Commons Debates (11 June 2008), number 110, 39th
Parliament, 2nd Session, http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.
aspx?Docid=3568890&Language=E.
193. Canada, House of Commons Debates (11 June 2008), number 110, 39th
Parliament, 2nd Session, http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.
aspx?Docid=3568890&Language=E.
194. Canada, House of Commons Debates (11 June 2008), number 110, 39th
Parliament, 2nd Session, http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.
aspx?Docid=3568890&Language=E.
195. Canada, House of Commons Debates (11 June 2008), number 110, 39th
Parliament, 2nd Session, http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.
aspx?Docid=3568890&Language=E.
196. Canada, House of Commons Debates (11 June 2008), number 110, 39th
Parliament, 2nd Session, http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.
aspx?Docid=3568890&Language=E.
197. Smith, “Schools ‘Atrocity’ Affected Generations, Survivor Says,” Toronto Star, 11 June 2008,
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2008/06/11/schools_atrocity_affected_generations_
survivor_says.html.
198. Stan Beardy, as quoted in “Reaction to Harper’s Apology,” Wawatay News, 26 June 2008,
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199. Order-in-Council P.C. No. 2008-0793; Order-in-Council P.C. No. 2008-0794; Order-in-Council
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Primary Sources
1. Truth and Reconciliation Commission Databases
The endnotes of this report often commence with the abbreviation trc, followed by one of thefollowing abbreviations: asagr, avs, car, irssa, nra, rbs, and lac. The documents so citedare located in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s database, housed at
the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. At the end of each of these endnotes, in square
brackets, is the document identification number for each of these documents. The following is abrief description of each database.
Active and Semi-Active Government Records (asagr) Database: The Active and SemiActive Government Records database contains active and semi-active records collected fromfederal governmental departments that potentially intersected with the administration andmanagement of the residential school system. Documents that were relevant to the history and/or legacy of the system were disclosed to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada(trc) in keeping with the federal government’s obligations in relation to the Indian Residential
Schools Settlement Agreement (irssa). Some of the other federal government departments
included, but were not limited to, the Department of Justice, Health Canada, the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police, and National Defence. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada
undertook the responsibility of centrally collecting and producing the records from these otherfederal departments to the trc.
Audio/Video Statement (avs) Database: The Audio/Video Statement database contains video
and audio statements provided to the trc at community hearings and regional and national
events held by the trc, as well as at other special events attended by the trc.
Church Archival Records (car) Database: The Church Archival Records database contains
records collected from the different church/religious entities that were involved in theadministration and management of residential schools. The church/religious entities primarily
included, but were not limited to, entities associated with the Roman Catholic Church, theAnglican Church of Canada, the Presbyterian Church in Canada, and the United Churchof Canada. The records were collected as part of the trc’s mandate, as set out in the Indian
Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, to “identify sources and create as complete an
historical record as possible of the irs system and legacy.”790 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
Indian Residential Schools School Authority (IRSSA) Database: The Indian Residential
Schools School Authority database is comprised of individual records related to each residential
school, as set out by the irssa.
National Research and Analysis (NRA) Database: The National Research and Analysis database
contains records collected by the National Research and Analysis Directorate, Aboriginal Affairs
and Northern Development Canada, formerly Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada(irsrc). The records in the database were originally collected for the purpose of research
into a variety of allegations, such as abuse in residential schools, and primarily resulted fromcourt processes such as civil and criminal litigation, and later the Indian Residential Schools
Settlement Agreement (irssa), as well as from out-of-court processes such as Alternative
Dispute Resolution. A majority of the records were collected from Aboriginal Affairs andNorthern Development Canada. The collection also contains records from other federal
departments and religious entities. In the case of some records in the database that were
provided by outside entities, the information in the database is incomplete. In those instances,the endnotes in the report reads, “No document location, no document file source.”
Red, Black and School Series (rbs) Database: The Red, Black and School Series database
contains records provided by Library and Archives Canada to the trc. These three sub-series
contain records that were originally part of the “Headquarters Central Registry System,” orrecords management system, for departments that preceded the current federal department of
Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. The archival records are currently related
to the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development fonds and are held as part of
Library and Archives Canada’s collection.
Library and Archives Canada Archival Records Container (lacar) (File) and Document
Databases: The LAC Records Container (File) and Document databases contain records
collected from Library and Archives Canada (lac). The archival records of federal governmental
departments that potentially intersected with the administration and management of Indian
Residential Schools were held as part of Library and Archives Canada’s collection. Documentsthat were relevant to the history and/or legacy of the Indian Residential School system were
initially collected by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in conjunction with Aboriginal
Affairs and Northern Development Canada, as part of their mandate, as set out in the Indian
Residential School Settlement Agreement. The collection of records was later continued by
Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, based on the federal government’s
obligation to disclose documents in relation to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement
Agreement.

2. Indian Affairs Annual Reports, 1864–1997
Within this report, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs denotes the publishedannual reports created by the Government of Canada, and relating to Indian Affairs over theperiod from 1864 to 1997.

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The Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development was created in 1966. In 2011, it
was renamed Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. Before 1966, different departments
were responsible for the portfolios of Indian Affairs and Northern Affairs.
The departments responsible for Indian Affairs were (in chronological order):• The Department of the Secretary of State of Canada (to 1869)• The Department of the Secretary of State for the Provinces (1869–1873)• The Department of the Interior (1873–1880)• The Department of Indian Affairs (1880–1936)• The Department of Mines and Resources (1936–1950)• The Department of Citizenship and Immigration (1950–1965)• The Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources (1966)• The Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (1966 to the present)
The exact titles of Indian Affairs annual reports changed over time, and were named for the
department.

3. Library and Archives Canada
RG10 (Indian Affairs Records Group) The records of RG10 at Library and Archives Canada
are currently part of the R216, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development fonds.
For clarity and brevity, in footnotes throughout this report, records belonging to the RG10
Records Group have been identified simply with their RG10 information. Where a copy of an
RG10 document held in a TRC database was used, the TRC database holding that copy is clearly
identified, along with the RG10 information connected with the original document.
RG85 (Northern Affairs Program)

4. Other Archives
Anglican Church of Canada, General Synod Archives, Toronto.
Glenbow Museum, Calgary.
Jesuit Archives, Toronto.

792 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission

5. Government Publications
Alberta. Legislative Assembly of Alberta. “The Honourable R.G. Steinhauer, 1974–79.” http://
www.assembly.ab.ca/lao/library/lt-gov/steinhau.htm (accessed 13 September 2013).
Canada. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. “Distribution of IAP Claims with
Student-to-Student Abuse Map, Data from September 19, 2007 to December 31, 2012.”
Canada. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. “Indian Residential Schools –Key Milestones.” https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1332939430258/1332939552554(accessed 10 December 2014).
Canada. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. “Individuals Responsible for
Indian and Northern Affairs in Canada, 1755 to 2006.” https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/
eng/1100100016471/1100100016472 (accessed 13 April 2014).
Canada. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. “Statement of the Government of
Canada on Indian Policy, 1969.” https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/DAM/DAM-INTER-HQ/
STAGING/texte-text/cp1969_1100100010190_eng.pdf.
Canada. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. “The Nations Map of Quebec, Innu
Takuaikan Uashat mak Mani-Utenam.” http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/Mobile/Nations/profile_uashatmaliotenam-eng.html (accessed 12 November 2014).
Canada. Bank of Canada. “Inflation Calculator.” http://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculator/ (accessed 22 December 2013).
Canada. Education Division, Indian Affairs Branch, Department of Citizenship andImmigration. Statistical Report and Analysis of the Distribution of Indian School Children byAge, Grade, and Sex. January 1958.
Canada. Health Canada. Food and Nutrition. “Canada’s Food Guides from 1942 to 1992.”
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/food-guide-aliment/context/fg_history-histoire_ga-eng.
php#fnb9 (accessed 14 December 2013).
Canada. House of Commons. Special Joint Committee of the senate and the House ofCommons Appointed to Examine the Indian Act. Minutes of Evidence, D.F. Brown Presiding,April–May 1974.
Canada. House of Commons. Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern
Development, Minutes of Meetings 1, 18, 19, 20, 25, and 30 re Effectiveness of theGovernment Alternative Dispute Resolution Process for Resolution of Indian Residential
Schools Claims, 38th Parliament, 1st Session. http://www.parl.gc.ca/CommitteeBusiness/
CommitteeMeetings.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=38&Ses=1&Stac=1119424 (accessed
5 February 2015).
Canada. House of Commons. Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern
Development, Evidence, 17 February 2005, 38th Parliament, 1st Session. http://www.parl.gc.
ca/HousePublications/Publication aspx?DocId=1648068&Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=
38&Ses=1#Int-1137136 (accessed 2 November 2014).
Canada. House of Commons. Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern
Development. Study on the Effectiveness of the Government Alternative Dispute Resolution
Process for the Resolution of Indian Residential School Claims, 12 April 2005, 38th Parliament,
1st Session, Fourth Report.
Canada. Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Gathering Strength – Canada’s
Aboriginal Action Plan. Ottawa: Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada,
1997.

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Canada. Parliament. House of Commons Debates, 27th Parliament, 1st session, Volume II, 16
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Canada. Parliament. Orders-in-Council, P.C. nos. 2008-0793 to 2008-0804.
Canada. Parliament. Special Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons
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Canada. Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Canada’s Missing. “Case Reference: 2006005399.”
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Canada. Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Report of the Royal Commission on
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Canada. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. They Came for the Children:
Canada, Aboriginal Peoples, and Residential Schools. Winnipeg: Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada, 2012.
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Committee on Cereals. Outlook for Bread and Flour Enrichment: Review of Events during
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Political, Educational Needs and Policies [Hawthorn Report]. Volume 2. Ottawa: IndianAffairs Branch, 1967.
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Ottawa: Elections Canada, 2007. http://elections.ca/res/rec/part/paper/aboriginal/
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LeBeuf, Marcel-Eugène. The Role of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police During the Indian
Residential School System. Ottawa: Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 2011.
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Committee. Winnipeg: Manitoba Department of Education, 1964.

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6. Legislation
Class Actions Act, Statutes of Saskatchewan 2001, c. C-12.01.
Class Actions Act, Statutes of Newfoundland 2001, c. C-18.1.
Class Proceedings Act, Statutes of Ontario 1992, c. 6.
Class Proceedings Act, Statutes of Manitoba 2002, c. C130. Class Proceedings Act, Statutes ofBritish Columbia 1996, c. 50.
Class Proceedings Act, Statutes of New Brunswick 2011, c. 125.
Class Proceedings Act, Statutes of Alberta 2003, c. C-16.5.
Class Proceedings Act, Statues of Nova Scotia 2007, c. 28.

7. Legal Cases
A. (M.) v. Canada (Attorney General) [2001] SKQB 504 (CanLII). http://canlii.ca/t/5htn(accessed 18 February 2014).

Bibliography • 795
A. (M.) v. Canada (Attorney General) [2003] SKCA 002. http://canlii.ca/t/5clp (accessed 18
February 2014).
Ammaq v. Canada (Attorney General) [2006] NUCJ 24.
Anderson v. Bell Mobility Inc. [2010] NWTSC 65.
Baxter v. Canada (Attorney General) [2005] OJ 2165.
Baxter v. Canada (Attorney General) [2006] OJ 4968.
Blackwater (WRB) v. Plint [2005] SCC 58.
Bosum v. Canada (Attorney General) [2006] QCCS 5794.
Canadian Foundation for Children, Youth and the Law v. Canada (Attorney General) [2004] 1
SCR 76, [2004] SCC 4, 103–104.
Cardinal v. Canada (Attorney General). Court File No. 550-06-000308-502.
Cloud v. Canada (Attorney General) [2001] OJ 4163.
Cloud v. Canada (Attorney General) [2003] OJ 2698.
Cloud v. Canada (Attorney General) [2004] OJ 4924.
Cloud v. Canada (Attorney General) [2005] SCCA 50.
D. B. v. Canada (Attorney General) [2000] SKQB 574.
E. B. v. Order of Oblates [2001] BCSC 1783
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Fontaine v. Canada (Attorney General) [2006] YKSC 63.
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Fontaine v. Canada (Attorney General) [2014] ONSC 283.
G. S. v. Canada (Attorney General) [2001] SKQB 427.
H. L. v. Canada [2001] SKQB 233.
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H. L. v. Canada [2005] SCC 25.
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House v. Canada (Attorney General). Court File No. 550-06-0000210-056.
Kuptana v. Canada (Attorney General) [2007] NWTSC 1.
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Northwest v. Canada (Attorney General) [2006] ABQB 902.
Order of Quebec Superior Court Chief Justice François Rolland, 27 March 2013.
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796 • Truth & Reconciliation Commission
R. v. O’Connor [1996] BCJ 1663
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Semple v. Canada (Attorney General) [2006] MBQB 285
Sparvier v. Canada (Attorney General) [2005]. Court File No. T-848-05.
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TWNA v. Clarke [2001] BCSC 1177.
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W. R. B. v. Plint [2001] BCSC 997.
W. R. B. v. Plint [2003] BCCA 671.
Western Canadian Shopping Centres Ltd. v. Dutton [2001] 2 SCR 534.

8. Court Documents
Affidavit of Brian O’Reilly sworn on July 27, 2006 in Docket No. L051875, Quatell v. Canada(Attorney General).
Affidavit of Darcy Merkur sworn on 28 July 2006, in Court File No. 00-CV-192059CP, Baxter v.
Canada (Attorney General).
Affidavit of David Russell sworn on 25 July 2006, Court File No. 00-CV-192059CP, Baxter v.
Canada (Attorney General).
Affidavit of Donald I.M. Outerbridge, sworn on 8 August 2006, in Court File No. 00-CV192059-CP, Baxter v. Canada (Attorney General).
Affidavit of Frank Iacobucci sworn on 28 July 2006, in Court File No. 00-CV-192059CP, Baxter
v. Canada (Attorney General).
Affidavit of James Vincent Scott sworn on 14 June 2006, in Court File No. 00-CV-192059CP,
Baxter v. Canada (Attorney General).
Affidavit of Nellie J. Cournoyea sworn on 19 November 2012, in Docket No. 00-CV-192059,
Fontaine v. Canada (Attorney General), 2014 ONSC 4585.
Affidavit of Phil Fontaine, sworn on 28 July 2006, in Court File No. 05-CV-294716CP, Fontaine
v. Canada (Attorney General).
Factum of the Applicants/IAP Claimants in Request for Directions, Returnable 17 December
2013, in Docket No. 00-CV-192059, Fontaine v. Canada, 2013 ONSC 684.
Joint Factum of the Plaintiffs, Motion for Settlement Approval, Returnable 29–31 August 2006,
Court File No. 00-CV-192059CP, Baxter v. Canada (Attorney General).
Statement of Claim, in Court File No. 00-CV-192059CP, Baxter v. Canada (Attorney General).
Statement of Claim, in Court File No. 29762, Cloud v. Canada (Attorney General).

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9. Other
Agreement Between the Inuit of the Nunavut Settlement Area and Her Majesty the Queenin Right of Canada, Tungavik Federation of Nunavut and Minister of Indian Affairs andNorthern Development, 1993.
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undersigned, and the Assembly of First Nations et al., 10 November 2005. http://www.
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5. Theses and Dissertations
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6. Other Sources
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